On whose high branches, waving with the storm,
The birds of broadest wings their mansion form;
The jay, the magpie, the loquacious crow,
And soar aloft and skim the deeps below.
Here limpid fountains from the clefts distil,
And every fountain forms a noisy rill,
In mazy windings wand’ring down the hill.”
Monseigneur,—We bade adieu to the Morigeau family on the 9th, and to their companions of the chase, the Sioushwaps.[223] We quitted the upper valley of the Columbia by a small footpath, which soon conducted us to a narrow mountain defile, where the light of day vanished from view, amidst the huge, bold barriers of colossal rocks. The grand, the sublime, the beautiful, here form the most singular and fantastic {138} combinations. Though gray is the prevailing color, we find an immense rock of porphyry, or white-veined granite. Here and there, from the fissures of the rock, or wherever there is a handful of dust, the heavy and immortal pine enroots itself, adding its gloomy verdure to the variegated hues of the torpid rocks. These circuitous paths often present the most ravishing and picturesque vistas; surrounded by colossal walls, the greatest diversity and most beautiful scenery in nature is spread out before the eye, where the plush and cedar rise majestically in these venerable woods, the graceful poplar waves on high its emerald plumes, and fights its battles with the howling storm, whilst over the precipitous and jagged rocks, the scarcely-waving pine fills the brown shade with religious awe. The birch springs from an earth carpetted with moss, and shines like magnificent silver columns, supporting diadems of golden autumnal leaves, amidst the redolent purple-berried juniper and azure turpentines, of these humid dells and forests.
After a day’s journey through these primeval scenes, we reached the banks of the river Arcs-a-plats, where innumerable torrents rush headlong, with a thousand mazes from the mountain’s {139} brow, and in their union form this noble river. From afar is heard the deafening and continuous sound of its own dashes, as it traverses a rocky bed with extraordinary rapidity. We crossed the river in order to attempt the passage of another defile, still more wonderful, where the waters of the Vermillion have forced an opening.[224] Here, everything strikes the eye; all is wild sublimity, in this profound but turbulent solitude. Projecting mountains rise like holy towers where man might commune with the sky;—terrible precipices hang in fragments overhead—the astounding noise of the deep-tongued waves, in their unconfined flow, resembles that of the angry tempest, sweeping wild and free, like the spirit of liberty. Now the breaking waves play low upon the rock-ribbed beach, and madly plunge into an abyss—anon it returns foaming to its sedgy bed, apparently sporting with the sedges for diversion—falling from slope to slope, from cascade to cascade, passing in its course a long train of rapids—now concealing itself under the tufted foliage of cedar and pine—again pouring its brilliant and crystalline waters into a capacious basin, as if to take breath before quitting the ravine, and {140} finally precipitating its wandering course with renovated vigor.
From this almost impenetrable forest issues a harmonious sound. ’Tis the whistling or lowing of the noble stag, calling its companion. The moose, the most vigilant of animals, gives the signal of alarm. He has heard the crackling branch—he has inhaled the hunter’s deadly breath; a confused noise is heard from the mountain; the sportsman raises his eager eye to its summit, and scans a flock of rein-deer perched upon the snow; they are startled at the approach of man; in an instant they are lost among the inaccessible pinnacles, the