Not of every scene on this lake of wonders can we speak. Yet every mile brought its special revelation. Sometimes we found the lake in storms. As we rowed in what seemed a summer calm, Winter from his throne eight thousand feet above sent forth his cloud-legions, which, like the “thunder birds” of Indian story, spread their wings and came down. The thunder clash went echoing in long reverberations “from peak to peak, the rattling crags among.” “If a squall ever strikes you, put for the first crack in the bank that you see,” had been the parting injunction of the lake sailors when we started on our cruise. We observed the warning and made the best possible time to a cranny in the ill-omened “Windy Cape.” And there we lay till morning, when the tumult fell as suddenly as it rose, and lake and sky smiled as serenely at each other as ever.
The chief point on the lake, for photographing, hunting, fishing, and climbing, is Railroad Creek, fifty miles up the lake. Railroad Creek comes from the “Roof of the World,” having its source in the very heart of a great group of glaciers. It descends probably six thousand feet in twenty-five miles. It is swift! The fury with which it hurls logs and even boulders down its cataract bed is fairly appalling. The very earth quivers beneath its flail-like strokes.
Nowhere, perhaps, can one see more work done by rivers than here. The entire course of one of these rivers can be traced from the lake. Rising in a snow bank six thousand feet above, its route marked by a streak of foam, sometimes falling in spray hundreds of feet, then hiding behind a cliff, to burst forth in snow-white “chute,” augmented by similar streams from lateral cañons, it plunges into the lake with a perfect delirium of motion. So great is the erosion that were not the lake of enormous depth, it would soon be filled with the jetsam and flotsam of the hills.
The sunset effects looking up the lake from Railroad Creek are marvellous, though, alas, the cool black and white of the photograph cannot preserve the wealth of colouring, “the illumination of all gems,” which for a few transcendent moments fills the mighty cañon “bank-full” with such radiance that one might think it the grand gathering place of all the rainbows of earth. The light greens and blues of the shallower water shade into deepest indigo toward the centre, reflecting the ever-changing hues of the cañon walls, a deep, rich, and sombre purple on the shaded side, while on the sun-lit side are poured forth upon the shaggy mountain slopes perfect inundations of orange, carmine, and saffron. From these floods of glory there falls into the lake a seeming rain of pearls and rubies, barred with stripes of gold and crimson. But the sun drops lower and the splendour fades, the conflagration of the sky is quenched, and it seems as though ten thousand ships, “all decked with funeral scarfs from stem to stern,” were putting out from the glooming western shores, strewing darkness as they move,—and night is at hand.
Gorge of Chelan River, the Outlet of Lake Chelan.
Photo. by T. W. Tolman, Spokane.
Like all travellers to Lake Chelan, we must make a journey to the head of the lake, to the Stehekin River, and to Rainbow Falls. The view up the cañon of the Stehekin is the crowning glory of this panorama of sublimities. A forest of almost tropical luxuriance covers the morass through which the impetuous river makes its way. On either side tower the cañon walls, capped with snow. The background consists of glittering pinnacles of some of the Glacier Range. Majesty, might, elemental force, eternity,—such are the only words to express the emotions excited by this scene.
One curious thing to be seen at the mouth of the Stehekin, and at several other places on the lake is a series of rude drawings on the smooth, white surface of the granite bluff, the work of some prehistoric artist, unknown to the Indians, and of so ancient date that the lake is now twenty feet below their level. The drawings are of men, goats, tents, and trees, and are in strong red colours, of some very enduring nature. One is ashamed to record that alleged human beings in the form of white tourists have used these curious relics of bygone days as targets to shoot at from their boats, and have ruined some of the finest. Also that some vandal has desecrated the place by painting a glaring advertisement of his ferry underneath.
Although it may well seem to the tourist who has attained the head of Lake Chelan that nature has reached her acme of grandeur, and that it would tax his powers of belief to be informed that there is grander yet, we shall run the risk of saying just that, and bid him join us on side journeys up the mighty cañons of the Stehekin River and Railroad Creek. Lake Chelan being, as already indicated, in the very heart of the Cascade Mountains, and these mountains here attaining an average elevation of seven or eight thousand feet, with dozens of peaks of ten thousand or more, and the countless impetuous streams from those snowy heights having cut their way deep down toward the lake level, it follows as a matter of course that the entire Chelan region, for an area of probably ten thousand square miles, is perfectly gridironed with cañons. Many of them have never been explored or even entered. In them are myriads of lakes, waterfalls, parks, glaciers, and, in fact, every species of mountain attraction. There is no question that within this vast cordon of mountains there are more glaciers than in all the rest of the United States combined, and, with the exception of the Sierras and the Canadian Rockies, there is certainly no other region on this continent that can for a moment enter into competition with it. Travellers have assured the author that the Alps in no respect except historical association, surpass, and some say, do not equal this crowning glory of our great North-west State.
