The Columbia River: Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery, Its Commerce

by William Denison Lyman

Portland Harbour, Oregon.
Photo. by E. H. Moorehouse, Portland.

In this section of the River there are no stupendous pinnacles as in the Gorge of the Cascades. Yet the scenery is infinitely varied, and although less bold, it is, in its way, equally attractive with the loftier scene. One unique spot attracts the eye, and almost recalls the beauty of Rooster Rock. This is Mt. Coffin, on the Washington side, near the mouth of the Cowlitz River. This was one of the “Memaloose” or sepulture places of the Indians. There in early times their dead, in great numbers, were deposited upon platforms after the usual Indian fashion.

After passing the ingress of the Cowlitz, we find the River widening to yet grander proportions. Islands become numerous. Among these islands not a few desperate affrays and even tragedies have occurred among warring fishermen, union against non-union. Lurking among these islands, too, are numerous unlicensed vendors of spirits. In the uncertainty as to which of the States may have jurisdiction at places, these illicit traffickers move from island to island and cove to cove and one overhanging forest to another, evading officers of both States and of Federal Government alike. Sometime a novelist will be inspired with the poetry and humour and tragedy and pathos of this fisher life on the lower River, with its mingling of the life of law-breaker and desperado, and this section of our River will blossom into literature and find a place with the moonshiners of the South and the cowboys of the Rockies. All the material is ready. The River waits only for its Owen Wister or Hamlin Garland or Jack London to introduce it to the world of readers.

But the River moves and we must move with it. Many signs indicate to us that we are approaching the ocean. If we are moving in a small boat, we may pause to camp under some one of the thick-topped spruce trees whose stiff spicules pierce our unwary hands like pins. If we should spend a night we would find the water heaving and falling two, four, or five feet, with the ocean tides. Broader and broader grows the River. Numerous salmon canneries and seining stations appear. Passing a fishing village on the north bank called Brookfield, we notice a very curious rock, Pillar Rock, in the River a quarter of a mile from shore. It rises forty feet directly out of the water. We are told by one versed in Indian lore that this is the transformed body of a chief who tried to imitate the god Speelyei by wading across the River. For his presumption he was turned into a rock.

Soon after passing Pillar Rock we see the curious spectacle of a house on piles apparently right in the middle of the River. More curious still, we see horses seemingly engaged in drawing a load through the very water itself. The mystery is soon solved. The house is built on a sand-bar. It is a seining station. The horses are pulling a seine from its moorings at the point of the sand-bar to the point where its load may be discharged. Lumber, salmon, and water,—this is the world in which we now live and move and have our being.

Fish River Road, in Upper Columbia Region, B. C.
Photo. by Trueman, Victoria.

We next enter a broad expanse of the River, nine miles wide, on the north side of which is a deep cove. There is the historic spot in which Robert Gray on May 3, 1792, paused at his highest point to fill his water casks and to float the Stars and Stripes over Oregon, claimed for the United States of America. As we look westward, the headlands seem to part in front of us, and between them sky and water join. The greatest ocean is before us, though still twenty miles away. The River has reached the end of his fourteen-hundred-mile journey. Soon we pass, on the Oregon side, the bold promontory of Tongue Point, and Astoria, the second largest city on the navigable waters of the Columbia, is before us.

To the history of this oldest American town west of the Rocky Mountains we have already referred many times. Interesting in so many features of the past, Astoria is full of problems and suggestions, commercial and otherwise, for the present and the future. The city has grown slowly, always wondering why Portland should have so outstripped her. She certainly has such a location that it seems a crime not to utilise it for a great city. The River is here five miles wide. Upon its ample flood all the navies of the world might ride at anchor, sheltered from the sea by the long low sand-ridge of Point Adams. The site of the city, though somewhat rugged and broken, is entirely capable of reduction to a convenient grade, and is singularly noble and commanding. From the plateau three hundred feet high upon which the splendid waterworks are located, is a view of imposing grandeur;—River in front, dense forest to rear, with the blue saddle and pinnacled horn of Saddle Mountain,—Swallalochost in Indian speech, with its thunder-bird of native myth,—and the ocean to the west. We find Astoria to be a well-built city of about fifteen thousand permanent inhabitants, with perhaps five or six thousand more during the height of the fishing season. Almost every resource of industry offers itself in this favoured region about the mouth of the River. Though the country is densely timbered in its native state, the soil is such that when cleared it is of the finest for dairy and vegetable purposes. The mildness of the climate keeps the clover and grass green and the flowers in bloom the long year through.