Down the Columbia

by Lewis R. Freeman

A low sandy beach just above the mouth of the rather insignificant Walla Walla comes pretty near to being the most historically important point on the Columbia. Here Lewis and Clark first came to the waters of the long-struggled-toward Oregon; here came Frémont, the “Pathfinder;” here Thompson planted his pious proclamation claiming all of the valley of the Columbia for the Northwest Company; and by here, sooner or later, passed and repassed practically every one of the trappers, missionaries, settlers and other pioneers who were finally to bring Oregon permanently under the Stars and Stripes.

The double-topped butte, an outstanding landmark for voyageurs for a hundred years, has long been called “The Two Virgins.” The story is told locally of a Catholic priest who saved his life by taking refuge in a cave between the castellated turrets during an Indian massacre, but who got in rather serious trouble with the Church afterwards as a consequence of sending words of his deliverance by a French-Canadian half-breed voyageur. The latter got the salient details of the story straight, but neglected to explain that the two virgins were mountains. The result was that the unlucky priest narrowly missed excommunication for saving his life at the expense of breaking his vows. I got no affidavit with the story; but local “stock” yarns are always worth preserving on account of their colour.

There were a number of big black rocks where the river began its bend to the west, but the channel to the right was not hard to follow. Neither did Bull Run Rapids, a few miles farther down, offer any difficulties. I followed the steamer channel as having the swiftest current, but could have passed without trouble on either side of it in much quieter water. Brown and terra-cotta-tinged cliffs reared higher and higher to left and right, encroaching closely on the river. There was little room for cultivation at any point, and often the railways had had to resort to heavy cutting and tunnelling to find a way through some jutting rock buttress. There were no trees, and the general aspect of the country was desolate in the extreme.

It was toward the end of a grey afternoon that I headed Imshallah into the first pitch of Umatilla Rapids. The sun had dissolved into a slowly thickening mist about three o’clock, and from then on the whole landscape had been gradually neutralizing itself by taking on shade after shade of dull, inconspicuous grey. From the grey-white mistiness of the sky to the grey-green murkiness of the river there was nothing that contrasted with anything else; every object was blended, dissolved, all but quenched. The foam-ruffles above even the sharpest of the riffles blurred like the streaking of clouded marble at a hundred feet, and it took the livest kind of a lookout to avoid the ones with teeth in them. Neither the first nor the second riffle had any very bad water, but my neck was stiff from watching over my shoulder even as they were. I had rather intended avoiding this trouble by drifting down anything that looked very threatening stern first, but that would have involved retrimming the boat and greatly reducing her speed. If I was going to make Umatilla by dark, there was no time to lose.

From the head of the first riffle of Umatilla Rapids to the head of the third or main one is a mile and a half. There was a slight up-river breeze blowing in the mist, and the heavy rumble of the big fall came to my ears some distance above the opening riffle. The distant roar augmented steadily after that, and the sharper grind of the more imminent riffles was never loud enough to drown it out entirely. The fact that it had a certain “all pervasive” quality, seeming to fill the whole of the gorge with its heavy beat, told me that it was an unusually long rapid, as well as an unusually rough one. That, it seemed, was about all I was going to be able to find out. No one was in sight on the left bank, which I was skirting, and the right bank was masked with mist. With none to seek information from, and with not enough light to see for myself, the alternatives were very simple: I could either land, line as far as I could while light lasted and then seek Umatilla on foot for the night, or I could take my chance at running through. It was the delay and uncertainty sure to be attendant upon lining that was the principal factor in deciding me to try the latter course. Also, I knew that there was an open channel all the way through, and that the rapid was a comparatively broad and shallow one, rather than constricted and deep. This meant that it would be straight white water—a succession of broken waves—I was going into, rather than heavy swirls and whirlpools; just the water in which the skiff had already proved she was at her best. These points seemed to minimize the risk of going wrong to a point where the chance of running was worth taking for the time and trouble it would save. If I had not known these things in advance, I should never, of course, have risked going into so strong a rapid under such conditions of light.

I shall always have a very grateful feeling toward that Pasco ferry-man for those few words he dropped about the run of the reef and the set of the current at Umatilla Rapid. This is one of the few great rapids I have ever known on any river where the main drift of the current will not carry a boat to the deepest channel. This is due to the fact that the great reef of native rock which causes the rapid is sufficiently submerged even at middle water to permit a considerable flow directly across it. The consequence of this is that a boat, large or small, which follows the current and does not start soon enough working over toward the point where a channel has been blasted through the reef, is almost certain to be carried directly upon the latter. This has happened to a good many steamers, the latest having been wrecked not long before my voyage.

With a rough idea of the lay of things in my mind, I had edged a good deal farther out across the current than would have been the case had I been trusting to my own judgment of the way the rapid ought to develop in the light of my past experience. The smooth but swiftly-flowing water to the left looked almost empty of threat, and it was not until I was within a hundred feet of the barrier that I saw it was flowing directly over the latter and went tumbling down the farther side in an almost straight fall. At the same instant I saw that I was still heading forty or fifty feet to the left of where the “intake” dipped through the break in the reef. Realizing that I could never make it by heading straight, I swung the skiff round and pulled quartering to the current with her head up-stream. Even then it was a nearer squeak than I like to think of. I missed the middle of the “V” by ten feet as I swung her head down-stream again, and as the racing current carried her up against the back-wave thrown off the end of the break in the reef she heeled heavily to starboard, like an auto turning on a steeply-banked track. Then she shot out into the big white combers in mid-channel and started slap-banging down through them. It looked beastly rough ahead, but in any event it was better than hanging up on the reef at the outset. We were going to have run for our money whatever happened.

The only precautions there had been time to take were slipping into my “Gieve” and throwing all my luggage aft. Half-inflated, the rubber-lined jacket was no handicap in rowing, and the tube hung ready to receive more air if necessity arose. As for the trim, it had been my snap judgment at the last moment that it would be better to give the skiff her head in the rollers that I knew were coming, and let her take her chance in being down by the stern in whirlpools that might never materialize. I still think that was the best thing to have done under the circumstances.

Not until I was right down into that wild wallow of rock-churned foam was there a chance to get an idea of the rather remarkable bedrock formation which is responsible for making Umatilla Rapids the worrisome problem they have always been for river skippers. After piercing the black basaltic barrier of the reef, the channel shoots to the left and runs for a quarter of a mile or more (I was too busy to judge distances accurately) right along the foot of it. With a considerable stream of water cascading over the reef at almost right angles to the channel, a queer sort of side-kick is thrown into the waves of the latter which make it one of the most “unrhythmic” rapids I ever ran. Imshallah pounded horribly, but gave not the savagest of the twisting combers a chance to put anything solid over her high held head. My erratic pecking strokes did not find green water often enough to give her much way over the current, but she responded instantly every time I dug deep to throw her head back after she had been buffeted sideways by an arrogant ruffian of a roller.

As soon as I saw the way she was riding the roughest of the water, I realized that the only chance of a bad mess-up would come through my failure to keep her head to the enemy. Knowing this wasn’t likely to happen unless I broke an oar, I eased a bit on my pulling and gave just a quick short-arm jerk now and then to hold her steady. She was never near to broaching-to, and I’m mighty glad she wasn’t. Umatilla is the sort of a rapid that hasn’t quite the teeth to get the best of a carefully handled boat that is running in good luck, but which has the power, with a mile to spare, to grind to match-wood any craft that gets into trouble on its own account. It was an eerie run that—with the snarling cascade of the reef on one side, the ghostly dance of the rollers on the other, and the impenetrable grey curtain of the mist blanking everything beyond a radius of a hundred feet; but Imshallah went through it with her head in the air and came waltzing out into the swirls below as cocky as a partridge. Indeed, that was just the trouble. The pair of us were just a bit too cocky over the way we had gone it blind and come through so smartly. It remained for a couple of lesser rapids to reduce both of us to a proper humility of spirit.