Part 18 (1/2)
With two or three more ”Aphrodites” beginning to bubble up through the steam, it is just possible that some such an ocular barrage actually was in process of formation; but I think not. My hard-plied oars had hardly lengthened my interval to much over fifty yards, when the whole lot of them trooped down to the river--steaming amazingly they were at the touch of the sharp early winter air--and plunged into the icy water. I learned later that this ”sweat-bath” treatment is the favourite cure-all with the Indians of that part of the Columbia Basin.
Where the left-hand channel returned to the main Columbia a mile or more below the mouth of the River Des Chutes I encountered an extensive series of rock-reefs which, until I drew near them, seemed to block the way completely. It was a sinuous course I wound in threading my way through the ugly basaltic outcroppings, but the comparatively slow water robbed it of any menace. Once clear of the rocks, I found myself at the head of the long, lake-like stretch of water backed up above Celilo Falls. The low rumble of the greatest cataract of the lower Columbia was already pulsing in the air, while a floating cloud of ”water-smoke,” white against the encroaching cliffs, marked its approximate location. I was at last approaching the famous ”long portage” of the old _voyageurs_, a place noted (in those days) for the worst water and the most treacherous Indians on the river. Now, however, the Indians no longer blocked the way and exacted toll, while the portage had been bridged by a Government ca.n.a.l. I caught the loom of the head-gate of the latter about the same time that the bridge of the ”North-Bank” branch line, which spans the gorge below the falls, began rearing its blurred fret-work above the mists. Then, once again, Romance. ”Ladies' Day” was not yet over. As I pulled in toward the entrance to the ca.n.a.l, at the left of the head of the falls, I observed a very gaily-blanketed dame dancing up and down on the bank and gesticulating toward the opposite side of the river. As I landed and started to pull the skiff up on the gravelly beach, she came trotting down to entreat, in her best ”Anglo-Chinook,” that I ferry her to the opposite bank, where her home was, and, where, apparently, she was long overdue. She wasn't a beggar, she a.s.sured me, but--jingling her beaded bag under my nose--was quite willing to pay me ”_hiyu chickamon_” for my services. Nor was she unduly persistent. No sooner had I told her that I was in a ”_hiyu rush_” and hadn't the time just then to be a squire of dames, than she bowed her head in stoical acquiescence and went back to her waving and croaking. It was that futile old croak (with not enough power behind it to send it a hundred yards across a mile-wide river) that caved my resolution. Shoving _Imshallah_ back into the water, I told her to pile in.
And so Romance drew near to me again, this time perched up in the long-empty stern-sheets of my boat. This one was neither an infant nor a centurienne, but rather a fair compromise between the two. Nor was she especially fair nor especially compromising (one couldn't expect that of a sixty-year-old squaw); but she was the most trusting soul I ever met, and that's something. The falls were thundering not fifty yards below--near enough to wet us with their up-blown spray,--and yet not one word of warning did she utter about giving the brink a wide birth in pulling across. Not that I needed such a warning, for the first thing I did was to start pulling up-stream in the slack water; but, all the same, it was a distinct compliment to have it omitted. As it turned out, there was nothing to bother about, for the current was scarcely swifter in mid-stream than along the banks. It was an easy pull. Romance beamed on me all the way, and once, when one of her stubby old toes came afoul of my hob-nailed boot, she bent over and gave a few propitiary rubs to--the boot ... as if _that_ had lost any cuticle. And at parting, when I waved her money-bag aside and told her to keep her _chickamon_ to spend on the movies, she came and patted me affectionately on the shoulder, repeating over and over ”_Close tum-tum mika!_” And that, in Chinook, means: ”You're very much all right!” As far as I can remember, that is the only unqualified praise I ever had from a lady--one of that age, I mean. Squiring squaws--especially dear old souls like that one--is a lot better fun than a man would think.
[Ill.u.s.tration: LIFTED DRAWBRIDGE ON CELILO Ca.n.a.l (_above_)]
[Ill.u.s.tration: TUMWATER GORGE OF THE GRAND DALLES (_below_)]
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”IMSHALLAH” IN THE LOCK AT FIVE-MILE]
[Ill.u.s.tration: ”IMSHALLAH” HALF WAY THROUGH THE CELILO Ca.n.a.l]
It was four o'clock when I turned up at the lock-master's house at Celilo, and then to find that that worthy had just taken his gun and gone off up on the cliffs to try and bag a goose. As it would probably be dark before he returned, his wife reckoned I had better put up with them for the night and make an early start through the Ca.n.a.l the following morning. The lock-master, a genial Texan, came down with his goose too late it get it ready for supper, but not to get it picked that night. Indeed, we made rather a gala occasion of it. ”Mistah” Sides got out his fiddle and played ”The Arkansaw Traveller” and ”Turkey in the Straw,” the while his very comely young wife accompanied on the piano and their two children, the village school-marm and myself collaborated on the goose. It was a large bird, but many hands make light work; that is, as far as getting the feathers off the goose was concerned. Cleaning up the kitchen was another matter. As it was the giddy young school-teacher who _started_ the trouble by putting feathers down my neck, I hope ”Missus” Sides made that demure-eyed minx swab down decks in the morning before she went to teach the young idea how to shoot.
There is no lock at the head of the Celilo Ca.n.a.l, but a gate is maintained for the purpose of regulating flow and keeping out drift.
Sides, silhouetted against the early morning clouds, worked the gates and let me through into the narrow, concrete-walled ca.n.a.l, down which I pulled with the thunder of the falls on one side and on the other the roar of a pa.s.sing freight. The earth-shaking rumbles died down presently, and beyond the bend below the railway bridge I found myself rowing quietly through the shadow of the great wall of red-black cliffs that dominate the Dalles from the south.
Celilo Falls is a replica on a reduced scale of the Horse-shoe cataract at Niagara. At middle and low-water there is a drop of twenty feet here, but at the flood-stage of early summer the fall is almost wiped out in the lake backed up from the head of the Tumwater gorge of the Dalles.
The Dalles then form one practically continuous rapid, eight or nine miles in length, with many terrific swirls and whirlpools, but with all rocks so deeply submerged that it is _possible_ for a well-handled steamer to run through in safety--provided she is lucky. With the completion of the Ca.n.a.l this wildest of all steamer runs was no longer necessary, but in the old days it was attempted a number of times when it was desired to take some craft that had been constructed on the upper river down to Portland. The first steamer was run through successfully in May, 1866, by Captain T. J. Stump, but the man who became famous for his success in getting away with this dare-devil stunt was Captain James Troup, perhaps the greatest of all Columbia skippers. Professor W.
D. Lyman gives the following graphic account of a run through the Dalles with Captain Troup, on the _D. S. Baker_, in 1888.
”At that strange point in the river, the whole vast volume is compressed into a channel but one hundred and sixty feet wide at low water and much deeper than wide. Like a huge mill-race the current continues nearly straight for two miles, when it is hurled with frightful force against a ma.s.sive bluff. Deflected from the bluff, it turns at a sharp angle to be split asunder by a low reef of rock. When the _Baker_ was drawn into the suck of the current at the head of the 'chute' she swept down the channel, which was almost black, with streaks of foam, to the bluff, two miles in four minutes. There feeling the tremendous refluent wave, she went careening over toward the sunken reef.
The skilled captain had her perfectly in hand, and precisely at the right moment rang the signal bell, 'Ahead, full speed,' and ahead she went, just barely scratching her side on the rock. Thus close was it necessary to calculate distance. If the steamer had struck the tooth-like point of the reef broadside on, she would have been broken in two and carried in fragments on either side.
Having pa.s.sed this danger point, she glided into the beautiful calm bay below and the feat was accomplished.”
There is a fall of eighty-one feet in the twelve miles from the head of Celilo Falls to the foot of the Dalles. This is the most considerable rate of descent in the whole course of the Columbia in the United States, though hardly more than a third of that over stretches of the Big Bend in Canada. It appeared to be customary for the old _voyageurs_ to make an eight or ten miles portage here, whether going up or down stream, though there were doubtless times when their big _batteaux_ were equal to running the Dalles below Celilo. I climbed out and took hurried surveys of both Tumwater and Five-Mile (sometimes called ”The Big Chute”) in pa.s.sing, and while they appeared to be such that I would never have considered taking a chance with a skiff in either of them, it did look as though a big double-ender, with an experienced crew of oarsmen and paddlers, would have been able to make the run. That was a snap judgment, formed after the briefest kind of a ”look-see,” and it may well be that I was over optimistic.
The Celilo Ca.n.a.l, which was completed by the Government about five years ago, is eight and a half miles long, has a bottom width of sixty-five feet, and a depth of eight feet. It has a total lift of eighty feet, of which seventy are taken by two locks in flight at the lower end. That this ca.n.a.l has failed of its object--that of opening up through navigation between tide-water and the upper Columbia--is due to no defect of its own from an engineering standpoint, but rather to the fact that, first the railway, and now the truck, have made it impossible for river steamers to pay adequate returns in the face of costly operation and the almost prohibitive risks of running day after day through rock-beset rapids. There is not a steamer running regularly on the Columbia above the Dalles to-day. The best service, perhaps, which the Celilo Ca.n.a.l rendered was the indirect one of forcing a very considerable reduction of railway freight rates. That alone is said to have saved the s.h.i.+ppers of eastern Oregon and Was.h.i.+ngton many times the cost of this highly expensive undertaking.
I pulled at a leisurely gait down the Ca.n.a.l, stopping, as I have said, at Tumwater and Five-Mile, and at the latter giving the lock-master a hand in dropping _Imshallah_ down a step to the next level. Rowing past a weird ”fleet” of laid-up salmon-wheels in the Big Eddy Basin, I sheered over to the left bank in response to a jovial hail, and found myself shaking hands with Captain Stewart Winslow, in command of the Government dredge, _Umatilla_, and one of the most experienced skippers on the upper river. He said that he had been following the progress of my voyage by the papers with a good deal of interest, and had been on the lookout to hold me over for a yarn. As I was anxious to make the Dalles that night, so as to get away for an early start on the following morning, he readily agreed to join me for the run and dinner at the hotel.
While Captain Winslow was making a hurried s.h.i.+ft of togs for the river, I had a brief but highly interesting visit with Captain and Mrs.
Saunders. Captain Saunders, who is of the engineering branch of the army, has been in charge of the Celilo Ca.n.a.l for a number of years. Mrs.
Saunders has a very large and valuable collection of Indian relics and curios, and at the moment of my arrival was following with great interest the progress of a State Highway cut immediately in front of her door, which was uncovering, evidently in an old graveyard, some stone mortars of unusual size and considerable antiquity. When Captain Winslow was ready, we went down to the skiff, and pulled along to the first lock. With Captain Saunders and a single helper working the machinery, pa.s.sing us down to the second lock and on out into the river was but the matter of a few minutes.
Big Eddy must be rather a fearsome hole at high water, but below middle stage there is not enough power behind its slow-heaving swirls to make them troublesome. It was a great relief to have a competent river-man at the paddle again, and my rather over-craned neck was not the least beneficiary by the change. The narrows at Two-Mile were interesting rather for what they might be than what they were. Beyond a lively snaking about in the conflicting currents, it was an easy pa.s.sage through to the smooth water of the broadening river below. One or two late salmon-wheels plashed eerily in the twilight as we ran past the black cliffs, but fis.h.i.+ng for the season was practically over weeks before. We landed just above the steamer dock well before dark, beached the skiff, stowed my outfit in the warehouse, and reached the hotel in time to avoid an early evening shower. Captain Winslow had to dine early in order to catch his train back to Big Eddy, but we had a mighty good yarn withal.
CHAPTER XIV
THE HOME STRETCH
The Dalles was the largest town I touched on the Columbia, and one of the most attractive. Long one of the largest wool-s.h.i.+pping centres of the United States, it has recently attained to considerable importance as a fruit market. It will not, however, enter into anything approaching the full enjoyment of its birthright until the incalculably enormous power possibilities of Celilo Falls and the Dalles have been developed.
So far, as at every other point along the Columbia with the exception of a small plant at Priest Rapids, nothing has been done along this line.
When it is, The Dalles will be in the way of becoming one of the most important industrial centres of the West.
In the days of the _voyageurs_ The Dalles was notorious for the unspeakably treacherous Indians who congregated there to intimidate and plunder all who pa.s.sed that unavoidable portage. They were lying, thieving scoundrels for the most part, easily intimidated by a show of force and far less p.r.o.ne to stage a real fight than their more warlike brethren who disputed the pa.s.sage at the Cascades. That this ”plunderbund” tradition is one which the present-day Dalles is making a great point of living down, I had conclusive evidence of through an incident that arose in connection with my hotel bill. I had found my room extremely comfortable and well appointed, so that the bill presented for it at my departure, far from striking me as unduly high, seemed extremely reasonable. I think I may even have said something to that effect; yet, two days later in Portland, I received a letter containing an express order for one dollar, and a note saying that this was the amount of an unintentional over-charge for my room. That was characteristic of the treatment I received from first to last in connection with my small financial transactions along the way. I never dreamed that there were still so many people in the world above profiteering at the expense of the pa.s.sing tourist until I made my Columbia voyage.