Over all the varying scene, as the boat ploughed along, hung a mighty silence; for almost the only life on the deep wooded sides of the mountains was that of stealthy game. At only two points were any human beings lodged, and these were wood-choppers who supplied the fuel for the steamer—a Chinaman in one place, and two or three white men farther on. In this part of its magnificent valley the Columbia broadens in two long loops, called the Arrow Lakes, each more than two miles wide and twenty to thirty miles in length. Their prodigious towering walls are densely wooded, and in places are snow-capped in midsummer. The forest growth is primeval, and its own luxuriance crowds it beyond the edge of the grand stream in the fretwork of fallen trunks and bushes, whose roots are bedded in the soft mass of centuries of forest débris.
Early in the journey the clerk of the steamer told me that wild animals were frequently seen crossing the river ahead of the vessel; bear, he said, and deer and elk and porcupine. When I left him to go to my state-room and dress for the rough journey ahead of me, he came to my door, calling in excited tones for me to come out on the deck. "There's a big bear ahead!" he cried, and as he spoke I saw the black head of the animal cleaving the quiet water close to the nearer shore. Presently Bruin's feet touched the bottom, and he bounded into the bush and disappeared.
The scenery was superb all the day, but at sundown nature began to revel in a series of the most splendid and spectacular effects. For an hour a haze had clothed the more distant mountains as with a transparent veil, rendering the view dream-like and soft beyond description. But as the sun sank to the summit of the uplifted horizon it began to lavish the most intense colors upon all the objects in view. The snowy peaks turned to gaudy prisms as of crystal, the wooded summits became impurpled, the nearer hills turned a deep green, and the tranquil lake assumed a bright pea-color. Above all else, the sky was gorgeous. Around its western edge it took on a rose-red blush that blended at the zenith with a deep blue, in which were floating little clouds of amber and of flame-lit pearl.
A moonless night soon closed around the boat, and in the morning we were at Sproat's Landing, a place two months old. The village consisted of a tiny cluster of frame-houses and tents perched on the edge of the steep bank of the Columbia. One building was the office and storehouse of the projected railroad, two others were general trading stores, one was the hotel, and the other habitations were mainly tents.
I firmly believe there never was a hotel like the hostlery there. In a general way its design was an adaptation of the plan of a hen-coop. Possibly a box made of gridirons suggests more clearly the principle of its construction. It was two stories high, and contained about a baker's dozen of rooms, the main one being the bar-room, of course. After the framework had been finished, there was perhaps half enough "slab" lumber to sheathe the outside of the house, and this had been made to serve for exterior and interior walls, and the floors and ceilings besides. The consequence was that a flock of gigantic canaries might have been kept in it with propriety, but as a place of abode for human beings it compared closely with the Brooklyn Bridge.
AN INDIAN CANOE ON THE COLUMBIA
They have in our West many very frail hotels that the people call "telephone houses," because a tenant can hear in every room whatever is spoken in any part of the building; but in this house one could stand in any room and see into all the others. A clergyman and his wife stopped in it on the night before I arrived, and the good woman stayed up until nearly daylight, pinning papers on the walls and laying them on the floor until she covered a corner in which to prepare for bed.
I hired a room and stored my traps in it, but I slept in one of the engineers' tents, and met with a very comical adventure. The tent contained two cots, and a bench on which the engineer, who occupied one of the beds, had heaped his clothing. Supposing him to be asleep, I undressed quietly, blew out the candle, and popped into my bed. As I did so one pair of its legs broke down, and it naturally occurred to me, at almost the same instant, that the bench was of about the proper height to raise the fallen end of the cot to the right level.