We covered forty miles out of Grants Pass with little hint of the road terrors we expected to encounter before the close of the day. The road, fair to excellent, ran at first through cultivated fields and apple-laden orchards; then it entered rounded hills, where the forests, fragrant with balsam pine, were interspersed with lovely green valleys dotted with numerous well-improved ranches. There were signs of considerable activity in lumbering and we passed two large sawmills along the way.
At Waldo, a tiny village forty miles from Grants Pass, we recalled that the famous Oregon caves were only twelve miles eastward and regretted that our schedule did not permit a day’s delay to visit them. From here a picturesque trail leads to these so-called Marble Halls of Oregon, deep in the heart of the rugged mountains. These strange caves were discovered some fifty years ago by a hunter who pursued a wounded bear into a cavern in the mountain. The caves have not yet been fully explored, but there is known to be a series of lofty vaulted chambers rivaling those of the Mammoth Cave and hundreds of smaller apartments, with walls, ceilings, and pillars in old ivory and lighter colorings, all as delicately sculptured as though designed and executed by master artists. The roar of subterranean rivers is heard, seemingly overhead, and again beneath one’s feet, echoing from mysterious caverns as yet unentered even by the adventurous guides.
Beyond Waldo our real mountaineering began, and an incident occurred that caused us no small perturbation nor, looking back, can we feel that our uneasiness was unwarranted. Here a stranger walking along the road hailed us and as we paused in response to his signal, asked us to give him a lift to the next town. As he looked fairly reputable and carried no baggage, our first thought was that he might be a ranchman of the vicinity, and as there were four unoccupied seats in the big car, it seemed churlish to refuse, despite whatever distrust we might have of a stranger in such a lonely wilderness. So we bade him climb in beside the driver and began the ascent of the stupendous grade leading over the first great range of the Cascades. For nearly ten miles we followed the rough, stony road which flung its narrow loops around canyon and headland, often with a deep valley alongside. The steep slopes above and below us were clad with mighty pines and through these we caught occasional glimpses of an ever widening prospect. It was only when we reached the summit of the range that the full magnificence of the scene broke upon our astonished vision. A vast panorama of rugged peaks—“a sea of wood in wild, unmeasured miles,” to quote the poet of the Sierras—stretched way inimitably in the thin, clear atmosphere until it was lost in a violet-blue haze.
Our enjoyment of the wonderful scene was not unmixed, however, for by this time it had become clear to us that our self-invited passenger was a lunatic. He had talked much wild and silly chatter about a wonderful invention of his and a great fortune awaiting him in San Francisco, and given evidence by other unmistakable signs that he was more or less demented. It did not seem practicable to attempt to get rid of him at the time and we began the descent with increasing uneasiness as he continued to harass the driver with his wild talk. And if ever a driver needed to keep his head clear it was during this same descent; the road, a mere shelf in the rock, crawls along the precipitous mountainside while a vast abyss yawns below with a mad, boulder-vexed stream at the bottom. It was made far more trying to the nerves by the absence of trees or shrubbery to screen the precipice—a bare foot or two lay between our wheels and a sheer drop of say half a mile.
Our guest noted our perturbation and, turning to the lady, who had shrunk into the smallest possible space in the end of the capacious seat and was studiously refusing to even look at the road, he said,
“Gets on your nerves, doesn’t it? Looks mighty scaly, for a fact!”
It was not made the easier by the knowledge that a lunatic sat beside the driver, harmless, maybe, but we had no way of knowing that he was. In any event, when he wasn’t looking I slipped the Colt automatic, which had been our almost forgotten companion since we started, beneath our car robe, with the resolve that if he should attempt to lay hands on our driver on these appalling roads, there would be something doing. Fortunately, except for his incessant chatter, he was quite inoffensive and we looked forward anxiously to the next station on the road, where we determined to drop him, willy nilly.
It was a long, slow crawl to Patrick’s Creek, to which an occasional signboard directed us, for our cautious driver averaged only seven or eight miles per hour, and, however anxious we were to get rid of our passenger, it was quite enough. The scenery was inspiring and picturesque but the road was more or less nerve-racking every mile of the way. Passing-places were only occasional, but, fortunately, we met no one after leaving Waldo.
Patrick’s Creek Hotel proved a small ranch house close by the road where meals are served and auto supplies sold to tourists. As usual, we had our lunch, but were glad to supplement it with one of the landlady’s home-made pies, which proved excellent indeed. For once we regretted having brought our lunch, since they told us that it was their practice to fry one of the numerous young chickens running about the place, “while you wait.” Here we had the peculiar sensation that comes from paying fifty cents per gallon for gasoline—our top notch, I believe, except in Longwy, France, some years before.
“I get it by parcel post in sealed five-gallon cans,” said the innkeeper, who is also forest ranger in this district, “which is the only way the stage people will accept it for shipment.”