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

by William Denison Lyman

Another native idea is to the effect that Castle Rock (which ought to be called Wehatpolitan’s gravestone) is hollow and is filled with the bodies of former generations now turned to stone. As a matter of fact, the party of 1901 found evidence of a great cave, but so far there has been found no practical ingress. So the interior is still an unexplored mystery. Immense quantities of spear-heads and arrow-heads are found along the river at this point, and these are apparently of an earlier age than most of those found in this country.

Loosing from the enchanted shore of Wehatpolitan’s monument, we see for several miles on the Oregon side a cordon of perpendicular cliffs, red and purple in hue, streaked with spray, and touched here and there with the deep green of firs which have rooted themselves with claw-like roots into the crevices. Most symmetrical and beautiful, though not the highest of this line of elevations, is St. Peter’s Dome. Its summit is over two thousand feet above the river. While in height it is surpassed by certain crags of Chelan or Yosemite, as well as its brothers on the river, it has no rival in beauty there, or elsewhere, so far as the author has seen, among the wonders of the American continent. Every hour of the day, every change of sky or season, reveals some new and unexpected beauty or sublimity in this superb cliff.

Hunters on Lake Chelan, with their Spoils.
Photo. by W. D. Lyman.

A Morning’s Catch on the Touchet, near Dayton, Wash.
Sunset Magazine.

We are almost sated with sublimities by the time we pass on down below St. Peter’s Dome, but one of the most unique scenes of all is close at hand. This is Oneonta Gorge. A swift stream issuing from the cliffs on the south side of the River attracts our attention, and we moor our boat to the roots of a tall cottonwood and make our way inward. The wall is cleft asunder, its sides almost meeting above. At places the smooth sides of the Gorge leave no space except for the passage of the pellucid stream, and we have to wade hip deep to make our way. Showers of spray descend from the towering roof above, and in places we are well-nigh in darkness. Then there is a widening and through the broken wall the lances of sunshine pierce the gloom with rainbow tints. Marvellous Oneonta with the sweet-sounding name! It, too, has its wealth of native myth, of which our narrowing limits forbid us to speak.

And now leaving Oneonta, we can see that we have passed the maximum of the mountains, and are already looking into a broadening valley, with the yet more lordly volume of the river widening toward the sunset. While our eyes are thus drawn toward the river, the diminishing walls of the cañon, and the fair entrance to what may be called the genuine West-of-the-Mountains, we perceive on the Oregon shore a series of waterfalls, higher and grander than has even been the wont, and in the midst of them, far-famed Multnomah. A spacious sweep of circling mountains, a perpendicular wall, indented with a deep recess, and crowned upon its topmost bastions with a row of frightened looking trees, and partially visible through intercepting cottonwoods at the River’s margin a moving whiteness,—such is the first vision of this matchless waterfall. A short space farther carries us past the screen of cottonwoods, and the whole majestic scene lies before us. Like St. Peter’s Dome or Castle Rock or Niagara or Yosemite or Chelan or Mt. “Takhoma,” this scene of Multnomah Falls with its surroundings wears that aspect of eternity, that look of final perfectness, which marks the great works of nature and of art. The cliff almost overhangs, so that except when deflected by the wind against a projecting ledge the water leaps sheer through the air its eight hundred feet of fall. It is mainly spray when it reaches the deep pool within the recess of the mountain, and from that recess the regathered waters pour in a final plunge, from which the stream takes its way through the cottonwoods to the River.

We disembark and climb to the pool which receives the great fall. We find it sunless and almost black in hue from the intensity of the shadows. The maidenhair fern which grows at the edge of the pool is nearly white in its cool dark abode. The water falls into the pool with a weird, uncanny “chug,” rather than a splash, so great is the sheer fall and so largely does the water consist of spray alternating with “chunks”—if we may so express it—of water. The pool is large enough to hold a steamboat and of considerable depth. A pretty rustic bridge spans the gorge through which the stream passes on its way from the pool, and below the bridge is the final fall of seventy-five feet. On account of its proximity to Portland and the frequent steamboat excursions, Multnomah has become quite a resort. While the creek is only of moderate size in summer, and the fall is notable rather for beauty than energy, yet when swollen by the rains and melting snows of winter and spring it takes on the dimensions of a river. Then the fall hurling its great volume over the eight hundred feet of open space assumes an appalling sublimity.