Down the Columbia

by Lewis R. Freeman

Cabinet Rapids is the beginning of a somewhat irregular series of columnar basaltic cliffs which wall in the Columbia closely for the next thirty miles. They range in height from fifteen hundred to three thousand feet, and in colour from a rich blend of saffron-cinnamon, through all the shades of brown, to a dull black. The prevailing formation is that of upended cordwood, but there are endless weird stratifications and lamiations, with here and there queer nuclei that suggest sulphur crystallizations. Imbedded in the face of one of these cliffs not far from the tumultuous run of Gualquil Rapids, is a landmark that has been famous among Columbia voyageurs for over a hundred years. This is huge log, barkless and weather-whitened, standing on end in the native basalt. Over a thousand feet above the river and almost an equal distance from the brink of the sheer wall of rock, there is no possible question of its having been set there by man. The descriptions written of it a hundred years ago might have been written to-day. Whether it is petrified or not, there is no way of knowing. The only possible explanation of its presence is that it was lodged where it is at a time when the Columbia flowed a thousand feet higher than it does to-day, probably before it tore its great gorge through the Cascades and much of what is now eastern Washington was a vast lake.

On the suggestion of the ferry-man at Trinidad, we avoided the upper half of Gualquil Rapids by taking a straight, narrow channel to the right, which would probably have been dry in another week. There is a half mile of fast, white water here, ending with some heavy swirls against a sheer cliff, but nothing seriously to menace any well-handled open boat. The water was slack for a number of miles from the foot of Gualquil, but began quickening where the river spread out between long gravel bars below Vantage Ferry. They were shunting sheep across at the latter point, and the Portuguese herders crowded eagerly round our boat, making strange “high signs” and voicing cryptic utterances, evidently having something to do with a local bootleggers’ code. At our failure to respond in kind, they became suspicious (doubtless the fact that Roos was wearing a second-hand Canadian officer’s uniform he had bought in Revelstoke had something to do with it) that we were prohibition enforcement officials, and they were muttering darkly to each other and shaking their heads as we pushed off again.

The cliffs ran out not long after we left Vantage Ferry, and as we neared the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Bridge at Beverly rough patches of sandy desert began opening up on either side. Deprived of the shelter of the high river walls, we were at once exposed to a heavy easterly wind that had evidently been blowing all day on the desert. The sun dulled to a luminous blur behind the pall of the sand-filled air, and the wind, which headed us every now and then, about neutralized the impulse of the accelerating current. There was a forty-miles-an-hour sand-storm blowing when we beached the boat under the railway bridge at four-thirty. The brilliantly golden-yellow cars of the C. M. & St. P. Limited rumbling across above behind their electric locomotive seemed strangely out-of-place in the desolate landscape.

The one sidewalk of the town’s fragment of street was ankle-deep in sand as we buffetted our way to the hotel. “Have you ever been in Beverly before?” asked the sandy-haired (literally) girl who responded to the jangle of the cowbell on the counter. “But I should know better than that,” she apologized with a blush as she blew off the grit on the register; “’cause if you had been here once, you’d sure never be here again. What’s the game, anyhow? You haven’t...?” A knowing twitch of a dusty eyelash finished the question.

“No, we haven’t,” growled Roos irritably. Somehow he was never able to extract half the amusement that I did over being taken for a boot-legger.

It was the sand-storm that broke Roos’ heart, I think. He was non-committal at supper that night when I started to talk about Priest Rapids, and the next morning, after describing his shave as like rubbing his face with a brick, he announced that he was through with the Columbia for good. As there was a good deal to be said for his contention that, between the shortening days and the high cliffs walling in the river, there were only two or three hours of good shooting light even when the sun was out, I did not feel justified in urging him to go on unless he wanted to. In any event, light for filming the running and lining of Priest Rapids, now that the sand-storm was at its height, was out of the question for a day or two at least. And below Priest Rapids there would be nothing worth filming until the mouth of the Snake was passed. I suggested, therefore, that he should go on to Pasco by train and await me there, finding out in the meantime by wire whether Chester cared to have him continue the “farmer” picture in the face of the adverse light conditions.

By this time I had fairly complete data on Priest Rapids. These, beginning at the end of a stretch of slack water several miles below Beverly, continue for eleven miles. In this distance there are seven major riffles, with considerable intervals of fairly quiet water between. It seemed probable that all of these, with the exception of the second and seventh, and possibly the sixth, could be run. The lining of the others, while not difficult, would require the help of another man. All that morning I inhaled sand as I went over Beverly with a fine-toothed comb in a very earnest effort to find some one willing to give me a hand through Priest Rapids. The nearest I came to success was an ex-brakeman, who said he would go with me after the storm was over, provided a job hadn’t turned up in the meantime. The only real river-man I found was an old chap who opined that the middle of November was too late in the year to be getting his feet—if nothing else—wet in the “Columby.” He offered to haul the boat to the foot of the rapids by the road for twenty dollars, but as the down-river branch of the Milwaukee presented an opportunity to accomplish the same end in less time and discomfort, I decided to portage by the latter. As there was an auto-stage service from Hanford to Pasco, Roos accompanied me to the former point by train, and helped get the boat down to the river and into the water in the morning. Hanford was not the point on the line closest to the foot of Priest Rapids, but I took the boat through to there because the station was nearer the river than at White Bluffs, and launching, therefore, a simpler matter.

The stretch of seventy miles between the foot of Priest Rapids and the mouth of the Snake has the slowest current of any part of the Columbia above the Dalles. Mindful of the time we had been losing by stops for lunch, I now began putting into practice a plan which I followed right on to the end of my voyage. Taking a package of biscuit and a couple of bars of milk chocolate in my pocket, I kept the river right straight on through to my destination. Munching and resting for an hour at noon, I at least had the benefit of the current for this period. Eating a much lighter lunch, I also gained the advantage of no longer being troubled with that comfortable siesta-time drowsiness that inevitably follows a hearty meal and disinclines one strongly to heavy exertion for an hour or more.

For a dozen miles or more below Hanford the river, flanked on either side by rolling desert sand-dunes, winds in broad shallow reaches through a region desolate in the extreme. The only signs of life I saw for many miles were coyotes slinking through the hungry sage-brush and occasional flocks of geese, the latter forerunners of the countless myriads that were to keep me company below the Snake. At Richfield the results of irrigation became evident in young apple orchards and green fields of alfalfa, and these multiplied all the way down to Pasco. The country seemed very flat and monotonous after so many weeks among cliffs and mountains, but there was no question of its richness and productivity once water was brought to it. The low overflow flats about the mouth of the Yakima, which flows into the Columbia from the west a few miles above Pasco, gave little indication of the beauty of the famous apple country which owes so much to the waters diverted from that little river.

After pulling for an hour with the long Northern Pacific bridge in view, I landed just below the Pasco-Kennewick ferry at three o’clock. As I was beaching the boat and getting out the luggage to leave in the ferry-man’s house-boat, a hail from the river attracted my attention. It was from Roos, in the front seat of an auto, on the approaching ferry-boat. His stage had been behind time in leaving Hanford, and as a consequence I had beaten him to the Pasco landing by ten minutes. After the speed with which we had moved on the upper river, however, mine had been rather a slow run. In spite of my steady pulling, it had taken me just under six hours to do the thirty-five miles.