Down the Columbia

by Lewis R. Freeman

Pushing off about noon, we dropped down to near the head of “Twelve-Mile,” and put Roos ashore on the right bank for a shot as we ran through. We had expected to land to pick him up at the foot of the rapid, but Blackmore, in order to make the picture as spectacular as possible, threw the boat right into the midst of the white stuff. There was a good deal of soft fluff flying in the air, but nothing with much weight in it. We ran through easily, but got so far over toward the left bank that it was impossible to pull into the eddy we had hoped to make. Andy and I pulled our heads off for five minutes before we could reach slack water near the left bank, and by then we were a quarter of a mile below the foot of the rapid. Andy had to go back to help Roos down over the boulders with his machine and tripod. Another mile in fast water brought us to the head of Rock Slide Rapids, and we landed on the right bank for our last stretch of lining on the Big Bend.

The Rock Slide is the narrowest point on the whole Columbia between Lake Windermere and the Pacific. An almost perpendicular mountainside has been encroaching on the river here for many years, possibly damming it all the way across at times. From the Slide to the precipitous left bank there is an average channel seventy feet in width, through which the river rushes with tremendous velocity over and between enormous sharp-edged boulders. This pours into a cauldron-like eddy at a right-angled bend, and over the lower end of that swirling maelstrom the river spills into another narrow chute to form the Dalles des Morts of accursed memory. I know of no place on the upper half of the Bend where the river is less than a hundred feet wide. The Little Dalles, just below the American line, are about a hundred and forty feet across in their narrowest part, and the Great Dalles below Celilo Falls are slightly wider. Kettle Falls, Hell-Gate and Rock Island Rapids have side channels of less than a hundred feet, but the main channels are much broader. Save only the Dalles des Morts (which are really its continuation) the Rock Slide has no near rival anywhere on the river.

It has struck me as quite probable that the Rock Slide, and the consequent constriction of the river at that point, are of comparatively recent occurrence, almost certainly of the last hundred years. In the diaries of Ross, Cox and Franchiere, on which most of the earlier Columbian history is based, I can find no mention of anything of the kind at this point, a location readily identifiable because of its proximity to the Dalles des Morts, which they all mention. But in Ross’ record I do find this significant passage:

“A little after starting (from the Dalles des Morts) we backed our paddles and stood still for some minutes admiring a striking curiosity. The water of a cataract creek, after shooting over the brink of a bold precipice, falls in a white sheet onto a broad, flat rock, smooth as glass, which forms the first step; then upon a second, some ten feet lower down, and lastly, on a third, somewhat lower. It then enters a subterranean vault, formed at the mouth like a funnel, and after passing through this funnel it again issues forth with a noise like distant thunder. After falling over another step it meets the front of a bold rock, which repulses back the water with such violence as to keep it whirling around in a large basin. Opposite to this rises the wing of a shelving cliff, which overhangs the basin and forces back the rising spray, refracting in the sunshine all the colours of the rainbow. The creek then enters the Columbia.”

On the left bank, immediately above the Dalles des Morts, an extremely beautiful little waterfall leaps into the river from the cliffs, but neither this (as will readily be seen from my photograph of it) nor any other similar fall I saw in the whole length of the Columbia, bears the least suggestion of a resemblance to the remarkable cataract Ross so strikingly describes. But I did see a very sizable stream of water cascading right down the middle of the great rock slide, and at a point which might very well coincide with that at which Ross saw his “stairway-and-tunnel” phenomenon. Does it not seem quite possible that the latter should have undermined the cliff over and through which it was tumbling, precipitating it into the river and forming the Rock Slide of the present day?

The middle of the channel at Rock Slide was a rough, smashing cascade that looked quite capable of grinding a boat to kindling wood in a hundred feet; but to the right of it the water was considerably better. Blackmore said the chances would be all in favour of running it safely, but, if anything at all went wrong (such as the unshipping of an oar, for instance), it might make it hard to get into the eddy at the bend; and if we missed the eddy—Death Rapids! He didn’t seem to think any further elucidation was necessary. It would be best to line the whole way down, he said.

On account of the considerable depth of water right up to the banks, the boat struck on the rocks rather less than usual; but the clamber over the jagged, fresh-fallen granite was the worst thing of the kind we encountered. I did get a bit of a duck here, though, but it was not near to being anything serious, and the sequel was rather amusing. Losing my footing for a moment on the only occasion I had to give Andy a lift with the boat, I floundered for a few strokes, kicked into an eddy and climbed out.

Ever since Andy had his souse and came out with empty pockets, I had taken the precaution of buttoning mine securely down before starting in to line. The buttons had resisted the best efforts of the kleptomaniacal river current, and I came out with the contents of my pocket wet but intact. But there was a trifling casualty even thus. A leg of my riding breeches was missing from the knee down. It was an ancient pair of East Indian jodpurs I was wearing (without leggings, of course), and age and rough usage had opened a slit at the knee. Possibly I caught this somewhere on the boat without noting it in my excitement; or it is even possible the current did tear it off. There was nothing especially remarkable about it in any case. All the same, Blackmore and Andy always solemnly declared that the geesly river, baulked by my buttons of its designs on the contents of my pockets, had tried to get away with my whole pair of pants! If that was so, it had its way in the end. Before I set out on the second leg of my voyage from the foot of the Arrow Lakes, I threw the river god all that was left of that bedraggled pair of jodpurs as a propitiatory offering.

The deeper rumble of Death Rapids became audible above the higher-keyed grind of Rock Slide as we worked down toward the head of the intervening eddy. Of all the cataracts and cascades with sinister records on the Columbia this Dalles of the Dead has undoubtedly been the one to draw to itself the greatest share of execration. The terrific toll of lives they have claimed is unquestionably traceable to the fact that this swift, narrow chute of round-topped rollers is many times worse than it looks, especially to a comparatively inexperienced river man, and there have been many such numbered among its victims. There are two or three places in Surprise Rapids, and one or two even in Kinbasket, that the veriest greenhorn would know better than to try to run; Death Rapids it is conceivable that a novice might try, just as many of them have, and to their cost. However, it is probable that the greatest number that have died here were comparatively experienced men who were sucked into the death-chute in spite of themselves. Of such was made up the party whose tragic fate gave the rapid its sinister name. Ross Cox, of the original Astorians, tells the story, and the account of it I am setting down here is slightly abridged from his original narrative.

On the sixteenth of April, 1817, Ross Cox’s party of twenty-three left Fort George (originally and subsequently Astoria) to ascend the Columbia and cross the Rockies by the Athabaska Pass, en route Montreal. On the twenty-seventh of May they arrived at Boat Encampment after the most severe labours in dragging their boats up the rapids and making their way along the rocky shores. Seven men of the party were so weak, sick and worn out that they were unable to proceed across the mountains, so they were given the best of the canoes and provisions, and were to attempt to return down river to Spokane House, a Hudson Bay post near the mouth of the river of that name. They reached the place which has since borne the name of Dalles des Morts without trouble. There, in passing their canoe down over the rapids with a light cod line, it was caught in a whirlpool. The line snapped, and the canoe, with all the provisions and blankets, was lost.

The men found themselves utterly destitute, and at a time of year when it was impossible to procure any wild fruit or roots. The continual rising of the water completely inundated the beach, which compelled them to force their way through a dense forest, rendered almost impervious by a thick growth of prickly underbrush. Their only nourishment was water. On the third day a man named Macon died, and his surviving comrades, though unconscious of how soon they might be called on to follow him, divided his remains into equal parts, on which they subsisted for several days. From the sore and swollen state of their feet, their daily progress did not exceed two or three miles. A tailor named Holmes was the next to die, and the others subsisted for some days on his emaciated remains. In a little while, of the seven men, only two remained alive—Dubois and La Pierre. La Pierre was subsequently found on the upper Arrow Lake by two Indians who were coasting it in a canoe. They took him to Kettle Falls, from where he was carried to Spokane House.

He stated that after the death of the fifth man of the party, Dubois and he remained for some days at the spot, living on the remains. When they felt strong enough to continue, they loaded themselves with as much of the flesh as they could carry; that with this they succeeded in reaching the Upper Lake, around the shores of which they wandered for some time in search of Indians; that their food at length became exhausted, and they were again reduced to the prospects of starvation. On the second night after their last meal La Pierre observed something suspicious in the conduct of Dubois, which induced him to be on his guard; and that shortly after they had lain down for the night, and while he feigned sleep, he observed Dubois cautiously opening his clasp-knife, with which he sprang at La Pierre, inflicting on the hand the blow evidently intended for the neck. A silent and desperate conflict followed, in which, after severe struggling, La Pierre succeeded in wresting the knife from his antagonist, and, having no other resource left, was finally obliged to cut Dubois’ throat. It was several days after this that he was discovered by the Indians.