Across America; Or, The Great West and the Pacific Coast

by James Fowler Rusling

[CHAPTER XV.]

DOWN THE COLUMBIA.

Umatilla was then a river town, of two or three hundred houses, mostly frame. It was still the chief point of departure from the Columbia for Idaho and Montana, though Wallula—25 miles farther up—was beginning to compete for this. Trade and travel that season had not been large, and the whole region there complained of dullness and stringency. The Metropolitan was a fair hotel, with a goodly supply of eastern and California papers, and seemed like a palace after our long "roughing it" from the Missouri to the Columbia. It was well patronized, especially by babies; and I do think they were the worst enfans terribles I ever saw. One doting mamma asked L. if he did not think her red-eyed, puffy-faced youngster "a dear little cherub;" and though he smiled approvingly, of course, he subsequently vowed he should think better of King Herod hereafter. The town already boasted one weekly newspaper, a public school-house, and two young churches, with a goodly complement of saloons and restaurants. Of course, the patent-medicine venders had long since reached it. "S. T. 1860 X. Drake's Plantation Bitters," was emblazoned on every dead-wall, "in characters of living light," as it had been from New York there. The year before I had observed it all through the South, in over ten thousand miles of travel there; and here it was again, mysterious and blatant, at the head of navigation on the Pacific Coast. So, we had found it all through the Rocky Mountains, at Salt Lake, and Boisè, as inevitable as the stage-station and post-office; and the design was the same huge cabalistic characters always. Another advertisement accompanied us regularly across the Plains to the Rocky Mountains; but "S. T. 1860 X. etc.," followed us to the Columbia and beyond, and everywhere seemed as universal as the air—as omnipresent as sunlight.

Indians were seen on the streets occasionally, but they were usually in the last stages of dissipation and degradation. They ought to be forbidden all such border towns, as their life there ends only in ruin. The white population consisted chiefly of Oregonians and Californians, of every shade of character. The Micawber type, of course, was not wanting. One afternoon, while writing in my room, a seedy individual, whom we had met at Wells' Springs, sauntered in, and, after some conversational skirmishing, solicited, "the loan of five dollars." He had been keeping a "hotel," he said, up in Owyhee, but the miners hadn't paid up their board-bills, and he was now "dead-broke," on his way back to Puget Sound. He would give his due-bill, and would certainly remit to me at San Francisco, but really couldn't tell exactly when! He claimed to be "a son of old Massachusetts, sir," and from Boston at that. But as he was odorous afar of "needle-gun" whiskey, the Hub, I suspect, would have haughtily repudiated him!

Ding! Dong! Puff! Puff! The steamer had come, and Nov. 28th, we at length embarked for down the Columbia. She was a little stern-wheel boat, scarcely longer than your finger, called Nez Perce Chief, Capt. Stump, master. Her fare to Fort Vancouver or Portland, including railroad-portages, was $18 in coin, which at rates then current was equivalent to $25 in greenbacks. Meals were extra, at a cost of $1,50 each, in currency, besides. The distance to Portland was about 200 miles; to the mouth of the Columbia, 100 or so more. We found Capt. Stump a very obliging Oregonian, and obtained much interesting information from him. His boat was part of a line belonging to the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, a gigantic corporation that controlled all the navigable waters of the Columbia, and with far-reaching enterprise was now seeking to connect them with the headwaters of the Missouri. He said, their boats could ascend to Umatilla all the year round, except in mid-winter, when the Columbia sometimes froze over for several weeks together, though not usually. With good water, they could go up to Wallula, at the mouth of the Walla-Walla, 25 miles farther, which they usually did six months in the year. With very high water, they could run up to Lewiston, at the junction of the Snake and Clearwater, about 175 miles more, three months in the year—making about 500 miles from the sea in all. Above Lewiston, there was a bad cañon in the Snake, with shoals and rapids for a hundred miles or so to Farewell Bend; but after that, he thought, a light-draught steamer might get up at least three hundred miles farther, or within about 200 miles of Salt Lake, as stated heretofore.

Clark's Fork of the Columbia, or the Columbia proper, makes a sharp bend north at Wallula, and for 300 miles, he said, was unnavigable, until you reach Fort Colville near the British line, when it trends east and south, until it disappears in the far off wilds of Montana. Just above Fort Colville, it became navigable again, and a small boat was then running up to the Great Bend region, over 200 miles farther, where good placer mines had been discovered (Kootenay) and worked a little. This boat could connect with another, already plying on Lake Pond Oreille (a part of Clark's Fork), and this with still another then building, that it was believed with short portages would extend navigation some 200 miles more, or into the very heart of Montana, within two or three hundred miles only of Fort Benton—the head of navigation on the Missouri. These were weighty facts, marrying the Pacific to the Atlantic; but Captain Stump thought the O. S. N. company could accomplish them, or anything else, indeed, it seriously undertook. Just now it was bending its energies in that direction, and he said would beat the Northern Pacific Railroad yet. No doubt we have a fine country up there, near the British America line, abounding in lakes and threaded with rivers, and roomy enough for all enterprises, whether railroad or steamboat.

Puff! Puff! And so we were off down the Columbia, at last. How exquisitely pleasant, how cosy and delightful, our little steamer seemed, after 2,400 miles of jolting and banging by stage-coach and ambulance! The state-rooms were clean and tidy, the meals well-cooked and excellent, and we went steaming down the Columbia without thought or care, as on "summer seas." Occasionally rapids appeared, of a serious character; but as a rule the river was broad and deep, majestic in size and volume. On the banks were frequent Indian villages, with their hardy little ponies browsing around—apparently on nothing but sage-brush and cobble-stones. These Indians fancied spotted or "calico" horses, as the Oregonians called them, and very few of their ponies were of a single color. They spend the summer mostly in the Mountains, making long excursions in all directions; but as winter approaches, they return to the Columbia, and eke out a precarious subsistence by fishing, etc., till spring comes. Timber was scarce, and frequently we saw numbers of them in canoes, paddling up and down the river in search of drift-wood, for their winter's supply of fuel. Past Owyhee rapids and the seething caldron of Hell-Gate, we reached Celilo, eighty-five miles from Umatilla, with its long warehouse (935 feet), and its mosquito fleet of five or six pigmy steamers, that formed the up-river line. Here we disembarked, and took the Railroad around the "chutes" or rapids, some fourteen miles, to still water again below. The shrill whistle of the locomotive and the rattle of the cars were delightful sounds, after our long exile from them, and soon convinced us we were on the right road to civilization again. This portage had formerly been made by pack-mules, and then by wagons; but recently a railroad had been constructed, after much hard blasting and costly wall-work, and now "Riding on a rail," there, with the Columbia boiling and roaring at your side, like the Rapids above Niagara, was exhilarating and superb. At very high water, these "chutes" or rapids somewhat disappear, though they still continue very dangerous. No attempt had been made to ascend them with a steamer; but the spring before, Capt. Stump had safely descended them, much against his will. It was high water in the Columbia, with a strong current, and his boat drifting near the rapids was suddenly sucked in, before he knew it. Clearly, escape was impossible; so he put on all steam, to give her steerage-way, and then headed down stream—neck or nothing. There was a good deal of bumping and thumping—it was a toss and a plunge, for awhile—and everybody he feared was pretty badly scared; but his gallant little boat ran the rapids for all that, and reached still water below safely at last. It was a daring feat, and worthy of this brave Oregonian. Just now, the Columbia was very low, rocks and reefs showing all through the rapids—among, around, and over which the waters boiled and rushed like a mill-race.

The locomotive carried us to the Dalles, at the foot of the Rapids, a town of some two thousand inhabitants, with a maturer civilization than any we had seen since leaving Salt lake. It was but five or six years old; yet it was already in its decrepitude. A "rush" of miners a few years before, to alleged fine "diggings" near there, had suddenly elevated it from an obscure landing into quite a town; but the mines did not justify their promise, and the Dalles was now at a stand-still, if not something worse. "Mining stock" and "corner lots" had gone down by the run, during the past year or two, and her few merchants sat by their doors watching for customers in vain. The enterprise of the town, however, deserved a better fate. At the Umatilla House they gave us an excellent supper, at a moderate price, and the hotel itself would have been a credit to a much larger town anywhere. The mines on John Day River, and other dependencies of the Dalles, had formerly yielded $2,000,000 per year, and Congress had then voted a U. S. Mint there. We could but sincerely hope it would be much needed, some day or other.

Halting at the Dalles over night, the next morning we took the side-wheel steamer Idaho, and ran down to Upper Cascades—some fifty miles—through the heart of the Cascade Mountains. Here we took the railroad again for six miles—to flank more rapids—and at Lower Cascades embarked on the W. G. Hunt, a large and elegant side-wheel steamer, that some years before had come "round the Horn," from New York. The Columbia, soon issuing from the Mountains, now became a broad and majestic river, with good depth of water to the ocean all the year round, and larger vessels even than the W. G. Hunt might readily ascend to Lower Cascades, if necessary. Our good boat, however, bore us bravely on to Fort Vancouver, amidst multiplying signs of civilization again; and as we landed there, we realized another great link of our journey was over.

To return a little. Our sail down the Columbia, and through the Cascade Mountains, altogether was a notable one, and surpassed everything in the way of wild and picturesque river-scenery, that we had seen yet. Some have compared the Columbia to the Hudson; but it is the Hudson many times magnified, and infinitely finer. It is the Hudson, without its teeming travel, its towns and villas, its civilization and culture; but with many times its grandeur and sublimity. The noble Palisades, famed justly throughout the world, sink into insignificance before the stupendous walls of the Cascade Range, which here duplicate them but on a far vaster scale, for many miles together. Piled along the sky on either side, up two or three thousand feet, for fifty miles at a stretch, with only a narrow gorge between, the Columbia whirls and boils along through this, in supreme mightiness and power; while from the summit of the great walls little streams here and there topple over, run like lace for a time, then break into a million drops, and finally come sifting down as mist, into the far depths below. Some of these tiny cascades streaked the cyclopean walls, like threads of silver, from top to bottom. Others seemed mere webs of gossamer, and these the wind at times caught up and swayed to and fro, like veils fit for goddesses. These Mountains, all through the cañon of the Columbia, abound with such fairy cascades; whence their name. Just below Lower Cascades, where the river-bottoms open out a little, stands Castle Rock, a huge red boulder of comparatively moderate dimensions at the base, but seven hundred feet high. Its walls are so perpendicular they seem inaccessible, and on top it is covered with a thick growth of fir-trees. Its alleged height appeared incredible at first, but on comparing it with the gigantic firs at the base, and those on the summit, the estimate seemed not unreasonable. All along, the vast basaltic walls of the cañon are shaped and fashioned into domes and turrets, ramparts and battlements; and surely in point of picturesque grandeur and effect, the Columbia would be hard to beat. We had not seen the Yosemite yet. But already, we felt, the Columbia compensated us for all our fatigue and danger, in crossing the Continent; and it is not too much to say, that all true lovers of the sublime and beautiful in nature will yet wonder and worship here.