Captain McDermid was waiting on the bow of his steamer to give us a hand aboard. He had read of our voyage in the Spokane papers, he said, and had been on the lookout for several days. At first he had watched for a skiff, but later, when he had heard that we had pushed off with Ike on a raft, it was logs he had been keeping a weather eye lifting for. When Ike described the raft to him, he wagged his head significantly, and said he reckoned it was just as well we had changed to the launch for Box Canyon. “It isn’t everybody that can navigate under water like this old rat here,” he added, giving Ike a playful prod in the ribs.
As we were planning to go on through to the mouth of the Chelan River, in the hope of getting up to the lake that afternoon, an hour was the most I could stop over on the Bridgeport for a yarn with Captain McDermid, where I would have been glad of a week. He told me, very simply but graphically, of the run down Grand Rapids, and a little of his work with stern or side-wheelers in other parts of the world, which included a year on the upper Amazon and about the same time as skipper of a ferry running from the Battery to Staten Island. Then he spoke, with a shade of sadness, of the Bridgeport and his plans for the future. In all the thousand miles of the Columbia between the Dalles and its source, she had been the last steamer to maintain a regular service. (This was not reckoning the Arrow Lakes, of course). But the close of the present apple season had marked the end. Between the increasing competition of railways and trucks, the game was no longer worth the candle. He, and his partners in the Bridgeport, had decided to try to take her to Portland and offer her for sale. She was very powerfully engined and would undoubtedly bring a good price—once they got her there. But getting her to Portland was the rub. There were locks at the Cascades and the Dalles, but Rock Island, Cabinet, Priest and Umatilla, to say nothing of a number of lesser rapids would have to be run. It was a big gamble, insurance, of course, being out of the question on any terms. The Douglas, half the size of the Bridgeport, had tried it a couple of months ago, and—well, we would see the consequences on the rocks below Cabinet Rapids. Got through Rock Island all right, and then went wrong in Cabinet, which wasn’t half as bad. Overconfidence, probably, “Old Cap” thought. But he felt sure that he would have better luck, especially if he went down first and made a good study of Rock Island and Priest; and that was one of the things that he had wanted to see me about. If there was room for him in the skiff, he would like to run through with us as far as Pasco, and brush up on the channel as we went along. If things were so he could get away, he would join us at Wenatchee on our return from Chelan. I jumped at the chance without hesitation, for it would give us the benefit of the experience and help of the very best man on that part of the Columbia in getting through the worst of the rapids that remained to be run. I had been a good deal concerned about how the sinister cascade of Rock Island was to be negotiated, to say nothing of the long series of riffles called Priest Rapids, which had even a worse record. I parted with Captain McDermid with the understanding that we would get in touch by phone a day or two later, when I knew definitely when we would return to the river from Chelan, and make the final arrangements.
Leaving Ike on the Bridgeport for a yarn with his old friend, we pushed off in the launch for Chelan. Methow Rapids, just below the river of that name, was the only fast water encountered, and that was a good, straight run in a fairly clear channel. We landed half a mile below the mouth of the Chelan River, where the remains of a road led down through the boulders to the tower of an abandoned ferry. Earl put about at once and headed back up-stream, expecting to pick up Ike at Potaris and push on through to Bridgeport that evening.
We parted from both Earl and Ike in all good feeling and with much regret. Each in his line was one of the best men I have ever had to do with. Ike—in spite of the extent to which his movements were dominated by the maxim that “time is made for slaves,” or, more likely, for that very reason—was a most priceless character. I only hope I shall be able to recruit him for another river voyage in the not-too-distant future.
CHAPTER XII
CHELAN TO PASCO
For two reasons I am writing but briefly of our visit to Lake Chelan: first, because it was entirely incidental to the Columbia voyage, and, second, because one who has only made the run up and down this loveliest of mountain lakes has no call to write of it. Chelan is well named “Beautiful Water.” Sixty miles long and from one to four miles wide, cliff-walled and backed by snowy mountains and glaciers, it has much in common with the Arrow Lakes of the upper Columbia, and, by the same tokens, Kootenay Lake. Among the large mountain lakes of the world it has few peers.
The Chelan River falls three hundred and eighty-five feet in the four miles from the outlet of the lake to where it tumbles into the Columbia. It is a foam-white torrent all the way, with a wonderful “Horse-shoe” gorge near the lower end which has few rivals for savage grandeur. One may reach the lake from the Columbia by roads starting either north or south of the draining river. We went by the latter, as it was the more conveniently reached from the ferry-man’s house where we had left our outfit after landing. The town of Chelan, at the lower end of the lake, is a lovely little village, with clean streets, bright shops, and a very comfortable hotel. I have forgotten the name of the hotel, but not the fact that it serves a big pitcher of thick, yellow cream with every breakfast. So far as my own experience goes, it is the only hotel in America or Europe which has perpetuated that now all but extinct ante-bellum custom. In case there may be any interested to know—even actually to enjoy—what our forefathers had with their coffee and mush, I will state that three transcontinental railways pass within a hundred miles to the southward of Chelan. It will prove well worth the stop-over; and there is the lake besides.
The lower end of Lake Chelan is surrounded by rolling hills, whose fertile soil is admirably adapted to apples, now an important industry in that region; the upper end is closely walled with mountains and high cliffs—really an extremely deep gorge half filled with water. Indeed, the distinction of being the “deepest furrow Time has wrought on the face of the Western Hemisphere” is claimed for upper Chelan Lake—this because there are cliffs which rise almost vertically for six thousand feet from the water’s edge, and at a point where the sounding lead has needed nearly a third of that length of line to bring it back from a rocky bottom which is indented far below the level of the sea.