Glimpses of Three Coasts

by Helen Hunt Jackson

Then he told me of another Indian chief he had known well,—"Ercutch" by name. This chief was always a warm friend of the whites; again and again he had warned them of danger from hostile Indians. "Why, when he died, there wa'n't a white woman in all this country that didn't mourn 's if she'd lost a friend; they felt safe's long's he was round. When he knew he was dyin' he jest bade all his friends good-by. Said he, 'Good-by! I'm goin' to the Great Spirit;' an' then he named over each friend he had, Injuns an' whites, each one by name, and said good-by after each name."

It was a strange half-hour, rocking and jolting on this crowded car platform, the splendid tossing and foaming river with its rocks and islands on one hand, high cliffs and fir forests on the other; these three weather-beaten, eager, aged faces by my side, with their shrewd old voices telling such reminiscences, and rising shrill above the din of the cars.

From the upper cascades to the Dalles, by boat again; a splendid forty miles' run, through the mountain-pass, its walls now gradually lowering, and, on the Washington Territory side of the river, terraces and slopes of cleared lands and occasional settlements. Great numbers of drift-logs passed us here, coming down apace, from the rush of the Dalles above. Every now and then one would get tangled in the bushes and roots on the shore, swing in, and lodge tight to await the next freshet.

The "log" of one of these driftwood voyages would be interesting; a tree trunk may be ten years getting down to the sea, or it may swirl down in a week. It is one of the businesses along the river to catch them, and pull them in to shore, and much money is made at it. One lucky fisher of logs, on the Snake River Fork, once drew ashore six hundred cords in a single year. Sometimes a whole boom gets loose from its moorings, and comes down stream, without breaking up. This is a godsend to anybody who can head it off and tow it in shore; for by the law of the river he is entitled to one half the value of the logs.

At the Dalles is another short portage of twelve miles, past a portion of the river which, though less grand than its plunge through the Cascade Mountains, is far more unique and wonderful. The waters here are stripped and shred into countless zigzagging torrents, boiling along through labyrinths of black lava rocks and slabs. There is nothing in all Nature so gloomy, so weird, as volcanic slag; and the piles, ridges, walls, palisades of it thrown up at this point look like the roof-trees, chimneys, turrets of a half-engulfed Pandemonium. Dark slaty and gray tints spread over the whole shore, also; it is all volcanic matter, oozed or boiled over, and hardened into rigid shapes of death and destruction. The place is terrible to see. Fitting in well with the desolateness of the region was a group of half-naked Indians crouching on the rocks, gaunt and wretched, fishing for salmon; the hollows in the rocks about them filled with the bright vermilion-colored salmon spawn, spread out to dry. The twilight was nearly over as we sped by, and the deepening darkness added momently to the gloom of the scene.

At Celilo, just above the Dalles, we took boat again for Umatilla, one hundred miles farther up the river.

Next morning we were still among lava beds: on the Washington Territory side, low, rolling shores, or slanting slopes with terraces, and tufty brown surfaces broken by ridges and points of the black slag; on the Oregon side, high brown cliffs mottled with red and yellow lichens, and great beaches and dunes of sand, which had blown into windrows and curving hillock lines as on the sea-shore. This sand is a terrible enemy for a railroad to fight. In a few hours, sometimes, rods of the track are buried by it as deep as by snow in the fiercest winter storms.

The first picture I saw from my state-room windows, this morning, was an Indian standing on a narrow plank shelf that was let down by ropes over a perpendicular rock front, some fifty feet high. There he stood, as composed as if he were on terra firma, bending over towards the water, and flinging in his salmon net. On the rocks above him sat the women of his family, spreading the salmon to dry. We were within so short a distance of the banks that friendly smiles could be distinctly seen; and one of the younger squaws, laughing back at the lookers-on on deck, picked up a salmon, and waving it in her right hand ran swiftly along towards an outjutting point. She was a gay creature, with scarlet fringed leggings, a pale green blanket, and on her head a twisted handkerchief of a fine old Dürer red. As she poised herself, and braced backwards to throw the salmon on deck, she was a superb figure against the sky; she did not throw straight, and the fish fell a few inches short of reaching the boat. As it struck the water she made a petulant little gesture of disappointment, like a child, threw up her hands, turned, and ran back to her work.

At Umatilla, being forced again to "make option which of two," we reluctantly turned back, leaving the beautiful Walla Walla region unvisited, for the sake of seeing Puget Sound. The Walla Walla region is said to be the finest stretch of wheat country in the world. Lava slag, when decomposed, makes the richest of soil,—deep and seemingly of inexhaustible fertility. A failure of harvests is said never to have been known in that country; the average yield of wheat is thirty-five to forty bushels an acre, and oats have yielded a hundred bushels. Apples and peaches thrive, and are of a superior quality. The country is well watered, and has fine rolling plateaus from fifteen hundred to three thousand feet high, giving a climate neither too cold in winter nor too hot in summer, and of a bracing quality not found nearer the sea. Hearing all the unquestionable tributes to the beauty and value of this Walla Walla region, I could not but recall some of Chief Joseph's pleas that a small share of it should be left in the possession of those who once owned it all.

From our pilot, on the way down, I heard an Indian story, too touching to be forgotten, though too long to tell here except in briefest outline. As we were passing a little village, half under water, he exclaimed, looking earnestly at a small building to whose window-sills the water nearly reached: "Well, I declare, Lucy's been driven out of her house this time. I was wondering why I didn't see her handkerchief a-waving. She always waves to me when I go by." Then he told me Lucy's story.