A Pacific Coast Vacation

by Mrs. James Edwin Morris

The broken-hearted old chief sat the long night through by the corpse of his son. When morning came he called the tribe together and told them he wished to follow his last child to the grave, but he wanted them to promise him that they would cease to war with the white man and seek his friendship. At first many of the warriors refused, but Umatilla had been a good chief, and always had given them fine presents at the potlatches. Consulting among themselves they finally consented. When the grave was ready, the braves laid the body of Black Eagle to rest. Then said the old chief: “My heart is in the grave with my son. Be always kind to the white man as you have promised me, and bury us together. One last look into the grave of him I loved and Umatilla too shall die.” The next instant the gentle, kind hearted old chief dropped to the ground dead. Peace to his ashes. They buried him as he had requested and a little later sought the teacher’s friendship, asking him to guide them. That year saw the end of the trouble between the Indians and the white race at the Dalles.

The old chief still lives in the history of his country. Umatilla is a familiar name in Dalles City. The principal hotel bears the name of Umatilla.

On either side of the river farm houses, orchards and wheat fields dot the landscape.

Salmon fishing is the great industry on the river. The wheels along both sides of the river have been having a hard time of it this season from the drift wood, the high water and the big sturgeon, which sometimes get into the wheels. A big sturgeon got into a wheel belonging to the Dodon Company and slipped into the bucket, but was too large to be thrown out. It was carried around and around until it was cut to pieces, badly damaging the wheel. Now the law expressly states, as this is the close season for sturgeon, that when caught they must be thrown back in the water. “But what is the use,” inquires the Daily News, “if they are dead?”

FARM ON THE BANK OF THE COLUMBIA RIVER, BELOW THE DALLES, OREGON.

A visit to a salmon cannery is full of interest. As the open season for salmon is from April first to August first, the buildings though large are mere sheds. The work is all done by Chinamen. The fish are tossed onto the wharf, where they are seized by the men, who carry them in and throw them on to long tables, chop off their heads, dress them and hold them, one fish at a time, under a stream of pure mountain water, which pours through a faucet over the long sink. Next they are thrown onto another table, where other Chinamen cut them up ready for the cans, all in much less time than it takes to tell about it. The tin is shipped in the sheet to the canneries and the cans are made on the ground.

Astoria, the Venus of America, is headquarters for the salmon fishing on the Columbia River. Joaquin Miller described it as a town which “clings helplessly to a humid hill side, that seems to want to glide into the great bay-like river.” Much of it has long ago glided into the river. Usually the salmon canneries are built on the shores, but down here and on toward the sea, where the river is some seven miles wide, they are built on piles in mid stream. Nets are used quite as much as wheels in salmon fishing. Sometimes a hungry seal gets into the nets, eating an entire “catch,” and playing havoc with the net. Up toward the Dalles on the Washington side of the river, are three springs. These springs have long been considered by the Indians a veritable fountain of youth. Long before the coming of the white man they carried their sick and aged to these springs, across the “Bridge of the Gods.” Just above Dalles City lies the dalles which obstruct navigation for twelve miles. Beyond this point the river is navigable two hundred miles. Here, too, legends play an important part.

When the volcanoes of the northwest were blazing forth their storm of fire, ashes and lava, a tribe known as the Fire Fiends walked the earth and held high revelry in this wild country. When Mount Rainier had ceased to burn the Devil called the leaders of the tribe together one day and proposed that they follow nature’s mood and live more peaceably, and that they quit killing and eating each other. A howl met this proposal. The Devil deemed it wise just at this moment to move on, so off he set, a thousand Fire Fiends after him. Now his majesty could easily whip a score of Fiends, but he was no match for a thousand. He lashed his wondrous tail about and broke a great chasm in the ground. Many of the Fiends fell in, but the greater part leaped the rent and came on. A second time the ponderous tail came down with such force that a large ravine was cracked out of the rocks, the earth breaking away into an inland sea. The flood engulfed the Fiends to a man. The bed of the sea is now a prairie and the three strokes of the Devil’s tail are plainly visible in the bed of the Columbia at the dalles.

Just across the river from Dalles City on a high bluff, stands a four story building, the tower in the center running two stories higher. The building stands out there alone, a monument to the enterprise of one American. He called it a shoe factory, but no machinery was ever put in position. After the pseudo shoe factory was completed false fronts of other buildings were set up and the rugged bluffs laid out in streets. An imaginary bridge spanned the broad river. Electric lights, also imaginary, light up this imaginary city. The pictures which this genius drew of his town showed street cars running on the principal streets and a busy throng of people passing to and fro. As to the shoe factory, it was turning out thousands of imaginary shoes every day. Now this rogue, when all was ready, carried the maps and cuts of his town to the east, where he sold the factory and any number of lots at a high figure, making a fortune out of his paper town.