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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Down the Columbia, by Lewis R. Freeman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Down the Columbia
+
+Author: Lewis R. Freeman
+
+Release Date: December 9, 2011 [EBook #38249]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOWN THE COLUMBIA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Pat McCoy, Greg Bergquist and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+DOWN THE COLUMBIA
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff
+
+MT. SIR DONALD, WHICH DRAINS FROM ALL SIDES TO THE COLUMBIA]
+
+
+
+
+    DOWN THE COLUMBIA
+
+    BY
+
+    LEWIS R. FREEMAN
+
+
+    AUTHOR OF "IN THE TRACKS OF THE TRADES,"
+    "HELL'S HATCHES," ETC.
+
+
+    WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
+    FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
+
+
+    [Illustration: Publisher's logo]
+
+
+    NEW YORK
+    DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
+    1921
+
+
+
+
+    COPYRIGHT 1921
+    By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.
+
+    The Quinn & Boden Company
+
+    BOOK MANUFACTURERS
+    RAHWAY      NEW JERSEY
+
+
+
+
+    TO
+    C. L. CHESTER
+
+    Hoping he will find in these pages some compensation for
+    the fun he missed in not being along.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+The day on which I first conceived the idea of a boat trip down the
+Columbia hangs in a frame all its own in the corridors of my memory. It
+was a number of years ago--more than a dozen, I should say. Just
+previously I had contrived somehow to induce the Superintendent of the
+Yellowstone National Park to grant me permission to attempt a winter
+journey on ski around this most beautiful of America's great
+playgrounds. He had even sent a Government scout along to keep, or help,
+me out of trouble. We were a week out from the post at Mammoth Hot
+Springs.
+
+Putting the rainbow revel of the incomparable Canyon behind, we had
+crossed Yellowstone Lake on the ice and fared onward and upward until we
+came at last to the long climb where the road under its ten feet of snow
+wound up to the crest of the Continental Divide. It was so dry and cold
+that the powdery snow overlying the crust rustled under our ski like
+autumn leaves. The air was diamond clear, so transparent that distant
+mountain peaks, juggled in the wizardry of the lens of the light, seemed
+fairly to float upon the eyeball.
+
+At the summit, where we paused for breath, an old Sergeant of the Game
+Patrol, letting down a tin can on a string, brought up drinks from an
+air-hole which he claimed was teetering giddily upon the very ridge-pole
+of North America.
+
+"If I dip to the left," he said, suiting the action to the word, "it's
+the Pacific I'll be robbing of a pint of Rocky Mountain dew; while if I
+dip to the right it's the Atlantic that'll have to settle back a notch.
+And if I had a string long enough, and a wing strong enough, to cast my
+can over there beyond Jackson's Hole," he went on, pointing
+southeasterly to the serrated peaks of the Wind River Mountains, "I
+could dip from the fount of the Green River and keep it from feeding the
+Colorado and the Gulf of California by so much."
+
+That led me to raise the question of boating by river from the Great
+Divide to the sea, and the Scout, who knew something of the Madison,
+Jefferson and Gallatin to the east, and of the Salmon, Clearwater and
+Snake to the west, said he reckoned the thing could be done in either
+direction provided a man had lots of time and no dependent family to
+think of and shake his nerve in the pinches.
+
+The old Sergeant agreed heartily. River boating was good, he said,
+because it was not opposed to Nature, like climbing mountains, for
+instance, where you were bucking the law of gravity from start to
+finish. With a river it was all easy and natural. You just got into your
+boat and let it go. Sooner or later, without any especial effort on your
+part, you reached your objective. You might not be in a condition to
+appreciate the fact, of course, but just the same you got there, and
+with a minimum of hard work. Some rivers were better for boating than
+others for the reason that you got there quicker. The Snake and the
+Missouri were all very well in their way, but for him, he'd take the
+Columbia. There was a river that started in mountains and finished in
+mountains. It ran in mountains all the way to the sea. No slack water in
+all its course. It was going somewhere all the time. He had lived as a
+kid on the lower Columbia and had trapped as a man on the upper
+Columbia; so he ought to know. _There_ was a "he" river if there ever
+was one. If a man really wanted to travel from snowflake to brine and
+not be troubled with "on-wee" on the way, there was no stream that ran
+one-two-three with the Columbia as a means of doing it.
+
+That night, where we steamed in the black depths of a snow-submerged
+Government "Emergency" cabin, the Sergeant's old Columbia memories
+thawed with the hunk of frosted beef he was toasting over the sheet-iron
+stove. He told of climbing for sheep and goat in the high Kootenay, of
+trailing moose and caribou in the valleys of the Rockies, and finally of
+his years of trapping on the creeks and in the canyons that run down to
+the Big Bend of the Columbia; of how he used to go down to Kinbasket
+Lake in the Fall, portaging or lining the three miles of tumbling
+cascades at Surprise Rapids, trap all winter on Sullivan Creek or Middle
+River, and then come out in the Spring to Revelstoke, playing
+ducks-and-drakes with his life and his scarcely less valuable catch of
+marten, mink and beaver running the riffles at Rock Slide, Twelve Mile
+and the terrible _Dalles des Morts_. He declared that there were a
+hundred miles of the Big Bend of the Columbia that had buffaloed to a
+fare-ye-well any equal stretch on any of the great rivers of North
+America for fall, rocks and wild rip-rarin' water generally. But the
+dread Rapids of Death and the treacherous swirls and eddies of
+Revelstoke Canyon were not the last of swift water by a long shot. Just
+below the defile of the Arrow Lakes the white caps began to rear their
+heads again, and from there right on down through the seven hundred
+miles and more to tide-water below the Cascade Locks in Oregon there was
+hardly a stretch of ten miles without its tumble of rapids, and mostly
+they averaged not more than three or four miles apart.
+
+"She's sure some 'he' river," the old chap concluded as he began to
+unroll his blankets, "going somewhere all the time, tumbling over itself
+all the way trying to beat itself to the finish."
+
+Confusing as the Sergeant was with his "he" and "she" and "it" as to the
+gender of the mighty Oregon, there was no question of the fascination of
+the pictures conjured up by his descriptions of that so-well-called
+"Achilles of Rivers." Before I closed my eyes that night I had promised
+myself that I should take the first opportunity to boat the length of
+the Columbia, to follow its tumultuous course from its glacial founts to
+the salt sea brine, to share with it, to jostle it in its "tumble to get
+there first."
+
+I held by that resolve for more than a dozen years, although, by a
+strange run of chance, I was destined to have some experience of almost
+every one of the great rivers of the world before I launched a boat upon
+the Columbia. My appetite for swift water boating had grown by what it
+fed on. I had come more and more to the way of thinking of my
+Yellowstone companion who held that boating down rivers was good because
+it was not opposed to Nature, "like mountain climbing, for instance,
+where you bucked the law of gravity all the way." In odd craft and
+various, and of diverse degree of water worthiness, I had trusted to
+luck and the law of gravity to land me somewhere to seaward of numerous
+up-river points of vantage to which I had attained by means of travel
+that ranged all the way from foot and donkey-back to elephant and auto.
+The Ichang gorges of the Yangtze I had run in a _sampan_ manned by a
+yelling crew of Szechuan coolies, and the Salween and Irawadi below the
+Yunnan boundary in weird Burmese canoes whose crews used their legs as
+well as their arms in plying their carved paddles. I had floated down
+the Tigris from Diarbekir to Mosul on a _kalek_ of inflated sheepskins,
+and the Nile below the Nyanzas in a cranky craft of zebra hide, whose
+striped sides might have suggested the idea of modern marine camouflage.
+On the middle Niger I had used a condemned gunboat's life-raft, and on
+the Zambesi a dugout of saffron-tinted wood so heavy that it sank like
+iron when capsized. And it had been in native dugouts of various crude
+types that I had boated greater or lesser lengths of the swifter upper
+stretches of the Orinoco, Amazon and Parana.
+
+But through it all--whether I was floating in a reed-wrapped _balsa_ on
+Titacaca or floundering in a pitch-smeared _gufa_ on the
+Euphrates--pictures conjured up by remembered phrases of the old
+ex-trapper keep rising at the back of my brain. "The big eddy at the
+bend of Surprise Rapids, where you go to look for busted boats and dead
+bodies;" "the twenty-one mile of white water rolling all the way from
+Kinbasket Lake to Canoe River;" "the double googly intake at the head
+of Gordon Rapid;" "the black-mouthed whirlpool waiting like a wild cat
+at the foot of _Dalles des Morts_"--how many times had I seen all these
+in fancy! And at last the time came when those pictures were to be made
+real--galvanized into life.
+
+It was well along toward the end of last summer that my friend C. L.
+Chester, whose work in filming the scenic beauties of out-of-the-way
+parts of the world has made the name Chester-Outing Pictures a byword on
+both sides of the Atlantic, mentioned that he was sending one of his
+cameramen to photograph the sources of the Columbia in the Selkirks and
+Rockies of western Canada. Also that he was thinking of taking his own
+holiday in that incomparably beautiful region. He supposed I knew that
+there were considerable areas here that had barely been explored, to
+saying nothing of photographed. This was notably so of the Big Bend
+country, where the Columbia had torn its channel between the Rockies and
+Selkirks and found a way down to the Arrow Lakes. He was especially
+anxious to take some kind of a boat round the hundred and fifty miles of
+canyon between Beavermouth and Revelstoke and bring out the first movies
+of what he had been assured was the roughest stretch of swift water on
+any of the important rivers of the world. Was there, by any chance, a
+possibility that my plans and commitments were such that I would be free
+to join him in the event that he made the trip personally?
+
+As a matter of fact there were several things that should have prevented
+my breaking away for a trip to the upper Columbia in September, not the
+least among which was a somewhat similar trip I had already planned for
+the Grand Canyon of the Colorado that very month. But the mention of the
+Big Bend was decisive. "I'll go," I said promptly. "When do you start?"
+
+It was finally arranged that I should go on ahead and engage men and
+boats for the Big Bend part of the trip, while Chester would endeavour
+to disentangle himself from business in Los Angeles and New York in time
+to join his cameraman and myself for a jaunt by packtrain to the Lake of
+the Hanging Glaciers. The latter is one of the high glacial sources of
+the Columbia in the Selkirks, and Chester, learning that it had never
+been photographed, desired especially to visit it in person. Returning
+from our visit to the source of the river, we planned to embark on the
+boating voyage around the Big Bend. It was not until business finally
+intervened to make it impossible for Chester to get away for even a
+portion of the trip which he had been at such trouble to plan, that I
+decided to attempt the voyage down the Columbia as I had always dreamed
+of it--all the way from the eternal snows to tide-water. At Chester's
+suggestion, it was arranged that his cameraman should accompany me
+during such portion of the journey as the weather was favourable to
+moving picture work.
+
+Our preliminary work and exploration among the sources of the river over
+(this was carried on either on foot or by packtrain, or in runs by canoe
+over short navigable stretches of the upper river), we pushed off from
+Beavermouth, at the head of the Big Bend. For this most arduous part of
+the voyage there were four in the party, with a big double-ended boat
+specially built for rough water. Further down, for a considerable
+stretch, we were three, in a skiff. Then, for a couple of hundred miles,
+there were four of us again, manning a raft and a towing launch. After
+that we were two--just the cameraman and myself, with the skiff. Him I
+finally dropped at the foot of Priest Rapids, fifty miles above Pasco,
+and the last two hundred and fifty miles down to Portland I rode alone.
+This "solo" run--though a one-man boat crew is kept rather too busy in
+swift water to have much time for enjoying the scenery--was far from
+proving the least interesting period of the journey.
+
+So far as I have been able to learn, my arrival in Portland marked the
+end of the first complete journey that has been made from the glacial
+sources of the Columbia to tide-water. David Thompson, scientist and
+explorer for the Northwest Company, racing against the Astor sea
+expedition to be first to establish a post at the mouth of the Columbia,
+boated down a very large part of the navigable part of the river over a
+hundred years ago. I have found no evidence, however, that he penetrated
+to the glacial fields in the Selkirks above Windermere and Columbia Lake
+from which spring the main feeders of the upper river. Thompson's, and
+all of the other voyages of the early days of which there is authentic
+record, started from Boat Encampment, where the road from the plains and
+Montreal led down to the Columbia by the icy waters of Portage River,
+or, as it is now called, Wood River. Thus all of the old Hudson Bay and
+Northwest voyageurs ran only the lower seventy-five miles of the Big
+Bend, and avoided what is by far its worst water--Surprise Rapids and
+the twenty-one miles of cascades below Kinbasket Lake. Ross Cox,
+Alexander Ross and Franchiere, whose diaries are the best commentaries
+extant upon early Columbia history, had no experience of the river above
+Boat Encampment. Lewis and Clark, and Hunt, with the remnants of the
+Astor transcontinental party, boated the river only below the Snake, and
+this was also true of Whitman and the other early missionaries and
+settlers. Frémont made only a few days' journey down the river from the
+Dalles.
+
+Of recent down-river passages, I have been able to learn of no voyageur
+who, having rounded the Big Bend, continued his trip down to the lower
+Columbia. The most notable voyage of the last three or four decades was
+that of Captain F. P. Armstrong and J. P. Forde, District Engineer of
+the Department of Public Works of Nelson, British Columbia, who,
+starting at the foot of the Lower Arrow Lake in a Peterboro canoe, made
+the run to Pasco, just above the mouth of the Snake, in ten days. As
+Captain Armstrong already knew the upper Columbia above the Arrow Lakes
+from many years of steamboating and prospecting, and as both he and Mr.
+Forde, after leaving their canoe at Pasco, continued on to Astoria by
+steamer, I am fully convinced that his knowledge of that river from
+source to mouth is more comprehensive than that of any one else of the
+present generation. This will be, perhaps, a fitting place to
+acknowledge my obligation to Captain Armstrong (who accompanied me in
+person from the mouth of the Kootenay to the mouth of the Spokane) for
+advice and encouragement which were very considerable factors in the
+ultimate success of my venture. To Mr. Forde I am scarcely less indebted
+for his courtesy in putting at my disposal a copy of his invaluable
+report to the Canadian Government on the proposal to open the Columbia
+to through navigation to the Pacific Ocean.
+
+Compared to the arduous journeys of the old Astorian and Hudson Bay
+voyageurs on the Columbia, my own trip--even though a considerably
+greater length of river was covered than by any of my predecessors--was
+negligible as an achievement. Only in rounding the Big Bend in Canada
+does the voyageur of to-day encounter conditions comparable to those
+faced by those of a hundred, or even fifty years ago who set out to
+travel on any part of the Columbia. For a hundred miles or more of the
+Bend, now just as much as in years long gone by, an upset with the loss
+of an outfit is more likely than not to spell disaster and probably
+tragedy. But in my own passage of the Big Bend I can claim no personal
+credit that those miles of tumbling water were run successfully. I was
+entirely in the hands of a pair of seasoned old river hands, and merely
+pulled an oar in the boat and did a few other things when I was told.
+
+But it is on the thousand miles of swiftly flowing water between the
+lower end of the Big Bend and the Pacific that conditions have changed
+the most in favour of the latter day voyageur. The rapids are, to be
+sure, much as they must have appeared to Thompson, Ross, Franchiere and
+their Indian contemporaries. The few rocks blasted here and there on the
+lower river in an attempt to improve steamer navigation have not greatly
+simplified the problems of the man in a rowboat or canoe. Nor is an
+upset in any part of the Columbia an experience lightly to be courted
+even to-day. Even below the Big Bend there are a score of places I could
+name offhand where the coolest kind of an old river hand, once in the
+water, would not have one chance in ten of swimming out. In half a
+hundred others he might reckon on an even break of crawling out alive.
+But if luck were with him and he _did_ reach the bank with the breath in
+his body, then his troubles would be pretty well behind him. Below the
+Canadian border there is hardly ten miles of the river without a farm, a
+village, or even a town of fair size. Food, shelter and even medical
+attention are not, therefore, ever more than a few hours away, so that
+the man who survives the loss of his boat and outfit is rarely in
+serious straits.
+
+But in the case of the pioneers, their troubles in like instance were
+only begun. What between hostile Indians and the loss of their only
+means of travel, the chances were all against their ever pulling out
+with their lives. The story of how the vicious cascade of the _Dalles
+des Morts_ won its grisly name, which I will set down in its proper
+place, furnishes a telling instance in point.
+
+It is a callous traveller who, in strange lands and seas, does not
+render heart homage to the better men that have gone before him. Just as
+you cannot sail the Pacific for long without fancying that Cook and
+Drake and Anson are sharing your night watches, so on the Columbia it is
+Thompson and Cox and Lewis and Clark who come to be your guiding
+spirits. At the head of every one of the major rapids you land just as
+you know they must have landed, and it is as through their eyes that you
+survey the work ahead. And when, rather against your better judgment,
+you decide to attempt to run a winding gorge where the sides are too
+steep to permit lining and where a portage would mean the loss of a
+day--you know that the best of the men who preceded you must have
+experienced the same hollowness under the belt when they were forced to
+the same decision, for were they not always gambling at longer odds than
+you are? And when, elate with the thrill of satisfaction and relief that
+come from knowing that what had been a menacing roar ahead has changed
+to a receding growl astern, you are inclined to credit yourself with
+smartness for having run a rapid where Thompson lined or Ross Cox
+portaged, that feeling will not persist for long. Sooner or later--and
+usually sooner--something or somebody will put you right. A broken oar
+and all but a mess-up in an inconsiderable riffle was all that was
+needed to quench the glow of pride that I felt over having won through
+the roughly tumbling left-hand channel of Rock Island Rapids with only a
+short length of lining. And it was a steady-eyed old river captain who
+brought me back to earth the night I told him--somewhat boastfully, I
+fear--that I had slashed my skiff straight down the middle of the final
+pitch of Umatilla Rapids, where Lewis and Clark had felt they had to
+portage.
+
+"But you must not forget," he said gently, with just the shadow of a
+smile softening the line of his firm lips, "that Lewis and Clark had
+something to lose besides their lives--that they had irreplaceable
+records in their care, and much work still to do. It was their duty to
+take as few chances as possible. But they never let the risk stop them
+when there wasn't any safer way. When you are pulling through Celilo
+Canal a few days from now, and being eased down a hundred feet in the
+locks, just remember that Lewis and Clark put their whole outfit down
+the Tumwater and Five-Mile Rapids of the Dalles, in either of which that
+skiff of yours would be sucked under in half a minute."
+
+Bulking insignificantly as an achievement as does my trip in comparison
+with the many Columbia voyages, recorded and unrecorded, of early days,
+it still seems to me that the opportunity I had for a comprehensive
+survey of this grandest scenically of all the world's great rivers gives
+me warrant for attempting to set down something of what I saw and
+experienced during those stirring weeks that intervened between that
+breathless moment when I let the whole stream of the Columbia trickle
+down my back in a glacial ice-cave in the high Selkirks, and that
+showery end-of-the-afternoon when I pushed out into tide-water at the
+foot of the Cascades.
+
+It is scant enough justice that the most gifted of pens can do to Nature
+in endeavouring to picture in words the grandest of her manifestations,
+and my own quill, albeit it glides not untrippingly in writing of
+lighter things, is never so inclined to halt and sputter as when I try
+to drive it to its task of registering in black scrawls on white paper
+something of what the sight of a soaring mountain peak, the depth of a
+black gorge with a white stream roaring at the bottom, or the morning
+mists rising from a silently flowing river have registered on the
+sensitized sheets of my memory. Superlative in grandeur to the last
+degree as are the mountains, glaciers, gorges, waterfalls, cascades and
+cliffs of the Columbia, it is to my photographs rather than my pen that
+I trust to convey something of their real message.
+
+If I can, however, pass on to my readers some suggestion of the keenness
+of my own enjoyment of what I experienced on the Columbia--of the sheer
+_joie de vivre_ that is the lot of the man who rides the running road;
+it will have not been in vain that I have cramped my fingers and bent my
+back above a desk during several weeks of the best part of the
+California year. Robert Service has written something about
+
+    "Doing things just for the doing,
+        Letting babblers tell the story...."
+
+Shall I need to confess to my readers that the one cloud on the seaward
+horizon during all of my voyage down the Columbia was brooding there as
+a consequence of the presentiment that, sooner or later, I should have
+to do my own babbling?
+
+PASADENA, July, 1921.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                                         PAGE
+
+       INTRODUCTION                                                 vi
+
+     I PREPARING FOR THE BIG BEND                                    1
+
+    II UP HORSE THIEF CREEK                                         20
+
+   III AT THE GLACIER                                               48
+
+    IV THE LAKE OF THE HANGING GLACIERS                             63
+
+     V CANAL FLATS TO BEAVERMOUTH                                   77
+
+    VI THROUGH SURPRISE RAPIDS                                      92
+
+   VII KINBASKET LAKE AND RAPIDS                                   134
+
+  VIII BOAT ENCAMPMENT TO REVELSTOKE                               160
+
+    IX REVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE                                   192
+
+     X RAFTING THROUGH HELL GATE                                   235
+
+    XI BY LAUNCH THROUGH BOX CANYON                                267
+
+   XII CHELAN TO PASCO                                             286
+
+  XIII PASCO TO THE DALLES                                         323
+
+   XIV THE HOME STRETCH                                            360
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  Mt. Sir Donald, which drains from all sides to the Columbia
+                                                       _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                           FACING PAGE
+
+  Mt. Assiniboine, near the headwaters of the Columbia              10
+
+  Twin Falls, Takakaw Falls, two great cataracts of the
+  Columbia watershed                                                11
+
+  The "turning-in" scene shot in silhouette                         38
+
+  "Reverse" of the "going-to-bed" shot                              38
+
+  On the Horse Thief Trail                                          39
+
+  A dead-fall on the trail                                          39
+
+  Looking toward the entrance of the ice cave                       52
+
+  Where the Hanging Glacier is about to fall                        53
+
+  My shower bath in an ice cave                                     58
+
+  Warming up after my glacial shower bath                           58
+
+  Ross and Harmon. Dragon moraine in distance                       59
+
+  The horses in the mouth of the ice cave                           59
+
+  Looking across the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers                   66
+
+  The Lake of the Hanging Glaciers, taken from the ice
+  walls, looking north                                              67
+
+  The face of the Hanging Glacier                                   72
+
+  Where my party foregathered with Harmon's on the shore
+  of the Lake of the Hanging Glacier                                73
+
+  Old Hudson Bay cart at Beavermouth                                80
+
+  My first push-off at the head of canoe navigation on the
+  Columbia                                                          80
+
+  Opening scene of the "Farmer" picture                             81
+
+  Old stern wheelers at Golden                                      81
+
+  A quiet stretch of the Columbia near Golden                       81
+
+  Arrival of our boat at Beavermouth                                96
+
+  Our first camp at Beavermouth                                     96
+
+  The remains of a sunken forest                                    96
+
+  Trapper's cabin where we found shelter for the night              97
+
+  Where we landed above Surprise Rapids                             97
+
+  Where we tied up at "Eight mile"                                  97
+
+  "Shooting" the first bit of lining at Surprise Rapids            122
+
+  The camp where the roar of the rapids deafened us                122
+
+  Where Steinhof was drowned                                       122
+
+  Where Andy just missed drowning in Surprise Rapids               123
+
+  Looking through the pines at Surprise Rapids                     123
+
+  Head of second fall of Surprise Rapids                           123
+
+  Blackmore and the ling that refused to "register"                142
+
+  The winter, with pike-pole just before lining Death Rapids       142
+
+  Andy and I pulling down Kinbasket Lake                           143
+
+  Our wettest camp, at Kinbasket Lake                              156
+
+  The old ferry tower above Canoe River                            156
+
+  Where we tied up at Kinbasket Lake                               157
+
+  The bridge which the Columbia carried a hundred miles and
+  placed across another stream                                     157
+
+  Lining down to the head of Death Rapids                          157
+
+  Trapper's cabin being undermined by stream                       168
+
+  The camp above Twelve-Mile                                       168
+
+  Landing at sunset above Canoe River                              169
+
+  Andy and Blackmore swinging the boat into the head of
+  Rock Slide Rapids                                                169
+
+  The big rollers, from 15 to 20 feet from hollow to crest, at
+  head of Death Rapids                                             169
+
+  Looking across to Boat Encampment                                180
+
+  "Wood smoke at twilight" above Twelve-Mile                       180
+
+  Lining down Rock Slide Rapids                                    181
+
+  When the Columbia took half of my riding breeches                181
+
+  Bonnington Falls of the Kootenay                                 198
+
+  Plastered log cabin in the Doukhobor village                     198
+
+  Trucking the skiff through Kettle Falls                          199
+
+  Twilight in the gorge at Kettle Falls                            199
+
+  Waiting for the fog to lift above Bishop's Rapids                210
+
+  Ross and Armstrong registering "gloom"                           210
+
+  The "intake" at the Little Dalles                                211
+
+  Where we started to line the Little Dalles                       211
+
+  Map of the Upper Columbia                                        236
+
+  A "close-up" of Ike building his raft                            237
+
+  My fifty pound salmon                                            237
+
+  Ike riding a log                                                 256
+
+  Ike on the mooring line of the raft                              256
+
+  Raft in tow of launch near mouth of San Poil                     257
+
+  Ike at the sweep below Hell Gate                                 257
+
+  The suspension bridge at Chelan Falls                            270
+
+  Old River veterans on the landing at Potaris. (Capt. McDermid
+  on left, Ike Emerson on right)                                   270
+
+  Night was falling as we headed into Box Canyon                   271
+
+  The Columbia above Box Canyon                                    271
+
+  A rocky cliff near head of Lake Chelan                           288
+
+  Rainbow Falls, 350 feet high, above head of Lake Chelan          288
+
+  Wenatchee under the dust cloud of its speeding autos             289
+
+  Head of Rock Island Rapids                                       289
+
+  The picture that cost me a wetting                               310
+
+  The wreck of the "Douglas"                                       310
+
+  We cooked our breakfast in the galley of the wreck of the
+  "Douglas"                                                        311
+
+  A rocky cliff above Beverly                                      311
+
+  Lifted drawbridge on Celilo Canal                                354
+
+  Tumwater Gorge of the Grand Dalles                               354
+
+  "Imshallah" in the lock at Five-Mile                             355
+
+  "Imshallah" half way through the Celilo Canal                    355
+
+  Palisade Rock, lower Columbia River                              362
+
+  Multnomah Falls, Columbia River Highway, near Portland           363
+
+  City of Portland with Mt. Hood in the distance                   370
+
+  Bridge on Columbia Highway near Portland, Oregon                 371
+
+
+
+
+DOWN THE COLUMBIA
+
+
+
+
+DOWN THE COLUMBIA
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+PREPARING FOR THE BIG BEND
+
+
+The itinerary of our Columbia trip as originally planned in Los Angeles
+called, first, for an expedition to the source of the river, next, a
+voyage by boat around the Big Bend from Beavermouth to Revelstoke, and,
+finally, if there was time and good weather held, a voyage of indefinite
+length on toward the sea. As the trip to the glaciers was largely a
+matter of engaging a good packer well in advance, while there was no
+certainty of getting any one who would undertake the passage of the Big
+Bend, it was to the latter that we first directed our attention. Chester
+wired the Publicity Department of the Canadian Pacific and I wrote
+friends in various parts of British Columbia. The C. P. R. replied that
+they had requested their Sub-Divisional Superintendent at Revelstoke to
+institute inquiries for boatmen in our behalf. The only one of my
+friends who contributed anything tangible stated that "while the
+Columbia above Golden and below Revelstoke was admirably suited to
+pleasure boating, any attempt to run the Big Bend between those points
+would result in almost certain disaster."
+
+As this appeared to be about the extent of what we were likely to learn
+from a distance, I decided to start north at once to see what could be
+arranged on the ground. Victoria yielded little save some large scale
+maps, and even these, they assured me in the Geographic Department of
+the B. C. Government where I secured them, were very inaccurate as to
+detail. The Big Bend region, it appeared, had never been surveyed north
+of the comparatively narrow zone of the C. P. R. grant. Several old
+hunting friends whom I met at the Club, although they had ranged the
+wildernesses of the Northwest from the Barren Lands to Alaska, spoke of
+the Big Bend as a veritable _terra incognita_.
+
+"It's said to be a great country for grizzly," one of them volunteered,
+"but too hard to get at. Only way to get in and out is the Columbia, and
+that is more likely to land you in Kingdom Come than back in
+Civilization. Best forget about the Big Bend and go after sheep and goat
+and moose in the Kootenays."
+
+At Kamloops I was told of an Indian who had gone round the Big Bend the
+previous May, before the Spring rise, and come out not only with his own
+skin, but with those of seven grizzlies. I was unable to locate the
+Indian, but did find a white man who had made the trip with him. This
+chap spent half an hour apparently endeavouring to persuade me to give
+up the trip on account of the prohibitive risk (my experience on other
+rivers, he declared, would be worse than useless in such water as was to
+be encountered at Surprise, Kinbasket and Death Rapids) and about an
+equal amount of time trying to convince me that my life would be
+perfectly safe if only I would engage him and his Indian and confide it
+to their care. As the consideration suggested in return for this
+immunity figured out at between two and three times the rate we had been
+expecting to pay for boatmen, I had to decline to take advantage of it.
+
+Finally, in Revelstoke, through the efforts of T. C. McNab of the
+Canadian Pacific, who had been at considerable trouble to line up
+possible candidates for a Big Bend trip, I met Bob Blackmore. After that
+things began moving toward a definite end.
+
+"You won't find old Bob Blackmore an active church-worker," I was told
+in Revelstoke, "and at one time he had the reputation of being the
+smoothest thing in the way of a boot-legger in this part of B. C. But he
+drinks little himself, is a past-master of woodcraft, a dead shot, and
+has twice the experience of swift-water boating of any man on the upper
+Columbia. In spite of the fact that he has undergone no end of hardship
+in his thirty years of packing, hunting, prospecting, trapping and
+boating all over the West, he's as hard to-day at fifty odd as most men
+are at thirty. Because he dished a boatload of freight last year
+somewhere up river, there are a few who are saying that old Bob
+Blackmore is losing his grip. Don't believe it. He was never better in
+his life than he is right now, and if you can persuade him to run your
+show round the Big Bend you're in luck. Once you start, you'll come
+right on round to Revelstoke all right. No fear on that score. But if
+you have old Bob Blackmore you'll stand a jolly lot better chance of
+arriving on top of the water."
+
+I found Bob Blackmore at his river-side home in the old town--what had
+been the metropolitan centre of Revelstoke in the days when it was the
+head of navigation of steamers from below the Arrow Lakes, and before
+the railway had come to drag settlement a mile northeastward and away
+from the Columbia. He was picking apples with one hand and slapping
+mosquitoes with the other--a grey-haired, grey-eyed man of middle
+height, with a muscular torso, a steady stare, and a grip that I had to
+meet half way to save my fingers. He might have passed for a well-to-do
+Middle Western farmer except for his iron-grey moustaches, which were
+long and drooping, like those affected by cowboy-town sheriffs in the
+movies.
+
+I knew at once that this was the man I wanted, and my only doubt was as
+to whether or not he felt the same way about me. They had told me in
+town that Blackmore, having some means and being more or less
+independent, never went out with a man or an outfit he did not like. I
+felt that it was I who was on approval, not he. I need not have worried,
+however. In this instance, at least, Bob Blackmore's mind was made up in
+advance. It was the movies that had done it.
+
+"The C. P. R. people wrote me that you might be wanting me for the
+Bend," he said genially after I had introduced myself, "and on the
+chance that we would be hitching up I have put my big boat in the water
+to give her a good soaking. I've figured that she's the only boat on the
+upper river that will do for what you want. I reckon I know them all.
+She'll carry three or four times as much as the biggest Peterboro.
+Besides, if you tried to go round in canoes, you'd be portaging or
+lining in a dozen places where I would drive this one straight through.
+With any luck, and if the water doesn't go down too fast, I'd figure on
+going the whole way without taking her out of the river at more'n one
+place, and maybe not there."
+
+"So you're willing to go ahead and see us through," I exclaimed
+delightedly. "They told me in the town that you'd probably need a lot of
+persuading, especially as you've been saying for the last two or three
+years that you were through with the Bend for good and all."
+
+Blackmore grinned broadly and somewhat sheepishly. "So I have," he said.
+"Fact is, I've never yet been round the Bend that I didn't tell myself
+and everybody else that I'd never try it again. I really meant it the
+last time, which was three or four years ago. And I've really meant it
+every time I said it right up to a few days back, when I heard that you
+wanted to take a movie machine in there and try and get some pictures.
+If that was so, I said to myself, it was sure up to me to do what I
+could to help, for there's scenery in there that is more worth picturing
+than any I've come across in thirty years of knocking around all over
+the mountain country of the West. So I'm your man if you want me. Of
+course you know something of what you're going up against in bucking the
+Bend?"
+
+"Yes," I replied a bit wearily. "I've been hearing very little else for
+the last week. Let's talk about the scenery."
+
+"So they've been trying to frighten you out of it," he said with a
+sympathetic smile. "They always do that with strangers who come here to
+tackle the Bend. And mostly they succeed. There was one chap they
+couldn't stop, though. He was a professor of some kind from
+Philadelphia. Fact is, he wasn't enough frightened. That's a bad thing
+with the Columbia, which isn't to be taken liberties with. I buried him
+near the head of Kinbasket Lake. We'll see his grave when we come down
+from Surprise Rapids. I'll want to stop off for a bit and see if the
+cross I put up is still standing. He was...."
+
+"_Et tu Brute_," I muttered under my breath. Then, aloud: "Let's look at
+the boat."
+
+Already this penchant of the natives for turning the pages of the Big
+Bend's gruesome record of death and disaster was getting onto my nerves,
+and it was rather a shock to find even the quiet-spoken, steady-eyed
+Blackmore addicted to the habit. Afterwards, when I got used to it, I
+ceased to mind. As a matter of fact, the good souls could no more help
+expatiating on what the Big Bend had done to people who had taken
+liberties with it than an aviator who is about to take you for a flight
+can help leading you round back of the hangar and showing you the
+wreckage of his latest crash. It seems to be one of the inevitable
+promptings of the human animal to warn his brother animal of troubles
+ahead. This is doubtless the outgrowth of the bogies and the "don'ts"
+which are calculated to check the child's explorative and investigative
+instincts in his nursery days. From the source to the mouth of the
+Columbia it was never (according to the solicitous volunteer advisers
+along the way) the really dangerous rapids that I had put behind me.
+These were always somewhere ahead--usually just around the next bend,
+where I would run into them the first thing in the morning. Luckily, I
+learned to discount these warnings very early in the game, and so saved
+much sleep which it would have been a real loss to be deprived of.
+
+Blackmore led the way back through his apple orchard and down a stairway
+that descended the steeply-sloping river bank to his boat-house. The
+Columbia, a quarter of a mile wide and with just a shade of grey
+clouding its lucent greenness to reveal its glacial origin, slid swiftly
+but smoothly by with a purposeful current of six or seven miles an hour.
+A wing-dam of concrete, evidently built to protect the works of a
+sawmill a bit farther down stream, jutted out into the current just
+above, and the boat-house, set on a raft of huge logs, floated in the
+eddy below.
+
+There were two boats in sight, both in the water. Blackmore indicated
+the larger one of the pair--a double-ender of about thirty feet in
+length and generous beam--as the craft recommended for the Big Bend
+trip. "I built her for the Bend more than fifteen years ago," he said,
+tapping the heavy gunwale with the toe of his boot. "She's the only boat
+I know that has been all the way round more than once, so you might say
+she knows the road. She's had many a hard bump, but--with any luck--she
+ought to stand one or two more. Not that I'm asking for any more than
+can be helped, though. There's no boat ever built that will stand a
+head-on crash 'gainst a rock in any such current as is driving it down
+Surprise or Kinbasket or Death Rapids, or a dozen other runs of swift
+water on the Bend. Of course, you're going to hit once in a while, spite
+of all you can do; but, if you're lucky, you'll probably kiss off
+without staving in a side. If you're not--well, if you're not lucky, you
+have no business fooling with the Bend at all.
+
+"Now what I like about this big boat of mine," he continued, taking up
+the scope of the painter to bring her in out of the tug of the current,
+"is that she's a lucky boat. Never lost a man out of her--that is,
+directly--and only one load of freight. Now with that one (indicating
+the smaller craft, a canoe-like double-ender of about twenty feet) it's
+just the other way. If there's trouble around she'll have her nose into
+it. She's as good a built boat as any on the river, easy to handle up
+stream and down--but unlucky. Why, only a few weeks ago a lad from the
+town borrowed her to have a bit of a lark running the ripple over that
+dam there. It's covered at high water, and just enough of a pitch to
+give the youngsters a little excitement in dropping over. Safe enough
+stunt with any luck at all. But that boat's not lucky. She drifted on
+sidewise, caught her keel and capsized. The lad and the two girls with
+him were all drowned. They found his body a week or two later. All his
+pockets were turned wrong-side-out and empty. The Columbia current most
+always plays that trick on a man--picks his pockets clean. The bodies of
+the girls never did show up. Probably the sand got into their clothes
+and held them down. That's another little trick of the Columbia. She's
+as full of tricks as a box of monkeys, that old stream there, and you've
+got to keep an eye lifting for 'em all the time if you're going to
+steer clear of trouble."
+
+"It won't be the first time I've had my pockets picked," I broke in
+somewhat testily. "Besides, if you're going to charge me at the rate
+that Indian I heard of in Kamloops demanded, there won't be anything
+left for the Columbia to extract."
+
+That brought us down to business, and I had no complaint to make of the
+terms Blackmore suggested--twelve dollars a day for himself and boat, I
+to buy the provisions and make my own arrangements with any additional
+boatmen. I already had sensed enough of the character of the work ahead
+to know that a good boatman would be cheap at any price, and a poor one
+dear if working only for his grub. Blackmore was to get the big boat in
+shape and have it ready to ship by rail to Beavermouth (at the head of
+the Bend and the most convenient point to get a craft into the river)
+when I returned from the source of the Columbia above Windermere.
+
+Going on to Golden by train from Revelstoke, I looked up Captain F. P.
+Armstrong, with whom I had already been in communication by wire. The
+Captain had navigated steamers between Golden and Windermere for many
+years, they told me at C. P. R. headquarters in Revelstoke, and had also
+some experience of the Bend. He would be unable to join me for the trip
+himself, but had spoken to one or two men who might be induced to do so.
+In any event his advice would be invaluable.
+
+I shall have so much to say of Captain Armstrong in the account of a
+later part of my down-river voyage that the briefest introduction to a
+man who has been one of the most picturesque personalities in the
+pioneering history of British Columbia will suffice here. Short,
+compactly but cleanly built, with iron-grey hair, square, determined jaw
+and piercing black eyes, he has been well characterized as "the biggest
+little man on the upper Columbia." Although he confessed to sixty-three
+years, he might well have passed for fifty, a circumstance which
+doubtless had much to do with the fact that he saw three years of active
+service in the transport service on the Tigris and Nile during the late
+war. Indeed, as became apparent later, he generally had as much reserve
+energy at the end of a long day's paddling as another man I could
+mention who is rather loath to admit forty.
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff
+
+MT. ASSINIBOINE, NEAR THE HEADWATERS OF THE COLUMBIA]
+
+[Illustration: TWIN FALLS]
+
+[Illustration: TAKAKAW FALLS
+
+TWO GREAT CATARACTS OF THE COLUMBIA WATERSHED]
+
+Captain Armstrong explained that he was about to close the sale of one
+of his mines on a tributary of the upper Columbia, and for that reason
+would be unable to join us for the Big Bend trip, as much as he would
+have enjoyed doing so. In the event that I decided to continue on down
+the Columbia after circling the Bend, it was just possible he would be
+clear to go along for a way. He spoke highly of Blackmore's ability as a
+river man, and mentioned one or two others in Golden whom he thought
+might be secured. Ten dollars a day was the customary pay for a boatman
+going all the way round the Bend. That was about twice the ordinary wage
+prevailing at the time in the sawmills and lumber camps. The extra five
+was partly insurance, and partly because the work was hard and really
+good river men very scarce. It was fair pay for an experienced hand.
+A poor boatman was worse than none at all, that is, in a pinch, while a
+good one might easily mean the difference between success and disaster.
+And of course I knew that disaster on the Bend--with perhaps fifty miles
+of trackless mountains between a wet man on the bank and the nearest
+human habitation--was spelt with a big D.
+
+So far as I can remember, Captain Armstrong was the only one with whom I
+talked in Golden who did not try to dramatize the dangers and
+difficulties of the Big Bend. Seemingly taking it for granted that I
+knew all about them, or in any case would hear enough of them from the
+others, he turned his attention to forwarding practical plans for the
+trip. He even contributed a touch of romance to a venture that the rest
+seemed a unit in trying to make me believe was a sort of a cross between
+going over Niagara in barrel and a flight to one of the Poles.
+
+"There was a deal of boot-legging on the river between Golden and Boat
+Encampment during the years the Grand Trunk was being built," he said as
+we pored over an outspread map of the Big Bend, "for that was the first
+leg of the run into the western construction camps, where the sale of
+liquor was forbidden by law. Many and many a boatload of the stuff went
+wrong in the rapids. This would have been inevitable in any case, just
+in the ordinary course of working in such difficult water. But what made
+the losses worse was the fact that a good many of the bootleggers always
+started off with a load under their belts as well as in their boats. Few
+of the bodies were ever found, but with the casks of whisky it was
+different, doubtless because the latter would float longer and resist
+buffeting better. Cask after cask has kept turning up through the years,
+even down to the present, when B. C. is a comparative desert. They are
+found in the most unexpected places, and it's very rare for a party to
+go all the way round the Bend without stumbling onto one. So bear well
+in mind you are not to go by anything that looks like a small barrel
+without looking to see if it has a head in both ends. If you have time,
+it will pay you to clamber for a few hours over the great patch of drift
+just below Middle River on Kinbasket Lake. That's the one great
+catch-all for everything floatable that gets into the river below
+Golden. I've found just about everything there from a canary bird cage
+to a railway bridge. Failing there (which will only be because you don't
+search long enough), dig sixteen paces northwest by compass from the
+foundation of the west tower of the abandoned cable ferry just above
+Boat Encampment."
+
+"How's that again!" I exclaimed incredulously. "Sure you aren't
+confusing the Big Bend with the Spanish Main?"
+
+"If you follow my directions," replied the Captain with a grin, "you'll
+uncover more treasure for five minutes' scratching than you'd be likely
+to find in turning over the Dry Tortugas for five years. You see, it was
+this way," he went on, smiling the smile of a man who speaks of
+something which has strongly stirred his imagination. "It was only a few
+weeks after Walter Steinhoff was lost in Surprise Rapids that I made
+the trip round the Bend in a Peterboro to examine some silver-lead
+prospects I had word of. I had with me Pete Bergenham (a first-class
+river man; one you will do well to get yourself if you can) and another
+chap. This fellow was good enough with the paddle, but--though I didn't
+know it when I engaged him--badly addicted to drink. That's a fatal
+weakness for a man who is going to work in swift water, and especially
+such water as you strike at Surprise and the long run of Kinbasket
+Rapids. The wreckage of Steinhoff's disaster (Blackmore will spin you
+the straightest yarn about that) was scattered all the way from the big
+whirlpool in Surprise Rapids down to Middle River, where they finally
+found his body. We might easily have picked up more than the one
+ten-gallon cask we bumped into, floating just submerged, in the shallows
+of the mud island at the head of Kinbasket Lake.
+
+"I didn't feel quite right about having so much whisky along; but the
+stuff had its value even in those days, and I would have felt still
+worse about leaving it to fall into the hands of some one who would be
+less moderate in its use than would I. I knew Pete Bergenham was all
+right, and counted on being able to keep an eye on the other man. That
+was just where I fell down. I should have taken the cask to bed with me
+instead of leaving it in the canoe.
+
+"When the fellow got to the whisky I never knew, but it was probably
+well along toward morning. He was already up when I awoke, and displayed
+unwonted energy in getting breakfast and breaking camp. If I had known
+how heavily he had been tippling I would have given him another drink
+before pushing off to steady his nerve. That might have held him all
+right. As it was, reaction in mind and body set in just as we headed
+into that first sharp dip below the lake--the beginning of the
+twenty-one miles of Kinbasket Rapids. At the place where the bottom has
+dropped out from under and left the channel blocked by jagged rocks with
+no place to run through, he collapsed as if kicked in the stomach, and
+slithered down into the bottom of the canoe, blubbering like a baby. We
+just did manage to make our landing above the cascade. With a less
+skilful man than Bergenham at the stern paddle we would have failed, and
+that would have meant that we should probably not have stopped for good
+before we settled into the mud at the bottom of the Arrow Lakes.
+
+"Even after that I could not find it in my heart to dish for good and
+all so much prime whisky. So I compromised by burying it that night,
+after we had come through the rapids without further mishap, at the spot
+I have told you of. That it was the best thing to do under the
+circumstances I am quite convinced. The mere thought that it was still
+in the world has cheered me in many a thirsty interval--yes, even out on
+the Tigris and the Nile, when there was no certainty I would ever come
+back to get it again.
+
+"And now I'm going to tell you how to find it, for there's no knowing if
+I shall ever have a chance to go for it myself. If you bring it out to
+Revelstoke safely, we'll split it fifty-fifty, as they say on your side
+of the line. All I shall want to know is who your other boatmen are
+going to be. Blackmore is all right, but if any one of the men whom he
+takes with him is a real drinker, you'd best forget the whole thing. If
+it's an 'all-sober' crew, I'll give you a map, marked so plainly that
+you can't go wrong. It will be a grand haul, for it was Number One
+Scotch even when we planted it there, and since then it has been ageing
+in wood for something like ten years. I suppose you'll be keen to
+smuggle your dividend right on down into the 'The Great American
+Desert'?" he concluded with a grin.
+
+"Trust me for that," I replied with a knowing shake of my head. "I
+didn't spend six months writing up opium smuggling on the China Coast
+for nothing." Then I told him the story of the Eurasian lady who was fat
+in Amoy and thin in Hongkong, and who finally confessed to having
+smuggled forty pounds of opium, three times a week for five years, in
+oiled silk hip- and bust-pads.
+
+"You must have a lot of prime ideas," said the Captain admiringly. "You
+ought to make it easy, especially if you cross the line by boat. How
+would a false bottom ... but perhaps it would be safer to float it down
+submerged, with an old shingle-bolt for a buoy, and pick it up
+afterwards."
+
+"Or inside my pneumatic mattress," I suggested. "But perhaps it would
+taste from the rubber." By midnight we had evolved a plan which could
+not fail, and which was almost without risk. "The stuff's as good as in
+California," I told myself before I went to sleep--"and enough to pay
+all the expenses of my trip in case I should care to bootleg it, which
+I won't."
+
+Captain Armstrong's mention of the Steinhoff disaster was not the first
+I had heard of it. The chap with whom I had talked in Kamloops had
+shown me a photograph of a rude cross that he and his Indian companion
+had erected over Steinhoff's grave, and in Revelstoke nearly every one
+who spoke of the Bend made some reference to the tragic affair. But here
+in Golden, which had been his home, the spectacularity of his passing
+seemed to have had an even more profound effect. As with everything else
+connected with the Big Bend, however, there was a very evident tendency
+to dramatize, to "play up," the incident. I heard many different
+versions of the story, but there was one part, the tragic finale, in
+which they all were in practical agreement. When his canoe broke loose
+from its line, they said, and shot down toward the big whirlpool at the
+foot of the second cataract of Surprise Rapids, Steinhoff, realizing
+that there was no chance of the light craft surviving the maelstrom,
+coolly turned round, waved farewell to his companions on the bank, and,
+folding his arms, went down to his death. Canoe and man were sucked
+completely out of sight, never to be seen again until the fragments of
+the one and the battered body of the other were cast up, weeks later,
+many miles below.
+
+It was an extremely effective story, especially as told by the local
+member in the B. C. Provincial Assembly, who had real histrionic talent.
+But somehow I couldn't quite reconcile the Nirvanic resignation implied
+by the farewell wave and the folded arms with the never-say-die,
+cat-with-nine-lives spirit I had come to associate with your true
+swift-water boatman the world over. I was quite ready to grant that the
+big sockdolager of a whirlpool below the second pitch of Surprise
+Rapids was a real all-day and all-night sucker, but the old river hand
+who gave up to it like the Kentucky coons at the sight of Davy
+Crockett's squirrel-gun wasn't quite convincing. That, and the iterated
+statement that Steinhoff's canoe-mate, who was thrown into the water at
+the same time, won his way to the bank by walking along the bottom
+_beneath_ the surface, had a decidedly steadying effect on the erratic
+flights to which my fancy had been launched by Big Bend yarns generally.
+There had been something strangely familiar in them all, and finally it
+came to me--Chinese _feng-shui_ generally, and particularly the legends
+of the sampan men of the portage villages along the Ichang gorges of the
+Yangtze. The things the giant dragon lurking in the whirlpools at the
+foot of the rapids would do to the luckless ones he got his back-curving
+teeth into were just a slightly different way of telling what the good
+folk of Golden claimed the Big Bend would do to the hapless wights who
+ventured down its darksome depths.
+
+Now that I thought of it in this clarifying light, there had been
+"dragon stuff" bobbing up about almost every stretch of rough water I
+had boated. Mostly it was native superstition, but partly it was small
+town pride--pride in the things their "Dragon" had done, and would do.
+Human nature--yes, and river rapids, too--are very much the same the
+world over, whether on the Yangtze, Brahmaputra or upper Columbia.
+
+That brought the Big Bend into its proper perspective. I realized that
+it was only water running down hill after all. Possibly it was faster
+than anything I had boated previously, and certainly--excepting the
+Yukon perhaps--colder. A great many men had been drowned in trying to
+run it; but so had men been drowned in duck-ponds. But many men had gone
+round without disaster, and that would I do, _Imshallah_. I always liked
+that pious Arab qualification when speaking of futurities. Later I
+applied the name--in fancy--to the skiff in which I made the voyage down
+the lower river.
+
+Yes, undoubtedly the most of the yarns and the warnings were "dragon
+stuff" pure and simple, but Romance remained. A hundred miles of river
+with possible treasure lurking in every eddy, and one place where it
+_had_ to be! I felt as I did the first time I read "Treasure Island,"
+only more so. For that I had only _read_, and now I was going to search
+for myself--yes, and I was going to find, too. It was a golden sunset in
+more ways than one the evening before I was to leave for the upper
+river. Barred and spangled and fluted with liquid, lucent gold was the
+sky above hills that were themselves golden with the tints of early
+autumn. And in the Northwest there was a flush of rose, old rose that
+deepened and glowed in lambent crimson where a notch between the
+Selkirks and Rockies marked the approximate location of historic Boat
+Encampment. "Great things have happened at Boat Encampment," I told
+myself, "and its history is not all written." Then: "Sixteen paces
+northwest by compass from the foundation of the west tower of the
+abandoned cable ferry...." Several times during dinner that evening I
+had to check myself from humming an ancient song. "What's that about,
+'_Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of rum_'?" queried the mackinaw drummer from
+Winnipeg who sat next me. "I thought you were from the States. I don't
+quite see the point."
+
+"It's just as well you don't," I replied, and was content to let it go
+at that.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+UP HORSE THIEF CREEK
+
+
+When I started north from Los Angeles toward the end of August Chester,
+held up for the moment by business, was hoping to be able to shake free
+so as to arrive on the upper Columbia by the time I had arrangements for
+the Big Bend voyage complete. We would then go together to the Lake of
+the Hanging Glaciers before embarking on the Bend venture. Luck was not
+with him, however. The day I was ready to start on up river from Golden
+I received a wire stating that he was still indefinitely delayed, and
+that the best that there was now any chance of his doing would be to
+join me for the Bend. He had ordered his cameraman to Windermere, where
+full directions for the trip to the glaciers awaited him. He hoped I
+would see fit to go along and help with the picture, as some "central
+figure" besides the guides and packers would be needed to give the
+"story" continuity. I replied that I would be glad to do the best I
+could, and left for Lake Windermere by the next train. Few movie stars
+have ever been called to twinkle upon shorter notice.
+
+One is usually told that the source of the Columbia is in Canal Flats, a
+hundred and fifty miles above Golden, and immediately south of a
+wonderfully lovely mountain-begirt lake that bears the same name as the
+river. This is true in a sense, although, strictly speaking, the real
+source of the river--the one rising at the point the greatest distance
+from its mouth--would be the longest of the many mountain creeks which
+converge upon Columbia Lake from the encompassing amphitheatre of the
+Rockies and Selkirks. This is probably Dutch Creek, which rises in the
+perpetual snow of the Selkirks and sends down a roaring torrent of
+grey-green glacier water into the western side of Columbia Lake.
+Scarcely less distant from the mouth of the Columbia are the heads of
+Toby and Horse Thief creeks, both of which bring splendid volumes of
+water to the mother river just below Lake Windermere.
+
+It was the presence of the almost totally unknown Lake of the Hanging
+Glaciers near the head of the Horse Thief Creek watershed that was
+responsible for Chester's determination to carry his preliminary
+explorations up to the latter source of the Columbia rather than to one
+slightly more remote above the upper lake. We had assurance that a
+trail, upon which work had been in progress all summer, would be
+completed by the middle of September, so that it would then be possible
+for the first time to take pack-horses and a full moving-picture outfit
+to one of the rarest scenic gems on the North American continent, the
+Lake of the Hanging Glaciers. To get the first movies of what is claimed
+to be the only lake in the world outside of the polar regions that has
+icebergs perpetually floating upon its surface was the principal object
+of Chester in directing his outfit up Horse Thief Creek. My own object
+was to reach one of the several points where the Columbia took its rise
+in the glacial ice, there to do a right-about and start upon my
+long-dreamed-of journey from snowflake to brine.
+
+It is a dozen years or more since one could travel the hundred miles of
+the Columbia between Golden and Lake Windermere by steamer. The
+comparatively sparse population in this rich but thinly settled region
+was not sufficient to support both rail and river transport, and with
+the coming of the former the latter could not long be maintained. Two or
+three rotting hulks on the mud by the old landing at Golden are all that
+remain of one of the most picturesque steamer services ever run, for
+those old stern-wheelers used to flounder up the Columbia to Windermere,
+on through Mud and Columbia Lakes to Canal Flats, through a log-built
+lock to the Kootenay watershed, and then down the winding canyons and
+tumbling rapids of that tempestuous stream to Jennings, Montana. Those
+were the bonanza days of the upper Columbia and Kootenay--such days as
+they have never seen since nor will ever see again. I was to hear much
+of them later from Captain Armstrong when we voyaged a stretch of the
+lower river together.
+
+There is a train between Golden and Windermere only three times a week.
+It is an amiable, ambling "jerk-water," whose conductor does everything
+from dandling babies to unloading lumber. At one station he held over
+for five minutes to let me run down to a point where I could get the
+best light on a "reflection" picture in the river, and at another he ran
+the whole train back to pick up a basket of eggs which had been
+overlooked in the rush of departure. The Canadian Pacific has the happy
+faculty of being all things to all men. Its main line has always
+impressed me as being the best-run road I have ever travelled on in any
+part of the world, including the United States. One would hardly
+characterize its little country feeders in the same words, but even
+these latter, as the instances I have noted will bear out, come about as
+near to being run for the accommodation of the travelling public as
+anything one will ever find. There is not the least need of hurrying
+this Golden-Windermere express. It stops over night at Invermere anyway,
+before continuing its leisurely progress southward the next morning.
+
+Chester's cameraman met me with a car at the station, and we rode a mile
+to the hotel at Invermere, on the heights above the lake. His name was
+Roos, he said--Len H. Roos of N. Y. C. It was his misfortune to have
+been born in Canada, he explained, but he had always had a great
+admiration for Americans, and had taken out his first papers for
+citizenship. He could manage to get on with Canadians in a pinch, he
+averred further; but as for Britishers--no "Lime-juicers" for him, with
+their "G'bly'me's" and afternoon teas. I saw that this was going to be a
+difficult companion, and took the occasion to point out that, since he
+was going to be in Canada for some weeks, it might be just as well to
+bottle up his rancour against the land of his birth until he was back on
+the other side of the line and had completed the honour he intended to
+do Uncle Sam by becoming an American citizen. Maybe I was right, he
+admitted thoughtfully; but it would be a hard thing for him to do, as
+he was naturally very frank and outspoken and a great believer in
+saying just what he thought of people and things.
+
+He was right about being outspoken. He had also rather a glittering line
+of dogma on the finer things of life. Jazz was the highest form of music
+(he ought to know, for had he not played both jazz and grand opera when
+he was head drummer of the Galt, Ontario, town band?); the Mack Sennett
+bathing comedy was his _belle ideal_ of kinematic art; and the
+newspapers of William Hearst were the supreme development of journalism.
+This latter he knew, because he had done camera work for a Hearst
+syndicate himself. I could manage to make a few degrees of allowance for
+jazz and the Mack Sennett knockabouts under the circumstances, but the
+deification of Hearst created an unbridgeable gulf. I foresaw that
+"director" and "star" were going to have bumpy sledding, but also
+perceived the possibility of comedy elements which promised to go a long
+way toward redeeming the enforced partnership from irksomeness, that is,
+if the latter were not too prolonged. That it could run to six or seven
+weeks and the passage of near to a thousand miles of the Columbia
+without turning both "director" and "star" into actual assassins, I
+would never have believed. Indeed, I am not able to figure out even now
+how it could have worked out that way. I can't explain it. I merely
+state the fact.
+
+Walter Nixon, the packer who was to take us "up Horse Thief," had been
+engaged by wire a week previously. His outfit had been ready for several
+days, and he called at the hotel the evening of my arrival to go over
+the grub list and make definite plans. As there were only two of us, he
+reckoned that ten horses and two packers would be sufficient to see us
+through. The horses would cost us two dollars a day a head, and the
+packers five dollars apiece. The provisions he would buy himself and
+endeavour to board us at a dollar and a half apiece a man. This footed
+up to between thirty-five and forty dollars a day for the outfit,
+exclusive of the movie end. It seemed a bit stiff offhand, but was
+really very reasonable considering present costs of doing that kind of a
+thing and the thoroughly first-class service Nixon gave us from
+beginning to end.
+
+Nixon himself I was extremely well impressed with. He was a fine
+up-standing fellow of six feet or more, black-haired, black-eyed,
+broad-shouldered and a swell of biceps and thigh that even his
+loose-fitting mackinaws could not entirely conceal. I liked
+particularly his simple rig-out, in its pleasing contrast to the
+cross-between-a-movie-cowboy-and-a-Tyrolean-yodeler garb that has come
+to be so much affected by the so-called guides at Banff and Lake Louise.
+Like the best of his kind, Nixon was quiet-spoken and leisurely of
+movement, but with a suggestion of powerful reserves of both vocabulary
+and activity. I felt sure at first sight that he was the sort of a man
+who could be depended upon to see a thing through whatever the
+difficulties, and I never had reason to change my opinion on that score.
+
+It was arranged that night that Nixon should get away with the pack
+outfit by noon of the next day, and make an easy stage of it to the
+Starbird Ranch, at the end of the wagon-road, nineteen miles out from
+Invermere. The following morning Roos and I would come out by motor and
+be ready to start by the time the horses were up and the packs on. That
+gave us an extra day for exploring Windermere and the more imminent
+sources of the Columbia.
+
+Roos' instructions from Chester called for a "Windermere Picture," in
+which should be shown the scenic, camping, fishing and hunting life of
+that region. The scenic and camping shots he had already made; the fish
+and the game had eluded him. I arrived just in time to take part in the
+final scurry to complete the picture. The fish to be shown were trout,
+and the game mountain sheep and goat, or at least that was the way Roos
+planned it at breakfast time. When inquiry revealed that it would take a
+day to reach a trout stream, and three days to penetrate to the haunts
+of the sheep and goats, he modified the campaign somewhat to conform
+with the limited time at our disposal. Close at hand in the lake there
+was a fish called the squaw-fish, which, floundering at the end of a
+line, would photograph almost like a trout, or so the hotel proprietor
+thought. And the best of it was that any one could catch them. Indeed,
+at times one had to manoeuvre to keep them from taking the bait that
+was meant for the more gamy and edible, but also far more elusive, ling
+or fresh-water cod. As for the game picture, said Roos, he would save
+time by having a deer rounded up and driven into the lake, where he
+would pursue it with a motor boat and shoot the required hunting
+pictures. He would like to have me dress like a tourist and do the
+hunting and fishing. That would break me in to adopting an easy and
+pleasing manner before the camera, so that a minimum of film would be
+spoiled when he got down to our regular work on the Hanging Glacier
+picture. It wouldn't take long. That was the advantage of "news"
+training for a cameraman. You could do things in a rush when you had to.
+
+Mr. Clelland, secretary of the Windermere Company, courteously found us
+tackle and drove us down to the outlet of the lake to catch the
+squaw-fish. Three hours later he drove us back to the hotel for lunch
+without one single fragment of our succulent salt-pork bait having been
+nuzzled on its hook. I lost my "easy and pleasing manner" at the end of
+the first hour, and Roos--who was under rather greater tension in
+standing by to crank--somewhat sooner. He said many unkind things about
+fish in general and squaw-fish in particular before we gave up the fight
+at noon, and I didn't improve matters at all by suggesting that I cut
+out the picture on a salmon can label, fasten it to my hook, and have
+him shoot me catching that. There was no sense whatever in the idea, he
+said. You had to have studio lighting to get away with that sort of
+thing. He couldn't see how I could advance such a thing seriously. As I
+had some doubts on that score myself, I didn't start an argument.
+
+In the afternoon no better success attended our effort to make the
+hunting picture,--this because no one seemed to know where a deer could
+be rounded up and driven into the lake. Again I discovered a way to
+save this situation. On the veranda of the country club there was a fine
+mounted specimen of _Ovis Canadensis_, the Canadian mountain sheep. By
+proper ballasting, I pointed out to Roos, this fine animal could be made
+to submerge to a natural swimming depth--say with the head and shoulders
+just above the water. Then a little Evinrude engine could be clamped to
+its hind quarters and set going. Forthwith the whole thing must start
+off ploughing across the lake just like a live mountain sheep. By a
+little manoeuvring it ought to be possible to shoot at an angle that
+would interpose the body of the sheep between the eye and the pushing
+engine. If this proved to be impossible, perhaps it could be explained
+in a sub-title that the extraneous machinery was a fragment of
+mowing-machine or something of the kind that the sheep had collided with
+and picked up in his flight. Roos, while admitting that this showed a
+considerable advance over my salmon-label suggestion of the morning,
+said that there were a number of limiting considerations which would
+render it impracticable. I forget what all of these were, but one of
+them was that our quarry couldn't be made to roll his eyes and register
+"consternation" and "mute reproach" in the close-ups. I began to see
+that there was a lot more to the movie game than I had ever dreamed. But
+what a stimulator of the imagination it was!
+
+As there was nothing more to be done about the hunting and fishing shots
+for the present, we turned our attention to final preparations for what
+we had begun to call the "Hanging Glacier Picture." Roos said it would
+be necessary to sketch a rough sort of scenario in advance--nothing
+elaborate like "Broken Blossoms" or "The Perils of Pauline" (we hadn't
+the company for that kind of thing), but just the thread of a story to
+make the "continuity" ripple continuously. It would be enough, he
+thought, if I would enact the rôle of a gentleman-sportsman and allow
+the guides and packers to be just their normal selves. Then with these
+circulating in the foreground, he would film the various scenic features
+of the trip as they unrolled. All the lot of us would have to do would
+be to act naturally and stand or lounge gracefully in those parts of the
+picture where the presence of human beings would be best calculated to
+balance effectively and harmoniously the composition. I agreed
+cheerfully to the sportsman part of my rôle, but demurred as to
+"gentleman." I might manage it for a scene, but for a sustained effort
+it was out of the question. A compromise along this line was finally
+effected. I engaged to act as much like a gentleman as I could for the
+opening shot, after which I was to be allowed to lapse into the seeming
+of a simple sportsman who loved scenery-gazing more than the pursuit and
+slaying of goat, sheep and bear. Roos observed shrewdly that it would be
+better to have the sportsman be more interested in scenery than game
+because, judging from our experience at Windermere, we would find more
+of the former than the latter. He was also encouragingly sympathetic
+about my transient appearance as a gentleman. "I only want about fifty
+feet of that," he said as he gave me a propitiating pat on the back;
+"besides, it's all a matter of clothes anyhow."
+
+Before we turned in that night it transpired that Chester's hope of
+being the first to show moving pictures of the Lake of the Hanging
+Glaciers to the world was probably doomed to disappointment, or, at the
+best, that this honour would have to be shared with an equally ambitious
+rival. Byron Harmon, of Banff, formerly official photographer for the
+Canadian Pacific, arrived at Invermere and announced that he was
+planning to go "up Horse Thief" and endeavour to film a number of the
+remarkable scenic features which he had hitherto tried to picture in
+vain. His schedule was temporarily upset by the fact that we had already
+engaged the best packtrain and guides available. Seasoned mountaineer
+that he was, however, this was of small moment. A few hours' scurrying
+about had provided him with a light but ample outfit, consisting of four
+horses and two men, with which he planned to get away in the morning. He
+was not in the least perturbed by the fact that Roos had practically a
+day's start of him. "There's room for a hundred cameramen to work up
+there," he told me genially; "and the more the world is shown of the
+wonders of the Rockies and the Selkirks, the more it will want to see.
+It will be good to have your company, and each of us ought to be of help
+to the other."
+
+I had some difficulty in bringing Roos to a similarly philosophical
+viewpoint. His "Hearst" training impelled him to brook no rivalry, to
+beat out the other man by any means that offered. He had the better
+packtrain, he said, to say nothing of a day's start. Also, he had the
+only dynamite and caps available that side of Golden, so that he would
+have the inside track for starting avalanches and creating artificial
+icebergs in the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers. I would like to think that
+it was my argument that, since it was not a "news" picture he was after,
+the man who took the most time to his work would be the one to get the
+best results, was what brought him round finally. I greatly fear,
+however, it was the knowledge that the generous Harmon had a number of
+flares that did the trick. He had neglected to provide flares himself,
+and without them work in the ice caves--second only in interest to the
+Lake of the Hanging Glaciers itself--would be greatly circumscribed. At
+any rate, he finally agreed to a truce, and we took Harmon out to the
+end of the road in our car the following morning. Of the latter's really
+notable work in picturing the mountains of western Canada I shall write
+later.
+
+The horses were waiting, saddled and packed, as we drove up to the
+rendezvous. The packer was a powerfully built fellow, with his straight
+black hair and high cheek bones betokening a considerable mixture of
+Indian blood. His name was Buckman--Jim Buckman. He was the village
+blacksmith of Athalmere, Nixon explained. He was making plenty of money
+in his trade, but was willing to come along at a packer's wage for the
+sake of the experience as an actor. The lure of the movies was also
+responsible for the presence of Nixon's fourteen-year-old son, Gordon,
+who had threatened to run away from home if he wasn't allowed to come
+along. He proved a useful acquisition--more than sufficiently so, it
+seemed to me, to compensate for what he did to the jam and honey.
+
+Roos called us around him and gave instructions for the "business" of
+the opening shot. Nixon and Jim were to be "picked up" taking the last
+of the slack out of a "diamond hitch," Gordon frolicking in the
+background with his dog. When the car drove up, Nixon was to take my
+saddle horse by the bridle, walk up and shake hands with me. Then, to
+make the transition from Civilization to the Primitive (movie people
+never miss a chance to use that word) with a click, I was to step
+directly from the car into my stirrups. "Get me!" admonished Roos;
+"straight from the running board to the saddle. Don't touch the ground
+at all. Make it snappy, all of you. I don't want any of you to grow into
+'foot-lice.'"
+
+My saddle horse turned out to be a stockily-built grey of over 1200
+pounds. He looked hard as nails and to have no end of endurance. But his
+shifty eye and back-laid ears indicated temperamentality, so that
+Nixon's warning that he "warn't exactly a lady's hawss" was a bit
+superfluous. "When you told me you tipped the beam at two-forty," he
+said, "I know'd 'Grayback' was the only hawss that'd carry you up these
+trails. So I brung him in, and stuffed him up with oats, and here he is.
+He may dance a leetle on his toes jest now, but he'll gentle down a lot
+by the end of a week."
+
+Whether "Grayback" mastered all of the "business" of that shot or not is
+probably open to doubt, but that he took the "Make it snappy!" part to
+heart there was no question. He came alongside like a lamb, but the
+instant I started to make my transition from "Civilization to the
+Primitive with a click" he started climbing into the car. The only click
+I heard was when my ear hit the ground. Roos couldn't have spoiled any
+more film than I did cuticle, but, being a "Director," he made a good
+deal more noise about it. After barking his hocks on the fender,
+"Grayback" refused to be enticed within mounting distance of the car
+again, so finally, with a comparatively un-clicky transition from
+Civilization to the Primitive, I got aboard by the usual route from the
+ground.
+
+The next shot was a quarter of a mile farther up the trail. Here Roos
+found a natural sylvan frame through which to shoot the whole outfit as
+it came stringing along. Unfortunately, the "Director" failed to tell
+the actors not to look at the camera--that, once and for all, the
+clicking box must be reckoned as a thing non-existent--and it all had to
+be done over again. The next time it was better, but the actors still
+had a wooden expression on their faces. They didn't look at the camera,
+but the expression on their faces showed that they were conscious of it.
+Roos then instructed me to talk to my companions, or sing, or do
+anything that would take their minds off the camera and make them appear
+relaxed and natural. That time we did it famously. As each, in turn,
+cantered by the sylvan bower with its clicking camera he was up to his
+neck "doing something." Nixon was declaiming Lincoln's Gettysburg speech
+as he had learned it from his phonograph, Gordon was calling his dog,
+Jim was larruping a straggling pinto and cursing it in fluent local
+idiom, and I was singing "Onward, Christian Soldiers!" We never had any
+trouble about "being natural" after that; but I hope no lip reader ever
+sees the pictures.
+
+After picking up Roos and his camera we made our real start. One
+pack-horse was reserved for the camera and tripod, and to prevent him
+from ranging from the trail and bumping the valuable apparatus against
+trees or rocks, his halter was tied to the tail of Nixon's saddle
+animal. Except that the latter's spinal column must have suffered some
+pretty severe snakings when the camera-carrier went through corduroy
+bridges or lost his footings in fords, the arrangement worked most
+successfully. The delicate instrument was not in the least injured in
+all of the many miles it was jogged over some of the roughest trails I
+have ever travelled.
+
+The sunshine by which the last of the trail shots was made proved the
+parting glimmer of what had been a month or more of practically unbroken
+fair weather. Indeed, the weather had been rather too fine, for, toward
+the end of the summer, lack of rain in western Canada invariably means
+forest fires. As these had been raging intermittently for several weeks
+all over British Columbia, the air had become thick with smoke, and at
+many places it was impossible to see for more than a mile or two in any
+direction. Both Roos and Harmon had been greatly hampered in their work
+about Banff and Lake Louise by the smoke, and both were, therefore,
+exceedingly anxious for early and copious rains to clear the air.
+Otherwise, they said, there was no hope of a picture of the Lake of the
+Hanging Glaciers that would be worth the film it was printed on. They
+must have rain. Their prayer was about to be answered, in full measure,
+pressed down and running over--and then some.
+
+We had been encountering contending currents of hot and cold air all the
+way up the wagon-road from Invermere and the lower valley. Now, as we
+entered the mountains, these became more pronounced, taking the form of
+scurrying "dust-devils" that attacked from flank and van without method
+or premonitory signal. The narrowing gorge ahead was packed solid with a
+sullen phalanx of augmenting clouds, sombre-hued and sagging with
+moisture, and frequently illumined with forked lightning flashes
+discharged from their murky depths. Nixon, anxious to make camp before
+the storm broke, jogged the horses steadily all through the darkening
+afternoon. It was a point called "Sixteen-mile" he was driving for, the
+first place we would reach where there was room for the tent and feed
+for the horses. We were still four miles short of our destination when
+the first spatter of ranging drops opened up, and from there on the
+batteries of the storm concentrated on us all the way.
+
+We made camp in a rain driving solidly enough to deflect the stroke of
+an axe. I shall not enlarge upon the acute discomfort of it. Those who
+have done it will understand; those who have not would never be able to.
+It was especially trying on the first day out, before the outfit had
+become shaken down and one had learned where to look for things. Nixon's
+consummate woodcraftsmanship was put to a severe test, but emerged
+triumphant. So, too, Jim, who proved himself as impervious to rain as to
+ill-temper. The fir boughs for the tent floor came in dripping, of
+course, but there were enough dry tarpaulins and blankets to blot up the
+heaviest of the moisture, and the glowing little sheet-iron stove licked
+up the rest. A piping hot dinner drove out the last of the chill, and we
+spent a snug, comfy evening listening to Nixon yarn about his
+mountaineering exploits and of the queer birds from New York and London
+whom he had nursed through strange and various intervals of moose and
+sheep-hunting in the Kootenays and Rockies. We slept dry but rather
+cold, especially Roos, who ended up by curling round the stove and
+stoking between shivers. Nixon and Jim drew generously on their own
+blanket rolls to help the both of us confine our ebbing animal heat, and
+yet appeared to find not the least difficulty in sleeping comfortably
+under half the weight of cover that left us shaking. It was all a matter
+of what one was used to, of course, and in a few days we began to
+harden.
+
+It was September tenth that we had started from Invermere, hoping at the
+time to be able to accomplish what we had set out to do in from four to
+six days. The rain which had come to break the long dry spell put a very
+different face on things, however. The eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth
+we were held in our first camp by an almost continuous downpour, which
+turned the mountain streams into torrents and raised Horse Thief till it
+lapped over the rim of the flat upon which our tent was pitched. The
+night of the thirteenth, with a sharp drop of the temperature, the rain
+turned to snow, and we crawled out on the fourteenth to find the valley
+under a light blanket of white. Then the clouds broke away and the
+sunshine and shadows began playing tag over the scarps and buttresses of
+the encompassing amphitheatre of mountains. For the first time there was
+a chance for a glimpse of the new world into which we had come. The
+transition from the cultivation and the gentle wooded slopes of
+Windermere was startling. Under the mask of the storm clouds we had
+penetrated from a smooth, rounded, pleasant country to one that was
+cliffy and pinnacled and bare--a country that was all on end, a land
+whose bones showed through. A towering Matterhorn reared its head six or
+eight thousand feet above us, and so near that slabs of rock cracked
+away from its scarred summit were lying just across the trail from the
+tent. The peaks walling in Horse Thief to the north were not so high but
+no less precipitous and barren, while to the west a jumble of splintered
+pinnacles whose bases barred the way were still lost in the witch-dance
+of the clouds. A tourist folder would have called it a "Land of Titans,"
+but Jim, leaning on his axe after nicking off a fresh back-log for the
+camp fire, merely opined it was "some skookum goat country. But not a
+patch," he added, "to what we'll be hittin' to-night if we get them
+_geesly_ hawsses rounded up in time fer a start 'fore noon."
+
+It appeared that the horses, with their grazing spoiled by the snow, had
+become restless, broken through the barrier Nixon had erected at a
+bridge just below camp, and started on the back trail for Invermere. As
+their tracks showed that they had broken into a trot immediately beyond
+the bridge, it looked like a long stern-chase, and Nixon did not reckon
+on being able to hit the trail for several hours. Roos grasped the
+occasion to make a couple of "camp life" shots his fertile brain had
+conceived the idea of during the long storm-bound days of enforced
+inaction. In one of these the "sportsman" was to go to bed in silhouette
+by candlelight. Ostensibly this was to be the shadow of a man crawling
+into his blankets _inside_ of the tent, and taken from the outside. In
+reality, however, Roos set up his camera _inside_ of the tent and shot
+the antics of the shadow the sunlight threw on the canvas when I went
+through the motions of turning in close against the _outside_ of the
+wall. This went off smartly and snappily; but I would have given much
+for a translation of the voluble comments of a passing Indian who pulled
+up to watch the agile action of the retiring "sportsman."
+
+It was while Roos was rehearsing me for this shot that Gordon must have
+heard him iterating his invariable injunction that I should not be a
+"foot-hog," meaning, I shall hardly need to explain, that I should be
+quick in my movements so as not to force him to use an undue footage of
+film. A little later I overheard the boy asking Jim what a "foot-hog"
+was. "I don't quite _kumtrux_ myself," the sturdy blacksmith-packer
+replied, scratching his head. "It sounds as if it might be suthin like
+pig's feet, but they want actin' as if they wuz ready to eat anythin',
+'less it was each other." Now that I think of it, I can see how the
+clash of the artistic temperaments of "Director" and "Star" over just
+about every one of the shots they made might have given Jim that
+impression.
+
+[Illustration: THE "TURNING-IN" SCENE SHOT IN SILHOUETTE (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: "REVERSE" OF THE "GOING-TO-BED" SHOT (_below_)]
+
+[Illustration: ON THE HORSE THIEF TRAIL]
+
+[Illustration: A DEAD-FALL ON THE TRAIL]
+
+The other shot we made that morning was one which Roos had labelled as
+"Berry Picking and Eating" in his tentative scenario. The "sportsman"
+was to fare forth, gather a bowlful of raspberries, bring them back to
+camp, put sugar and condensed milk on them, and finally eat them, all
+before the camera. I objected to appearing in this for two reasons: for
+one, because berry-picking was not a recognized out-door sport, and, for
+another, because I didn't like raspberries. Roos admitted that
+berry-picking was not a sport, but insisted he had to have the scene to
+preserve his continuity. "Gathering and eating these products of
+Nature," he explained, "shows how far the gentleman you were in the
+first scene has descended toward the Primitive. You will be getting more
+and more Primitive right along, but we must register each step on the
+film, see?" As for my distaste for raspberries, Roos was quite willing
+that, after displaying the berries heaped in the bowl in a close-up, I
+should do the real eating with strawberry jam. It was that last which
+overcame my spell of "temperament." Both Roos and Gordon already had me
+several pots down in the matter of jam consumption, and I was glad of
+the chance to climb back a notch.
+
+We found raspberry bushes by the acre but, thanks to the late storm,
+almost no berries. This didn't matter seriously in the picking shot, for
+which I managed to convey a very realistic effect in pantomime, but for
+the heaped-high close-up of the bowl it was another matter. One scant
+handful was the best that the four of us, foraging for half an hour,
+could bring in. But I soon figured a way to make these do. Opening a
+couple of tins of strawberry jam into the bowl, I rounded over smoothly
+the bright succulent mass and then made a close-set raspberry mosaic of
+one side of it. That did famously for the close-up. As I settled back
+for the berry-eating shot Roos cut in sharply with his usual: "Snappy
+now! Don't be a foot-hog!" Gordon, who had been digging his toe into the
+mud for some minutes, evidently under considerable mental stress, lifted
+his head at the word. "Hadn't you better say 'jam-hog', Mr. Roos?" he
+queried plaintively.
+
+"I'm afraid it wouldn't be any use," was the dejected reply. Roos was
+right. At the word "Action!" I dug in with my spoon on the unpaved side
+of the bowl of jam, and several turns before the crank ceased revolving
+there was nothing left but a few daubed raspberries and several broad
+red smears radiating from my mouth. Roos tossed the two empty jam tins
+into the murky torrent of Horse Thief Creek and watched them bob away
+down stream. "You're getting too darn primitive," he said peevishly.
+
+It was nearly eleven o'clock before Nixon came with the horses; but we
+had camp struck and the packs made, so there was little delay in taking
+the trail. The bottom of the valley continued fairly open for a few
+miles, with the swollen stream serpentining across it, turned hither and
+thither by huge logjams and fortress-like rock islands. Where the North
+Fork came tumbling into the main creek in a fine run of cascades there
+was a flat several acres in extent and good camping ground. Immediately
+above the valley narrowed to a steep-sided canyon, and continued so all
+the way up to the snow and glacier-line. The trail from now on was badly
+torn and washed and frequently blocked with dead-falls. Or rather it had
+been so blocked up to a day or two previously. Now I understood the
+reason for Nixon's complaisance when Harmon's outfit, travelling in the
+rain, had passed our camp a couple of days before. "Don't worry, sonny,"
+he had said in comforting the impetuous Roos; "we won't lose any time,
+and we will save a lot of chopping." And so it had worked out. Harmon's
+men had cut the dead-falls out of the whole twelve miles of trail
+between North Fork and the Dragon-Tail Glacier.
+
+Even so it was a beastly stretch of trail. The stream, completely
+filling the bottom of the gorge, kept the path always far up the side of
+the mountain. There were few dangerous precipices, but one had always to
+be on the lookout to keep his head from banging on dead-falls just high
+enough to clear a pack, and which, therefore, no one would take the
+trouble to cut away. The close-growing shrubbery was dripping with
+moisture, and even riding second to Nixon, who must have got all the
+worst of it, I found myself drenched at the end of the first half mile.
+Riding through wet underbrush can wet a man as no rain ever could. No
+waterproof ever devised offers the least protection against it; nothing
+less than a safe deposit vault on wheels could do so.
+
+Streams, swollen by the now rapidly melting snow, came tumbling
+down--half cataract, half cascade--all along the way. At the worst
+crossings these had been roughly bridged, as little footing for men or
+horses was afforded by the clean-swept rock. Only one crossing of the
+main stream was necessary. It was a good natural ford at low water, but
+quite out of the question to attempt at high. We found it about
+medium--a little more than belly deep and something like an eight-mile
+current. With a foot more water it would have commenced to get
+troublesome; with another two feet, really dangerous. That prospect,
+with the rapidly rising water, was reserved for our return trip.
+
+Such a road was, of course, wonderfully picturesque and colourful, and
+Roos, with a quick eye for an effective composition, made the most of
+his opportunities for "trail shots." A picture of this kind, simple
+enough to look at on the screen, often took half an hour or more to
+make. The finding of a picturesque spot on the trail was only the
+beginning. This was useless unless the light was right and a
+satisfactory place to set up the tripod was available. When this latter
+was found, more often than not a tree or two had to be felled to open up
+the view to the trail. Then--as the party photographed had to be
+complete each time, and with nothing to suggest the presence of the
+movie camera or its operator--Roos' saddle horse and the animal carrying
+his outfit had to be shuttled along out of line and tied up where they
+would not get in the picture. This was always a ticklish operation on
+the narrow trails, and once or twice the sheer impossibility of
+segregating the superfluous animals caused Roos to forego extremely
+effective shots.
+
+The mountains became higher and higher, and steeper and steeper, the
+farther we fared. And the greater the inclines, the more and more
+precarious was the hold of the winter's snow upon the mountainsides. At
+last we climbed into a veritable zone of avalanches--a stretch where,
+for a number of miles, the deep-gouged troughs of the snow-slides
+followed each other like the gullies in a rain-washed mudbank.
+Slide-time was in the Spring, of course, so the only trouble we
+encountered was in passing over the terribly violated mountainsides. If
+the trail came to the track of an avalanche far up on the mountainside,
+it meant descending a cut-bank to the scoured bedrock, click-clacking
+along over this with the shod hooves of the horses striking sparks at
+every step for a hundred yards or more, and then climbing out again. If
+the path of the destroyer was encountered low down, near the river, the
+way onward led over a fifty-feet-high pile of upended trees, boulders
+and sand. In nearly every instance one could see where the slides had
+dammed the stream a hundred feet high or more, and here and there were
+visible swaths cut in the timber of the further side, where the buffer
+of the opposite mountain had served to check the onrush.
+
+The going for the horses was hard at all times, but worst perhaps where
+the dam of a slide had checked the natural drainage and formed a
+bottomless bog too large for the trail to avoid. Here the hard-blown
+animals floundered belly deep in mud and rotten wood, as did also their
+riders when they had to slide from the saddles to give their mounts a
+chance to reach a solid footing. The polished granite of the runways of
+the slide was almost as bad, for here the horses were repeatedly down
+from slipping. My air-treading, toe-dancing "Grayback" of the morning
+was gone in the back and legs long before we reached the end. My weight
+and the pace (Nixon was driving hard to reach a camping place before a
+fresh gathering of storm clouds were ready to break) had proved too much
+for him. The fighting light was gone from his eye, his head was between
+his legs, and his breath was expelled with a force that seemed to be
+scouring the lining from his bleeding nostrils. Dropping back to slacken
+his girths and breathe him a moment before leading him up the last long
+run of zigzags, I heard the sobbing _diminuendo_ of the packtrain die
+out in the sombre depths above. It was like the shudder of sounds that
+rise through a blow-hole where the sea waves are pounding hard on the
+mouth of a subterranean grotto.
+
+I had developed a warm and inclusive sympathy for "Grayback" before I
+reached the crest of that final shoulder of mountain we had to surmount,
+but lost most of it on the slide back to the valley when, in lieu of
+anything else to hand as he found himself slipping, he started to canter
+up my spine. I found Nixon and Jim throwing off packs on a narrow strip
+of moss-covered bottom between the drop-curtain of the fir-covered
+mountainside and the bank of the creek. It was practically the only
+place for a camp anywhere in the closely-walled valley. Slide-wreckage
+claimed all the rest of it. An upward trickle of lilac smoke a half mile
+above told where Harmon's outfit had effected some sort of lodgment, but
+it was on a _geesly_ slither of wet side-hill, Nixon said, and badly
+exposed to the wind that was always sucking down from the glacier.
+
+The moss underfoot was saturated with water, but with an hour of
+daylight and pines close at hand this was a matter of small moment. We
+were well under cover by the time the snuffer of the darkness clapped
+sharply down, and with a good day's supply of wood for stove and
+camp-fire piled up outside the tent. Not having stopped for lunch on the
+trail, we were all rather "peckish" (to use Nixon's expression) by the
+time dinner was ready. After that there was nothing much to bother
+about. Nixon told goat hunting stories all evening, putting a fresh edge
+on his axe the while with a little round pocket whetstone. A Canadian
+guide is as cranky about his private and personal axe as a Chicago
+clothing drummer is about his razors. So it was only to be expected that
+Nixon took it a bit hard when Roos had employed his keenly whetted
+implement to crack open a hunk of quartz with. That was the reason,
+doubtless, why most of his stories had to do with the fool escapades of
+various of the _geesly_ (that was Nixon's favourite term of contempt,
+and a very expressive one it was) tenderfeet he had guided. But one of
+his yarns (and I think a true one) was of a time that he was caught by a
+storm at ten thousand feet in the Rockies and had to spend the night on
+the rocks a mile above the timber-line. Lightly dressed and without a
+blanket, the only protection he had from a temperature many degrees
+below freezing was from the carcasses of the two freshly-shot goats that
+had lured him there. Splitting these down the middle with his hunting
+knife, he had covered himself with them, entrails and all, in the hope
+that the remaining animal heat would keep him alive till daylight. Man
+and goat were frozen to one stiff mass by morning, but the man had still
+enough vitality to crack himself loose and descend to his camp. The
+exposure and hardship some of these northwest mountaineers have survived
+is almost beyond belief.
+
+I went to sleep with the sizzle of snowflakes on the dying embers of the
+camp-fire in my ears, and awoke to find the tent roof sagging down on my
+ear under the weight of a heavy night's fall. The storm was over for the
+moment, but the clouds were still lurking ominously above the glacier,
+and there was little light for pictures. Harmon, crossing the several
+channels of the creek on fallen logs, came over later in the day. He had
+been storm-bound ever since his arrival, he said, and had done nothing at
+all in taking either stills or movies yet. But fires and smoke were
+finished for the year now, he added philosophically, and it was his
+intention to remain until he got what he was after. Before he left he
+told me something of his work. "Stills," it appeared, were the main
+thing with him; his movie work was carried on merely as a side-line to
+pay the expenses of trips he could not otherwise afford. He had been
+photographing in the Selkirks and Rockies for a dozen years, and he
+would not be content to rest until the sets of negatives--as nearly
+perfect as they could be made--of every notable peak and valley of
+western Canada. Then he was going to hold a grand exhibition of mountain
+photographs at Banff and retire. The Lake of the Hanging Glaciers was
+one of the very few great scenic features he had never photographed, and
+he only hoped he would be able to do it justice. The fine reverence of
+Harmon's attitude toward the mountains that he loved was completely
+beyond Roos' ken. "I never worries about not doing 'em justice--not for
+a minute. What does worry me is whether or not these cracked up lakes
+and glaciers are going to turn out worth my coming in to do justice to.
+Get me?" "Yes, I think so," replied the veteran with a very patient
+smile.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+AT THE GLACIER
+
+
+Snow flurries kept us close to camp all that day. The next one, the
+sixteenth, was better, though still quite hopeless for movie work. After
+lunch we set out on foot for the big glacier, a mile above, from which
+the creek took its life. The clouds still hung too low to allow anything
+of the mountains to be seen, but one had the feeling of moving in a long
+narrow tunnel through which a cold jet of air was constantly being
+forced. A few hundred yards above our camp was a frightful zone of riven
+trees mixed with gravel and boulders. It was one of the strangest, one
+of the savagest spots I ever saw. It was the battle ground of two rival
+avalanches, Nixon explained, two great slides which, with the impetus of
+six or eight thousand feet of run driving uncounted millions of tons of
+snow and earth, met there every spring in primeval combat. No man had
+ever seen the fantastic onslaught (for no man could reach that point in
+the springtime), but it was certain that the remains of it made a mighty
+dam all the way across the valley. Then the creek would be backed up
+half way to the glacier, when it would accumulate enough power to sweep
+the obstruction away and scatter it down to the Columbia.
+
+Straight down the respective paths of the rival slides, and almost
+exactly opposite each other, tumbled two splendid cascades. The hovering
+storm clouds cut off further view of them a few hundred feet above the
+valley, but Nixon said that they came plunging like that for thousands
+of feet, from far up into the belt of perpetual snow. The one to the
+east (which at the moment seemed to be leaping straight out of the heart
+of a sinister slaty-purple patch of cumulonimbus) drained the Lake of
+the Hanging Glaciers; that to the west a desolate rock and ice-walled
+valley which was rimmed by some of the highest summits in the Selkirks.
+Our road to the lake would be wet with the spray of the former for a
+good part of the distance.
+
+We were scrambling through a land of snow-slides all the way to the
+glacier. For the first half mile patches of stunted fir survived here
+and there, due to being located in the lee of some cliff or other rocky
+outcrop which served to deflect the springtime onslaughts from above;
+then all vegetation ceased and nothing but snow-churned and ice-ground
+rock fragments remained. All along the last quarter of a mile the
+successive stages of the glacier's retreat were marked by great heaps of
+pulverized rock, like the tailings at the mouth of a mine. Only the face
+of the glacier and the yawning ice caves were visible under the
+cloud-pall. The queerly humped uplift of the "dragon" moraine could be
+dimly guessed in the shifting mists that whirled and eddied in the icy
+draughts from the caves.
+
+Our principal object in going up to the grottoes on so inclement a day
+was to experiment with our dynamite on the ice, with a view to turning
+our knowledge to practical use in making artificial icebergs for the
+movies in the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers. Selecting what looked like
+a favourable spot at the base of what seemed a "fracturable" pinnacle of
+grey-green ice, we dug a three-feet-deep hole with a long-handled
+chisel, pushed in two sticks of sixty per cent. dynamite, tamped it hard
+with snow after attaching a lengthy fuse, touched a match to the latter
+and retired to a safe distance. The result, to put it in Roos' latest
+imported slang, was an "oil can," which connotes about the same thing as
+fizzle, I took it. There's a deal of kick in two sticks of "sixty per"
+set off in rock, but here it was simply an exuberant "whouf" after the
+manner of a blowing porpoise. A jet of soft snow and ice shot up some
+distance, but the pinnacle never trembled. And the hole opened up was
+smooth-sided and clean, as if melted out with hot water. Not the
+beginning of a crack radiated from it. Jim opined that a slower burning
+powder might crack ice, but there was certainly no hope of "sixty per"
+doing the trick. It was evident that we would have to find some other
+way of making artificial icebergs. We did. We made them of rock. But I
+won't anticipate.
+
+It snowed again in the night, snowed itself out for a while. The
+following morning it was warm and brilliantly clear, and for the first
+time there was a chance to see what sort of a place it was to which we
+had entered. For a space the height and abruptness of the encompassing
+walls seemed almost appalling; it was more like looking up out of an
+immeasurably vast crater than from a valley. All around there were
+thousands of feet of sheer rocky cliff upon which no snow could effect a
+lodgment; and above these more thousands of feet solid with the
+glittering green of glacial ice and the polished marble of eternal
+snow. The jagged patch of sky was a vivid imperial blue, bright and
+solid-looking like a fragment of rich old porcelain. The morning sun,
+cutting through the sharp notches between the southeastern peaks, was
+dappling the snow fields of the western walls in gay splashes of flaming
+rose and saffron, interspersed with mottled shadows of indigo and deep
+purple. Reflected back to the still shadowed slopes of the eastern
+walls, these bolder colours became a blended iridescence of amethyst,
+lemon and pale misty lavender. The creek flowed steely cold, with fluffs
+of grey-wool on the riffles. The tree patches were black, dead funereal
+black, throwing back no ray of light from their down-swooping branches.
+The air was so clear that it seemed almost to have assumed a palpability
+of its own. One imagined things floating in it; even that it might
+tinkle to the snip of a finger nail, like a crystal rim.
+
+In movies as in hay-making, one has to step lively while the sun shines.
+This was the first good shooting light we had had, and no time was lost
+in taking advantage of it. Long before the sun had reached the bottom of
+the valley we were picking our way up toward the foot of the glacier,
+this time on horseback. Early as we had started, the enterprising Harmon
+had been still earlier. He was finishing his shots of the face of the
+glacier and the mouth of the ice caves as we came up. He would now leave
+the field clear for Roos for an hour, he said, while he climbed to the
+cliffs above the glacier to make a goat-hunting picture. That finished,
+he would return and, by the light of his flares both parties could
+shoot the interior of the ice caves. Before starting on his long climb,
+Harmon briefly outlined the scenario of his "goat" picture, part of
+which had already been shot. Two prospectors--impersonated by his guide
+and packer--having been in the mountains for many weeks without a change
+of diet, had become terribly sick of bacon. Finally, when one of them
+had disgustedly thrown his plate of it on the ground, even the camp dog,
+after a contemptuous sniff, had turned his back. He had had no trouble
+in getting the men to register "disgust," Harmon explained, but that
+"contemptuous sniff" business with the dog was more difficult. After
+their voracious Airedale pup had wolfed three plates of bacon without
+paying the least heed to the director's attempts to frighten him off at
+the psychological moment, they had tried thin strips of birch-bark,
+trimmed to represent curling rashers. Even these the hungry canine had
+persisted in licking, probably because they came from a greasy plate.
+Finally Harmon hit upon the expedient of anointing the birch-bark
+rashers with some of the iodine carried as an antiseptic in the event of
+cuts and scratches. "If the pup ate it, of course it would die," he
+explained; "but that would be no more than he deserved in such a case."
+But the plan worked perfectly. After his first eager lick, the outraged
+canine had "sniffed contemptuously" at the pungent fumes of the iodine,
+and then backed out of the picture with a wolfish snarl on his lifted
+lip.
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff
+
+LOOKING TOWARD THE ENTRANCE OF THE ICE CAVE]
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff
+
+WHERE THE HANGING GLACIER IS ABOUT TO FALL]
+
+Then the packer registered "fresh meat hunger" ("cut-in" of a butcher
+shop to be made later), immediately after which the guide pointed to the
+cliffs above the camp where some wild goats were frisking. By the aid
+of his long-distance lens, Harmon had shot the goats as they would
+appear through the binoculars the guide and packers excitedly passed
+back and forth between them. And now they were going forth to shoot the
+goats. Or rather they were going forth to "shoot" the goats, for these
+had already been shot with a rifle. In order to avoid loss of time in
+packing his cumbersome apparatus about over the cliffs, Harmon had sent
+out Conrad, his Swiss guide, the previous afternoon, with orders to
+shoot a goat--as fine a specimen as possible--and leave it in some
+picturesque spot where a re-shooting could be "shot" with the camera
+when the clouds lifted. The keen-eyed Tyrolese had experienced little
+difficulty in bringing down two goats. One of these--a huge "Billy"--he
+had left at the brink of a cliff a couple of thousand feet above the big
+glacier, and the other--a half-grown kid--he had brought into camp to
+cut up for the "meat-guzzling" shots with which guide, packer and canine
+were to indulge in as a finale. It was a cleverly conceived "nature"
+picture, one with a distinct "educational" value; or at least it was
+such when viewed from "behind the camera." Roos was plainly jealous over
+it, but, as he had no goats of his own, and as Harmon's goat was hardly
+likely to be "borrowable" after bouncing on rock pinnacles for a
+thousand feet, there was nothing to do about it. He would have to make
+up by putting it over Harmon on his "glacier stuff," he said
+philosophically. And he did; though it was only through the virtuosity
+of his chief actor.
+
+Harmon had confined his glacier shots to one of his party riding up
+over the rocks, and another of it grouped at the entrance of the largest
+cave and looking in. Being an old mountaineer, he was disinclined to
+take any unnecessary chances in stirring up a racket under hanging ice.
+Roos was new to the mountains, so didn't labour under any such handicap.
+His idea was to bring the whole outfit right up the middle of the stream
+and on into the cave. The approach and the entrance into the mouth of
+the cave were to be shot first from the outside, and then, in
+silhouette, from the inside.
+
+Nixon, pointing out that the roof of the cave had settled two or three
+feet since we were there yesterday and that the heat seemed to be
+honeycombing all the lower end of the glacier pretty badly, said that he
+didn't like the idea of taking horses inside, but would do so if it
+would make a better picture that way. He was quite willing to take
+chances if there was any reason for it. But what he did object to was
+trying to take the horses up the middle of the stream over big boulders
+when it would be perfectly plain to any one who saw the picture that
+there was comparatively smooth going on either side. "You can easy break
+a hawss' leg in one of them _geesly_ holes," he complained; "but the
+loss of a hawss isn't a patch to what I'd feel to have some guy that
+I've worked with see the pictur' and think I picked that sluiceway as
+the best way up."
+
+Roos replied with a rush of technical argument in which there was much
+about "continuity" and "back-lighting," and something about using the
+"trick crank so that the action can be speeded up when it's run." Not
+knowing the answer to any of this, Nixon finally shrugged his shoulders
+helplessly and signalled for Jim to bring up the horses. There was no
+need of a "trick crank" to speed up the action in the stream, for that
+glacial torrent, a veritable cascade, had carried away everything in its
+course save boulders four or five feet high. Nixon, in a bit of a
+temper, hit the ditch as though he were riding a steeplechase. So did
+Jim and Gordon. All three of them floundered through without mishap.
+"Grayback" tried to climb up on the tip of a submerged boulder, slipped
+with all four feet at once and went over sidewise. I kicked out my
+stirrups, but hit the water head first, getting considerably rolled and
+more than considerably wet. To Roos' great indignation, this occurred
+just outside the picture, but he had the delicacy not to ask me to do it
+over again.
+
+Taking the horses inside the cave was a distinctly ticklish performance,
+though there could be no question of its effectiveness as a picture.
+Roos set up a hundred feet in from the fifty-feet-wide, twenty-feet-high
+mouth and directed us to ride forward until a broad splashing jet of
+water from the roof blocked our way, and then swing round and beat it
+out. "Beat it out snappy!" he repeated. "Get me?" "Yep, _I_ got you,"
+muttered Nixon; "you're in luck if nothin' else does."
+
+The ice that arched above the entrance looked to me like the salt-eaten
+packing round an ice-cream can as we pushed up and under it. The horses
+could hardly have noticed this, and it must have been their
+instincts--their good sound horse-sense--that warned them that a dark
+hole full of hollow crackings and groanings and the roar of falling
+water was no place for self-respecting equines to venture. It took a
+deal of spurring and swearing to force them inside, and most of the
+linear distance gained was covered in circles on their hind legs. It was
+old "Grayback" whose nerves gave way first; he that started the stampede
+back to light and sunshine. There was no question but what we "beat it
+snappy."
+
+Roos came out rubbing his hands gleefully. "That photographed like a
+million dollars," he cried with enthusiasm. "Now just one thing
+more...." And forthwith he revealed what had been in his heart ever
+since he chanced onto that "natural shower bath" in the cave the
+previous afternoon. No one could deny that it was a natural shower bath.
+And since it _was_ a natural shower bath, what could be more natural
+than for some one to take a shower under it? How would Nixon feel about
+trying it? Or Jim? He admitted that it might be something of a shock,
+but he was willing to make that all right. Would ten dollars be fair? Or
+say twenty? Or why not twenty-five? He knew Mr. Chester didn't reckon
+cost when it was a question of getting a high class, he might say a
+unique, picture. Now which should it be? Nixon, a bit snappily, said his
+rheumatism put him out of the running, and Jim was equally decided.
+Money wouldn't tempt him to go even into the Columbia at Windermere, let
+alone a liquid icicle under a glacier.
+
+And right then and there I did a thing which Roos maintained to the end
+of our partnership repaid him for all the grief and worry I had caused
+him to date, and much that was still to accrue. "Since I've got to take
+a bath and dry these wet togs out sooner or later," I said with a great
+assumption of nonchalance, "perhaps the ice cave will do as well as
+anywhere else. Just promise me you won't spring a flare on the scene,
+and build a fire to dry my clothes by...." Roos was gathering wood for a
+fire before I finished speaking. As for the flares, Harmon had not given
+him any yet. It was only a silhouette he wanted--but that would show up
+like a million dollars in the spray and ice. There never had been such a
+picture; perhaps would never be again. I wasn't joking, was I? And
+primitive....
+
+"Go on and set up," I cut in with. "I'll be there by the time you're
+ready to shoot. And don't ever let me hear you say primitive again. Oh,
+yes--and you needn't remind me to 'Be snappy!' There won't be any
+trouble on that score. Just make sure your lens is fast enough to catch
+the action."
+
+I've had many a plunge overboard off the California coast that shocked
+me more than that "natural shower bath" did, but never a one with so
+exhilarant a reaction. Stripping off my wet clothes by the fire, I
+slipped into my big hooded "lammy" coat and hippity-hopped into the
+cave. Roos, set up ten yards inside the splashing jet from the roof, was
+already standing by to shoot. At his call of "Action!" I jumped out of
+my coat and into the black, unsparkling column of water. There was a
+sharp sting to the impact, but it imparted nothing of the numbing ache
+that accompanies immersion in water a number of degrees less cold than
+this--a feeling which I came later to know only too well on the
+Columbia. Nixon had warned me against tempting Providence again by
+making any unnecessary racket in the cave, but it was no use. No one
+could have the fun that I was having and not holler. It was against
+nature. Whooping like a Comanche, I continued my hydro-terpsichorean
+revel until a muffled "Nuff" from Roos called a halt. He had come to the
+end of his roll. I have been in more of a shiver coming out of the
+Adriatic at the Lido in August than I was when I ambled back to dry off
+by the fire and the sunshine. Glowing with warmth, I even loafed along
+with my dressing, as one does at Waikiki.
+
+"You'd make a fortune pulling the rough stuff in the movies," Roos
+exclaimed, patting me on the back. "You've got everything the real
+gripping cave-man _has_ to have--size, beef, a suggestion of brutal,
+elemental force, primitive...." I chucked a burning brand at him and
+went over to borrow Nixon's glass. A shot from far up the cliffs told
+that Harmon's "goat-hunt" was in full cry. The real thrill of the day
+was about to come off; rather more of a thrill, indeed, than any one was
+prepared for, Harmon included.
+
+[Illustration: MY SHOWER BATH IN AN ICE CAVE]
+
+[Illustration: WARMING UP AFTER MY GLACIAL SHOWER BATH]
+
+[Illustration: ROSS AND HARMON. DRAGON MORAINE IN DISTANCE (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: THE HORSES IN THE MOUTH OF THE ICE CAVE (_below_)]
+
+While we had been filming our "cave stuff" Harmon had finished setting
+the stage for his picture. He had two shots to make--one of his packers
+firing at the goat at the top of the cliff, and the other of the body of
+the goat falling to the glacier. Conrad, the Tyrolean, climbing like a
+fly, had scaled the face of the cliff and was standing by for the signal
+to start the goat "falling." The shot which had attracted my
+attention had been the packer discharging his rifle at the goat, which
+had been propped up in a life-like position, as though peering down onto
+the glacier. Harmon was still cranking when I got him in focus, while
+the packer had jumped to his feet and was executing a _pas seul_
+evidently intended to convey the impression he had made a hit. A curl of
+blue smoke from his rifle was still floating in the air. They had
+contrived that effective little touch by dribbling a bit of melted
+butter down the barrel before firing. Smokeless powder is hardly
+"tell-tale" enough for movie work.
+
+Harmon now moved over and set up at the foot of the cliff, apparently to
+get as near as possible to the point where the goat was going to hit. As
+the sequel proves, he judged his position to a hair. Now he made his
+signal. I saw the flutter of his handkerchief. The goat gave a
+convulsive leap, and then shot straight out over the brink of the cliff.
+From where we stood I could plainly see the useful Conrad "pulling the
+strings," but from where Harmon was set up this would hardly show. He
+was too careful to overlook a point like that in a "nature picture." The
+white body caromed sharply off a couple of projecting ledges, and then,
+gathering momentum, began to describe a great parabola which promised to
+carry it right to the foot of the cliff.
+
+I had kept my eyes glued to the glass from the start, but it was Nixon's
+unaided vision which was first to catch the drift of what was impending.
+"You couldn't drive a six-hawss team 'tween the side o' Mista Ha'mon's
+head and the trail in the air that _geesly_ goat's going to make
+passing by," he said with a calculating drawl. "Not so su' you could
+squeeze a pack-hawss through." Then, a couple of seconds later: "No'
+ev'n a big dawg." And almost immediately: "By Gawd, it's going to get
+him!"
+
+And that surely was what it looked like, to every one at least but the
+calmly cranking Harmon. He went on humping his back above the finder,
+and I could see the even rise and fall of his elbow against the snow.
+The dot of white had become a streak of grey, and it was the swift
+augmentation of this in his finder which finally (as he told me later)
+caused Harmon suddenly to duck. To me it looked as if the flying streak
+had passed right through him, but he was still there at the foot of his
+tripod after the Bolt of Wrath, striking the surface of the glacier with
+a resounding impact, threw up a fountain of pulverized snow and laid
+still. He was never quite sure whether it was the almost solid cushion
+of air or a side-swipe from a hoof or horn that joggled the tripod out
+of true. It was a near squeeze, for the flying body, which must have
+weighed all of two hundred pounds, was frozen hard as a rock. Conrad
+came staggering down with the remnants of the battered trunk over his
+shoulders. Only the heart and liver were fit to eat. The rest was a
+sausage of churned meat and bone splinters. There was no question about
+its fall having limbered it up.
+
+The illumination of the cave by the calcium flares was beautiful beyond
+words to describe, or at least so I was told. The first one was a
+failure, through the outward draught of air carrying the smoke back
+onto the cameras. I had set this off in a side gallery, about a hundred
+yards in from the mouth, with the idea of throwing a sort of concealed
+back light. Foolishly opening my eyes while the calcium was burning, I
+was completely blinded by the intense glare and did not regain my sight
+for several minutes. Harmon's packer, who held the next flare set
+off--this time to the leeward of the cameras--had still worse luck. A
+flake of the sputtering calcium kicked back up his sleeve and inflicted
+a raw, round burn with half the colours of the spectrum showing in its
+concentric rings of singed cuticle. The chap displayed astonishing nerve
+in refusing to relinquish his grip on the handle of the flare and thus
+ruin the picture. I most certainly would never have done so myself. Roos
+described the glittering ice walls as a "veritable Aladdin's Cave of
+jewels," and only regretted that he couldn't have had that lighting on
+my shower-bath.
+
+That night we tried a camp-fire scene by flare. Roos set up on the
+further bank of the side channel of the creek which flowed past the
+tent. Between the door of the tent and the water a hole was dug in such
+a way that light from it would shine on a group in front of the tent but
+not on the lens of the camera. The glow from a flare burning in this
+hole represented the camp-fire. I was supposed to stroll up and tell a
+jovial story to Nixon, Jim and Gordon, who were to be "picked up"
+already seated around the fire. I made my entrance very snappily, but,
+unluckily, the blanket roll upon which I sat down spread out and let me
+back against the corner of the glowing sheet-iron stove, which was set
+up just inside the tent opening. Seeing I had not rolled out of the
+picture, Roos shouted for me to carry on, as it was the last flare. So,
+with the reek of burning wool rising behind me, I did carry on, making
+plausible gestures intended to convey the idea that the bit of comedy
+was just a humorous piece of by-play of my own. I carried on for
+something over half a minute. The only circumstance that prevented my
+carrying on my back the print of the corner of the stove for the rest of
+my days was the fact that the combined thicknesses of my duffle coat,
+lumberman's shirt, sweater and heavy woollen undershirt were interposed
+to absorb the heat. The duffle coat was the worst sufferer, coming out
+with a bar-sinister branded most of the way through its half inch of
+pressed brown wool.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE LAKE OF THE HANGING GLACIERS
+
+
+It was now neck-or-nothing with the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers
+picture. Having already been out much longer than we had expected to be,
+there were left only provisions for two days. Nixon had suggested making
+a hurried trip out and bringing in fresh supplies, but as the time set
+by Chester for his arrival for the Big Bend trip was already past, I did
+not feel warranted in prolonging the present jaunt any further. If the
+morrow was fair all would be well; if not, the main object of our trip
+would be defeated.
+
+By great good luck the clear weather held. There was not a cloud
+hovering above the mountains at daybreak the following morning, and we
+got away for an early start to make the most of our opportunity. Nixon
+himself had run and cut out the trail to the Lake earlier in the summer,
+but horses had never been taken over it. Though it was extremely steep
+in pitches, our maiden passage was marked with few difficulties. Much to
+Nixon's surprise and satisfaction, only one big dead-fall had been thrown
+down to block the way, and our enforced halt here gave Roos the
+opportunity for a very effective "trail shot." He also got some striking
+"back-lighting stuff" at spots along the interminable cascade that was
+tumbling and bounding beside the trail. The elevation of our camp on the
+creek was something like six thousand feet, and that of the Lake of the
+Hanging Glaciers a bit under eight thousand. The trail is between three
+and four miles long, and we were rather over two hours in making the
+climb. There were several halts out of this; steady plugging would do it
+much quicker.
+
+Timber-line was passed half a mile below the lake, the last of the trees
+being left behind in a wonderful little mountain park studded with
+gnarled pines and still bright with late wild flowers. The autumn
+colouring here was a marvellous chromatic revel in dull golds and soft,
+subdued browns--the shedding tamaracks and the dying meadow grasses.
+
+Clambering on foot up a steep-sided hillock that appeared to be an
+ancient glacial moraine augmented by many slides, we suddenly found
+ourselves on the edge of the high-water level of the lake. The
+transition from the flower-strewn meadow to a region of almost Arctic
+frigidity was practically instantaneous--the matter of a half dozen
+steps. One moment we were climbing in a cliff-walled valley, with rocky
+buttresses and pinnacles soaring for thousands of feet on either side,
+and with brown-black gravel and thinning brown-grey bunch grass under
+foot and ahead; the next, as we gained the crest of the old terminal
+moraine, the landscape opened up with a blinding flash and we were
+gazing at a sparkling emerald lake clipped in the embrace of an
+amphitheatre of glaciers and eternal snow, and floating full of icebergs
+and marble-mottled shadows. The "Hanging Glacier"--perhaps a mile wide
+across its face, and rearing a solid wall of ice a couple of hundred
+feet in the sheer--closed the further or southeastern end of the lake.
+Behind the glacier was a cliff of two thousand feet or more in height.
+It appeared to be almost solid ice and snow, but must have been heavily
+underlaid with native rock to maintain its abruptness as it did. Higher
+still a snow-cap, bright and smooth as polished marble, extended to the
+crest of the range and formed a glittering line against the cobalt of
+the sky. Of all the scenic gems of the North American continent, I
+recall none which is so well entitled to the characterization of
+"unique" as this white-flaming little jewel of the high Selkirks.
+
+The lake was now rapidly receding to its winter low-water level, and to
+reach its brink we had to press on across three hundred yards of black
+boulders which were evidently covered in the time of the late spring
+floods. Ordinarily one would have expected the worst kind of rough and
+slippery walking here, but, to my great surprise, the great rocks were
+set as solid and as level as a pavement of mosaic. The reason for this
+became plain when we approached the water, where a flotilla of small
+icebergs, rising and falling to the waves kicked up by the brisk breeze
+drawing down the lake, were steadily thump-thumping the bottom with dull
+heavy blows which could be felt underfoot a hundred yards away. This
+natural tamping, going on incessantly during the months of high-water,
+was responsible for the surprising smoothness of the rocky waste
+uncovered by the winter recession. The great boulders had literally been
+hammered flat.
+
+The icebergs, which were formed by the cracking off of the face of the
+great glacier filled half of the lake. They varied in size from almost
+totally submerged chunks a few feet in diameter to huge floating islands
+of several hundred. They were of the most fantastic shapes, especially
+those which had been longest adrift and therefore most exposed to the
+capricious action of the sun. By and large, the effect was that of a
+Gargantuan bowl sprinkled with puffy white popcorn. But if one took his
+time and searched carefully enough there were very few things of heaven
+or earth that were not represented in the amazing collection. One berg,
+floating on another, had been reduced by the sun to the seeming of a
+gigantic view camera--box, bellows and lens. A number of famous groups
+of statuary were there, but of course very much in the rough. "The
+Thinker" was perhaps the best of these, but even Rodin would have wanted
+to do a bit more "finishing" on the glacial cave-man humped up on his
+icy green pedestal. Roos, who had never heard of Rodin, said it reminded
+him of me drying out after my shower-bath in the ice-cave. His facile
+imagination also discovered something else. He had once seen a picture
+of "Lohengrin's Farewell" in a Victrola record price-list, and there was
+a much sun-licked hunk of ice, very near the shore, which suggested the
+barge to him, swans and all. I saw the barge all right, but the Pegasus
+of my imagination had to have some spurring before he would take the
+"swan" hurdle.
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff
+
+LOOKING ACROSS THE LAKE OF THE HANGING GLACIERS]
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff
+
+THE LAKE OF THE HANGING GLACIERS, TAKEN FROM THE ICE WALLS, LOOKING
+NORTH]
+
+It was Roos' idea that I should swim off, clamber over the side of the
+barge, lassoo the "near" swan with a piece of pack-rope to represent
+reins, and let him shoot me as "Lohengrin." It wouldn't exactly run
+into the "continuity" of the "sportsman" picture, he admitted; but he
+thought that Chester might use it, with a lot of other odds and ends,
+under some such title as "Queer People in Queer Places." The idea
+appealed to me strongly. "Lohengrin's Farewell" had always moved me
+strangely; and here was a chance actually to appear in the classic rôle!
+"You bet I'll do it," I assented readily. "What shall I wear?" The
+"Shining Armour," which we both seemed to connect with "Lohengrin,"
+happened to be one of the things not brought up in our saddle-bags that
+morning. We were in a hot discussion as to the best manner of
+improvising a helmet and cuirass out of condensed milk and sardine tins,
+when Nixon, asking if we knew that the sun only shone about three hours
+a day in that "_geesly_ crack in the hills," dryly opined that we should
+take our pictures of the lake while there was plenty of light. That
+sounded sensible, and we started feverishly to hurry through with the
+routine grind so as to be free to do proper justice to "Lohengrin." As
+Fate would have it, however, that which was presently revealed to me of
+the ways of fresh-water icebergs quenched effectually my desire to swim
+off and take liberties with the capricious things at close quarters.
+
+After making a number of scenic shots, Roos announced that he was ready
+to go ahead with the "falling iceberg" stuff. As it was quite out of the
+question making our way along the base of the cliffs on either side of
+the lake to the face of the glacier in the limited time at our disposal,
+and, moreover, as we had already demonstrated the impossibility of
+making artificial icebergs with "sixty per" dynamite, it became
+necessary to improvise something closer at hand. It was Roos' idea that
+a piece of cliff cracked off into the lake might produce the effect
+desired, especially if "cut" with discrimination. "Here's the way it
+goes," he explained. "The cracked off rock plunks down into the lake
+right into the middle of a bunch of floating icebergs. I starts cranking
+at the splash, and with the bergs all rolling about and bumping into
+each other no one can tell but what it was one of them that really
+started it. Then I'll pick you up hopping up and down on the bank and
+registering 'surprise' and 'consternation'; and then follow with a
+close-up of you standing on that high rock, looking down on the quieting
+waves with folded arms. Now you register 'relief' and finally a sort of
+'awed wonder.' Then you take a big breath and raise your eyes to the
+face of the glacier. You keep right on registering 'awed wonder' (only
+more intense) and as I fade you out you shake your head slowly as if the
+mighty mysteries of Nature were beyond your understanding. Get me? They
+ought to colour the film for that dark blue in the laboratory (I could
+tell 'em just the solution to make that ice look cold), and the
+sub-title ought to be 'The Birth of an Iceberg,' and...."
+
+"Jim's the midwife, is he?" I cut in. "Yes, I get you. Tell him to
+uncork some of that 'sixty per' 'Twilight Sleep' of his and I'll stand
+by for the christening."
+
+After a careful technical examination of the terrain, Jim, chief "Powder
+Monkey," located what he thought was a favourable spot for operations
+and started to enlarge a thin crack in the cliff to make it take five
+sticks of dynamite. That was more than half of our remaining stock; but
+Roos was insisting on a big iceberg, and plenty of powder was the best
+way to insure success. It must have been the tamping that was at the
+bottom of the trouble, for moss and damp earth are hardly solid enough
+to deflect the kick of the dynamite in the desired direction. At any
+rate, although there was a roaring detonation, the mighty force released
+was expended outward rather than inward. The face of the cliff hardly
+shivered, and only an inconsiderable trickle of broken rocks and sand
+slid down into the lake. Too sore to take more than hostile notice of
+Nixon's somewhat rough and ready little _mot_ about the "'Birth o' the
+Iceberg' turning out a _geesly_ miscarriage," Roos clapped the cap over
+his lens, unscrewed the crank and began taking his camera off its
+tripod. That rather hasty action was responsible for his missing by a
+hair what I am certain was the greatest opportunity ever presented to a
+moving picture operator to film one of the most stupendous of Nature's
+manifestations.
+
+The roar of the detonating dynamite reverberated for half a minute or
+more among the cliffs and peaks, and it was just after the last roll had
+died out that a renewed rumble caused me to direct a searching gaze to
+the great wall of ice and snow that towered above the farther end of the
+lake. For an instant I could not believe my eyes. It could not be
+possible that the whole mountainside was toppling over! And yet that was
+decidedly the effect at a first glance. From the rim of the snow-cap
+down to the back of the glacier--a mile wide and two thousand feet
+high--there was one solid, unbroken Niagara of glittering, coruscant ice
+and snow. Like a curtain strung with diamonds and pearls and opals it
+streamed, while the shower of flaming colours was reflected in the
+quivering waters of the lake in fluttering scarves of sun-shot scarlet,
+in tenuous ribbons of lavender, jade and primrose. It was only when the
+last shreds of this marvellous banner had ceased to stream (at the end
+of thirty or forty seconds perhaps) that I saw what it was that had
+caused it. The whole hair-poised brink of the great snow-cap--sharply
+jolted, doubtless, by the explosion of the dynamite--had cracked away
+and precipitated itself to the glacier level, nearly half a mile below.
+The shock to the latter appeared to have had the effect of jarring it
+sufficiently to crack down great blocks all along its face. The glacier
+had, in fact, been shocked into giving birth to a whole litter of real
+icebergs where, nearer at hand, we had failed dismally in our efforts to
+incubate even an artificial one. As glacial obstetricians it appeared
+that we still had much to learn.
+
+Roos made a great effort to get his camera set up again in time to make
+it record something of the wonderful spectacle. He was just too late,
+however. Only a few thin trickles of snow were streaking the face of the
+cliff when he finally swung his powerful tele-photo lens upon it, and
+even these had ceased before he had found his focus. It was no end of a
+pity. I saw several of the great _valangas_ started by the Austrian and
+Italian artillery in the Dolomites, and, previous to that, what I had
+thought were very considerable slides on Aconcagua and Chimborazi, in
+the Andes, and on Kinchinjunga and among the hanging ice-fields above
+the Zoji-la in the Himalayas. But any half dozen of the greatest of
+these would have been lost in that mighty avalanche of ice and snow that
+we saw descend above the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers. Nixon, with a
+lifetime spent in the Selkirks and Rockies, said he had never seen
+anything to compare with it.
+
+Jim, reporting that he still had three sticks of dynamite in hand, said
+he reckoned there might be a better chance of starting an "iceberg" on
+the southern side of the lake than on the northern one, where we had
+failed to accomplish anything. The southern slope was even more
+precipitous than the northern, he pointed out, and he had his eye on a
+rock which looked as if a charge might turn it over and start it
+rolling. "You never can tell what you may be startin' among a bunch o'
+tiltin' rocks like them 'uns," he said hopefully. Nixon's muttered "That
+ain't no _geesly_ hooch dream" might have meant several things; but I
+took it that he intended to imply that there was too much "unstable
+equilibrium" along that southern shore to make it the sort of a place
+that a neurasthenic would seek out for a rest cure. I felt the same way
+about it, only more so; but Roos' disappointment over what he had
+already missed was so keen that neither of us had the heart to interpose
+any objections when he told Jim to go ahead and see what he could do. As
+two sticks of dynamite were already promised to Harmon, the trick, if it
+came off, would have to be pulled with one. Spitting tobacco juice on
+the taffy-like cylinder for luck, Jim clambered off up the cliff and
+planted it under his "likely rock," Roos meantime setting up in a
+favourable position below.
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff
+
+THE FACE OF THE HANGING GLACIER]
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff
+
+WHERE MY PARTY FOREGATHERED WITH HARMON'S ON THE SHORE OF THE LAKE OF
+THE HANGING GLACIER]
+
+Whether Jim's "tobaccanalian libation" had anything to do with it or
+not, this time luck was with us. The sharp blast kicked Jim's rock up on
+one ear, where it teetered for a second or two indecisively before
+rolling over sidewise and coming down kerplump on a huge twenty-ton cube
+of basalt that no one would have thought of moving with a barrel of
+giant. It wasn't so much what the little rock did as the way it did it.
+The big block gave a sort of a quiver, much as a man awakening from a
+doze would stretch his arms and yawn, and when it quivered a lot of
+loose stuff slipped away from beneath and just let it go. It lumbered
+along at an easy roll for a bit, and then increased its speed and
+started jumping. Its first jump was no more than a nervous little hop
+that served to hurdle it clear of a length of flat ledge that reached
+out to stop its downward progress. A second later it had hit its stride,
+so that when it struck the water there had been nothing but rarefied air
+trying to stop it for two hundred feet. Down it went, pushing a column
+of compressed _aqua pura_ ahead of it and sucking a big black hole along
+in its wake. It was when that column of compressed water spouted up
+again and tried to chase its tail down the hole it had come out of that
+things began to happen, for it found something like a dozen fat icebergs
+crowding in and trying to insinuate their translucent bulks into the
+same opening. And of course they made a tremendous fuss about it. When
+an iceberg found that it couldn't get in standing up, it forthwith
+lay down on its side, or even rolled over on its back; which didn't help
+it in the least after all, for the very good reason that all the other
+icebergs were adopting the same tactics. And so Roos, who was cranking
+steadily all the time, got his "Birth of an Iceberg" picture after all.
+
+When the bergs ceased butting their heads off against each other Roos
+shot me in the scenes where I registered "consternation," "relief" and
+"awed wonder," and our hard-striven-for Lake of the Hanging Glaciers
+picture was complete. There was just a bit of a hitch at the "awed
+wonder" fade-out, though, but that was Roos' fault in trying to
+introduce a "human touch" by trying to make Gordon's dog perch up beside
+me on the crest of a hatchet-edged rock. The pup sat quietly wagging his
+tail until the moment came for me to lift up mine eyes unto the hills
+and increase the tenseness of my "awed wonder" registration. Then the
+altitude began to affect his nerves and he started doing figure "8's"
+back and forth between my precariously planted feet. As a natural
+consequence, when Roos started in on his "fade-out" I was seesawing my
+arms wildly to maintain my balance, talking volubly, and
+registering--well, what would a temperamental movie star be registering
+while in the act of telling a dog and a man what he thought of them for
+their joint responsibility in all but pitching him off a
+twenty-foot-high rock into a vortex of tumbling icebergs? Again (unless
+this part of the film has been discreetly cut in the studio before
+exhibition) I beg the indulgence of lip-readers.
+
+The lake was deeply shadowed before we were finally at liberty to take
+up again the sartorics of "Lohengrin"; but it was not that fact, nor yet
+the not entirely prohibitive difficulty of making shining armour out of
+tin cans, that nipped that classic conception in the bud. Rather it was
+the astonishing unstable-mindedness displayed by the bergs when impinged
+upon from without. Of the hundred or more hunks of floating ice within a
+five-hundred-yard radius of the point where our artificial berg had hit
+the water, only a half dozen or so of the broadest and flattest
+continued to expose the same profiles they had presented before the big
+splash. Most of the others had turned over and over repeatedly, and one,
+which seemed to "hang" in almost perfect balance, continued slowly
+revolving like a patent churn. "Lohengrin's Barge," half a mile distant
+from the heart of the "birth splash" and lapped by but the lightest of
+expiring waves, was rolling drunkenly to port and starboard as though in
+the trough of the seas of a typhoon. It looked ready to turn turtle at a
+touch, and there were too many angular projections on it--especially
+about the "swans"--to make even a man who aspired to grand opera care to
+court lightly the experience of tangling himself up in the wreck.
+
+Descending to the timber-line meadow where the horses had been left, we
+found Harmon had brought up his outfit and pitched his tent midway of an
+enchanting vista framed in green-black pines and golden tamaracks, and
+with a wonderful background for "camp shots" both up and down the
+valley. There he was going to make his base, he said, until he found
+just the light he wanted on the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers. Then he
+hoped to get at least a negative or two that would do something
+approaching justice to so inspiring a subject. And there, working and
+waiting patiently through an almost unbroken succession of storms that
+raged in the high Selkirks for many days, he held on until he got what
+he wanted. It was in that quiet persistent way that he had been
+photographing the mountains of the Canadian West for many years, and it
+will be in that way that he will continue until he shall have attained
+somewhere near to the high goal he has set for his life's work--a
+complete photographic record of the Rockies and Selkirks. It is a
+privilege to have met an artist who works with so fine a spirit, who has
+set himself so high an ideal. A number of Harmon's scenic pictures of
+the mountains where the Columbia takes its rise are so much better than
+the best of my own of the same subjects, that I am giving them place in
+a work which it was my original intention to illustrate entirely myself.
+
+We returned to our camp at the head of Horse Thief Creek that night, and
+set out on our return to Windermere the following morning. Save for a
+rather sloppy passage of the main ford, the journey was without
+incident. With light packs, we pushed right through to the head of the
+wagon-road--something over thirty miles--the first day. The seventeen
+miles to Invermere we covered in a leisurely fashion, reaching the hotel
+at three in the afternoon of the following day, Sunday, the twentieth of
+September. Here I found a wire from Chester, stating that it had
+finally proved impossible for him to get away from business, and asking
+me to go ahead and see the Big Bend trip through without him. In the
+event I decided to continue on down the river he would be glad to have
+his cameraman accompany me as long as the weather and light were
+favourable for his work. A letter with full instructions covering the
+two pictures he desired made had already been dispatched.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+CANAL FLATS TO BEAVERMOUTH
+
+
+Chester's instructions respecting the two new pictures he wanted us to
+work on came through to Roos the day following our return to Windermere.
+One of these was to be confined entirely to the Big Bend voyage.
+Essaying again my role of "gentleman-cum-sportsman," I was to get off
+the train at Beavermouth, meet my boatman, launch the boat and start off
+down the river. The various things seen and done _en voyage_ were to
+make up the picture.
+
+In the other picture I was to play the part of a young rancher who was
+farming his hard-won clearing on the banks of the Columbia near its
+source. With the last of his crops in, he is assailed one day with a
+great longing to see the ocean. Suddenly it occurs to him that the river
+flowing right by his door runs all the way to the sea, and the sight of
+a prospector friend, about to push off with a sack of samples for the
+smelter many hundreds of miles below, suggests a means of making the
+journey. And so the two of them start off down the Columbia. What
+happened to them on their way was to be told in the picture. The
+introductory scenes of this picture were to be made somewhere in the
+vicinity of Windermere, but the thread of the story was to be picked up
+below the Arrow Lakes after the Big Bend voyage was over.
+
+Hunting "location" and rainy weather kept us four or five days in
+Windermere and vicinity, giving an opportunity we otherwise would have
+missed to meet and become acquainted with the always kindly and
+hospitable and often highly distinguished people of this beautiful and
+interesting community. From the time of David Thompson, the great
+astronomer and explorer of the Northwest Company who wintered there in
+1810, down to the present Windermere seems always to have attracted the
+right sort of people. The predominant class is what one might call the
+gentleman-farmer, with the stress perhaps on "gentleman." I mean to say,
+that is, that while a number of them have failed of outstanding
+achievement as farmers, there was none that I met who would not have
+qualified as a gentleman, and in the very best sense of the word.
+Sportsmen and lovers of the out-of-doors, there was this fine bond of
+fellowship between all of them. Nowhere have I encountered a fresher,
+more wholesome social atmosphere than that of this fine community of the
+upper Columbia.
+
+That genial and big-hearted old Scot, Randolph Bruce, I recall with
+especial affection, as must every one of the many who has known the
+hospitality of his great log lodge on a bay of the lake below Invermere.
+An Edinburgh engineer, Bruce was one of the builders of the Canadian
+Pacific, and as such an associate and intimate of Van Horne,
+O'Shaughnessy and the rest of those sturdy pioneers who pushed to
+accomplishment the most notable piece of railway construction the world
+has ever known. In love with the West by the time the railway was
+finished, he built him a home in the most beautiful spot he knew--such
+a spot as few even among the Scottish lochs could rival--and associated
+himself with various projects for the advancement of the country. At the
+present time he is the owner of the Paradise mine, one of the richest
+silver-lead properties in British Columbia, and the head of an
+enterprise which purposes to bring the Windermere region to its own
+among the grandest of the playgrounds of North America.
+
+We made the preliminary scenes for the "farmer" picture at a gem of a
+little mountain ranch in a clearing to the west of Lake Windermere.
+Shooting through one of his favourite "sylvan frames," Roos picked me up
+violently shocking hay at the end of a long narrow field which the
+labour of a young Scotch immigrant had reclaimed from the encompassing
+forest. (As a matter of fact the hay was already in shocks when we
+arrived, and I had to unshock a few shocks so as to shock them up again
+before the camera and thus give the impression that this was the last of
+my season's crop.) Then I threw up a couple of shocks for him set up at
+closer range, with more attention to "technique." (This latter came easy
+for me, as I had been pitching hay for a fortnight on my California
+ranch earlier in the summer.) Finally I stopped work, leaned on my fork
+and gazed into the distance with visioning eyes. (I was supposed to be
+thinking of the sea, Roos explained, and in the finished picture there
+would be a "cut-in" of breakers at this point.) Then I registered
+"impatience" and "restlessness," hardening to "firm resolve." At this
+juncture I threw down my fork and strode purposefully out of the right
+side of the picture. (The cabin to which I was supposed to be striding
+was really on my left, but Roos explained that some sort of a movie
+Median law made it imperative always to exit to right.) Then we went
+over to make the cabin shots.
+
+[Illustration: OLD HUDSON BAY CART AT BEAVERMOUTH (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: MY FIRST PUSH-OFF AT THE HEAD OF CANOE NAVIGATION ON THE
+COLUMBIA (_below_)]
+
+[Illustration: OPENING SCENE OF THE "FARMER" PICTURE]
+
+[Illustration: OLD STERN WHEELERS AT GOLDEN (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: A QUIET STRETCH OF THE COLUMBIA NEAR GOLDEN (_below_)]
+
+The owner of the cabin was away at the moment, but his young Scotch
+wife--a bonnie bit of a lass who might have been the inspiration for
+"Annie Laurie"--was on hand and mightily interested. She asked if I was
+Bill Hart, and Roos made the tactical error of guffawing, as though the
+idea was absurd. She was a good deal disappointed at that, but still
+very ready to help with anything calculated to immortalize her wee home
+by emblazoning it on the imperishable celluloid. First I strode into the
+cabin, but almost immediately to emerge unfolding a map. Going over to a
+convenient stump, I sat down and disposed of a considerable footage of
+"intent study." Then we made a close-up of the map--the Pacific
+Northwest--with my index finger starting at Windermere and tracing the
+course of the Columbia on its long winding way to the sea. That proved
+that there was water transit all the way to that previous cut-in of
+breakers which my visioning eyes had conjured up just before I threw
+down my fork. I stood up and gazed at the nearby river (which was really
+Lake Windermere, a mile distant), and presently stiffened to my full
+height, registering "discovery." What I was supposed to see was a
+prospector tinkering with his boat. As this latter scene could not be
+made until we had bought a boat and signed up a "prospector," all that
+was left to do here was to shoot me striding away from the cabin on the
+way to discuss ways and means with my mythical companion, and then
+striding back, getting my roll of blankets and exiting in a final
+fade-out. As we had neglected to provide a roll of blankets for this
+shot, we had to improvise one from such material as was available. I
+forget all that went to make up that fearful and wonderful package; but
+it is just as well the precariously-roped bundle didn't resolve into its
+component parts until the fade-out was pretty nearly complete.
+
+Roos tried hard to introduce "human interest" and "heart appeal" by
+staging a farewell scene with "wife and child," both of which were ready
+to hand. I was adamant, however, even when he agreed to compromise by
+leaving out the child. He was rather stubborn about it, refusing to
+admit the validity of my argument to the effect that a would-be screen
+hero who deserted so fair a wife would alienate the sympathies of the
+crowd at the outset. Finally it was decided for us. "It's too late noo,"
+cooed a wee voice in which I thought I detected both reproach and
+relief; "while ye're talkin', yon cooms Jock."
+
+It _was_ too late all right; even Roos was ready to grant that. Jock was
+about six-feet-three, and built in proportion. Also a wee bitty dour, I
+thought. At least he glowered redly under his bushy brows when he
+discovered that I had wrapped up his own and another _nicht-goon_ in my
+hastily assembled blanket-roll. If that bothered him, I hate to think
+what might have happened had he surprised that farewell scene,
+especially as Roos--with his Mack Sennett training and D. W. Griffith
+ideals--would have tried to stage it.
+
+Roos was young and inexperienced, and lacking in both finesse and
+subtlety. I granted that this wouldn't have cramped his style much in
+doing "old home town stuff;" but farther afield it was electric with
+dangerous possibilities. Driving back to the hotel I quoted to him what
+Kipling's hero in "The Man Who Would Be King" said on the subject,
+paraphrasing it slightly so he would understand. "A man has no business
+shooting farewell scenes with borrowed brides in foreign parts be he
+three times a crowned movie director," was the way I put it.
+
+It was my original intention to start the boating part of my Columbia
+trip from Golden, at the head of the Big Bend, the point at which the
+calm open reaches of the upper river give way to really swift water. The
+decision to make the push-off from Beavermouth, twenty-nine miles
+farther down, was come to merely because it was much easier to get the
+boat into the water at the latter point. There was little swift-water
+boating worthy of the name above Beavermouth. Donald Canyon was about
+the only rough water, and even that, I was assured, was not to be
+mentioned in the same breath with scores of rapids farther down the
+Bend. In the ninety miles between the foot of Lake Windermere and Golden
+there were but twenty-five feet of fall, so that the winding river was
+hardly more than a series of lagoon-like reaches, with a current of from
+one to four miles an hour. Between Columbia Lake--practically the head
+of the main channel of the river--and Mud Lake, and between the latter
+and the head of Lake Windermere, there was a stream of fairly swift
+current, but at this time of year not carrying enough water to permit
+the passage of even a canoe without much lining and portaging.
+
+From the practical aspect, therefore, I was quite content with the plan
+to start my voyage from Beavermouth. For the sake of sentiment, however,
+I _did_ want to make some kind of a push-off from the very highest point
+that offered sufficient water to float a boat at the end of September.
+This, I was assured in Invermere, would be Canal Flats, just above the
+head of Columbia Lake and immediately below the abandoned locks which at
+one time made navigation possible between the Kootenay and the Columbia.
+Although these crude log-built locks have never been restored since they
+were damaged by a great freshet in the nineties, and although the
+traffic they passed in the few years of their operation was almost
+negligible, it may be of interest to give a brief description of the
+remarkable terrain that made their construction possible by the simplest
+of engineering work, and to tell how the removal of a few shovelfuls of
+earth effected the practical insulation of the whole great range of the
+Selkirks.
+
+As a consequence of recent geological study, it has been definitely
+established that the divide between the Columbia and Kootenay rivers,
+now at Canal Flats, was originally a hundred and fifty miles farther
+north, or approximately where Donald Canyon occurs. That is to say, a
+great wall of rock at the latter point backed up a long, narrow lake
+between the Rockies on the east and the Selkirks on the west. This lake,
+unable to find outlet to the north, had risen until its waters were
+sufficiently above the lower southern barriers to give it drainage in
+that direction. At that time it was doubtless the main source of the
+Kootenay River, and its waters did not reach the Columbia until after a
+long and devious southerly course into what is now Montana, thence
+northward into Kootenay Lake, and finally, by a dizzy westerly plunge,
+into a much-extended Arrow Lake. An upheaval which carried away the dyke
+at Donald provided a northward drainage for the lake, and the divide was
+ultimately established at what is now called Canal Flats. It was a
+shifting and precarious division, however, for the Kootenay--which rises
+some distance to the northward in the Rockies and is here a sizable
+stream--discharged a considerable overflow to the Columbia basin at high
+water. It was this latter fact which called attention to the comparative
+ease with which navigation could be established between the two rivers
+by means of a canal. For an account of how this canal came to be built I
+am indebted to E. M. Sandilands, Esq., Mining Recorder for the British
+Columbia Government at Wilmer, who has the distinction of being, to use
+his own language, "the person who made the Selkirk Mts. an Island by
+connecting the Columbia and Kootenay rivers."
+
+Mr. Sandilands, in a recent letter, tells how an ex-big-game hunter by
+the name of Baillie-Grohman obtained, in 1886, a concession from the
+Provincial Government of British Columbia for 35,000 acres of land along
+the Kootenay River. In return for this he was to construct at his own
+expense a canal connecting the Columbia and Kootenay. This cut was for
+the ostensible purpose of opening up navigation between the two streams,
+but as nothing was stipulated in respect of dredging approaches the
+obligation of the concessionaire was limited to the construction of the
+canal and locks. "For this reason," writes Mr. Sandilands, who was
+working on the job at the time, "our 'Grand Canal' was practically
+useless. Nevertheless, in 1888, it was opened with due form and pomp,
+engineer, contractor and concessionaire paddling up to the lock in a
+canoe well laden with the 'good cheer' demanded by such an occasion. I
+was driving a team attached to a 'slush-scraper,' and together with a
+jovial Irish spirit who rejoiced in the name of Thomas Haggerty, was
+ordered by the foreman to scrape out the false dam holding the Kootenay
+back from the canal. This we did as long as we dared. Then I was
+deputed, with gum-boots and shovel, to dig a hole through what was left
+of the false dam, and allow the Kootenay into the canal and the
+Columbia. This being done, the fact was wired to the Provincial
+Government at Victoria ..., and the promised concession of land was
+asked for and granted. I little thought at the time," Mr. Sandilands
+concludes, "how distinguished a part I was playing, that I was making
+the Selkirk Mountains an 'Island,' a fact which few people realize to
+this day."
+
+Later a little dredging was done, so that finally, by dint of much
+"capstaning," a shallow-draught stern-wheeler was worked up to and
+through the lock and canal, and on down the Kootenay to Jennings,
+Montana. It was Captain F. P. Armstrong who performed this remarkable
+feat, only to lose the historic little craft later in one of the
+treacherous canyons of the Kootenay. His also was the distinction, after
+maintaining an intermittent service between the Columbia and Kootenay
+for a number of years, of being the captain and owner of the last boat
+to make that amazing passage.
+
+We reached Canal Flats at the end of a forty-mile auto-ride from
+Invermere. Traces of the old dredged channel were still visible running
+up from the head of Columbia Lake and coming to an abrupt end against a
+caving wall of logs which must at one time have been a gate of the
+inter-river lock. Out of the tangle of maiden hair fern which draped the
+rotting logs came a clear trickle of water, seeping through from the
+other side of the divide. This was what was popularly called the source
+of the Columbia. I could just manage to scoop the river dry with a quick
+sweep of my cupped palm.
+
+A hundred yards below the source the old channel opened out into a quiet
+currentless pool, and here I found a half-filled Peterboro belonging to
+a neighbouring farmer, which I had engaged for the first leg of my
+voyage down the Columbia. It leaked rather faster than I could bail, but
+even at that it floated as long as there was water to float it. Fifty
+yards farther down a broad mudbank blocked the channel all the way
+across, and in attempting to drag the old canoe out for the portage, I
+pulled it in two amidships. I had made my start from almost
+chock-a-block against the source, however. Sentiment was satisfied. I
+was now ready for the Bend. Groping my way back to the car through an
+almost impenetrable pall of mosquitoes, I rejoined Roos and we returned
+to Invermere.
+
+A wire from Blackmore stating that it would still be several days before
+his boat was ready for the Bend offered us a chance to make the journey
+to Golden by river if we so desired. There was nothing in it on the
+boating side, but Roos thought there might be a chance for some
+effective scenic shots. I, also, was rather inclined to favour the trip,
+for the chance it would give of hardening up my hands and pulling
+muscles before tackling the Bend. An unpropitious coincidence in the
+matter of an Indian name defeated the plan. Roos and I were trying out
+on Lake Windermere a sweet little skiff which Randolph Bruce had kindly
+volunteered to let us have for the quiet run down to Golden. "By hard
+pulling," I said, "we ought just about to make Spillimacheen at the end
+of the first day." "Spill a what?" ejaculated Roos anxiously; "you
+didn't say 'machine,' did you?" "Yes; Spillimacheen," I replied. "It's
+the name of a river that flows down to the Columbia from the Selkirks."
+"Then that settles it for me," he said decisively. "I don't want to
+spill my machine. It cost fifteen hundred dollars. I'm not
+superstitious; but, just the same, starting out for a place with a name
+like that is too much like asking for trouble to suit yours truly." And
+so we went down to Golden by train and put in the extra time outfitting
+for the Bend.
+
+Golden, superbly situated where the Kicking Horse comes tumbling down to
+join the Columbia, is a typical Western mining and lumbering town. Save
+for their penchant for dramatizing the perils of the Big Bend, the
+people are delightful. It is true that the hospitable spirit of one
+Goldenite _did_ get me in rather bad; but perhaps the fault was more
+mine than his. Meeting him on the railway platform just as he was about
+to leave for Vancouver, he spoke with great enthusiasm of his garden,
+and said that he feared some of his fine strawberries might be going to
+waste in his absence for lack of some one to eat them. I gulped with
+eagerness at that, and then told him bluntly--and truthfully--that I
+would willingly steal to get strawberries and cream, provided, of
+course, that they couldn't be acquired in some more conventional way. He
+hastened to reassure me, saying that it wouldn't be necessary to go
+outside the law in this case. "The first chance you get," he said with a
+twinkle in his eye, "just slip over and make love to my housekeeper, and
+tell her I said to give you your fill of berries and cream, and I have
+no doubt she'll provide for you."
+
+If his Vancouver-bound train had not started to pull out just then,
+perhaps he would have explained that that accursed "love stuff" formula
+was a figure of speech. Or perhaps he felt sure that I would understand
+it that way, if not at once, at least when the time came. And I would
+have, ordinarily. But my strawberry-and-cream appetite is so
+overpowering that, like the lions at feeding time, my finer
+psychological instincts are blunted where satiation is in sight. That
+was why I blurted out my hospitable friend's directions almost verbatim
+when I saw that the door of his home (to which I had rushed at my first
+opportunity) had been opened by a female. It was only after I had
+spoken that I saw that she was lean, angular, gimlet-eyed, and had
+hatred of all malekind indelibly stamped upon her dour visage. She drew
+in her breath whistlingly; then controlled herself with an effort. "I
+suppose I must give you the berries and cream," she said slowly and
+deliberately, the clearly enunciated words falling icily like the drip
+from the glacial grottoes at the head of the Columbia; "but the--the
+other matter you would find a little difficult."
+
+"Ye-es, ma'am," I quavered shiveringly, "I would. If you'll please send
+the strawberries and cream to the hotel I am quite content to have it a
+cash transaction."
+
+Considering the way that rapier-thrust punctured me through and through,
+I felt that I deserved no little credit for sticking to my guns in the
+matter of the strawberries and cream. For the rest, I was floored. The
+next time any one tries to send me into the Hesperides after free fruit
+I am going to know who is guarding the apples; and I am _not_ going to
+approach the delectable garden by the love-path.
+
+I had taken especial pains to warn Roos what he would have to expect
+from Golden in the matter of warnings about the Big Bend, but in spite
+of all, that garrulous social centre, the town pool-room, did manage to
+slip one rather good one over on him before we got away. "How long does
+it take to go round the Bend?" he had asked of a circle of trappers and
+lumber-jacks who were busily engaged in their favourite winter
+indoor-sport of decorating the pool-room stove with a frieze of tobacco
+juice. "Figger it fer yerself, sonny," replied a corpulent woodsman
+with a bandaged jaw. "If yer gets inter yer boat an' lets it go in that
+ten-twent'-thirt' mile current, it's a simpl' problum of 'rithmatick. If
+yer ain't dished in a souse-hole, yer _has_ ter make Revelstoke insider
+one day. As yer has ter do sum linin' to keep right side up, it's sum
+slower. Best time any of us makes it in is two days. But we never rushes
+it even like that 'nless we're hurryin' the cor'ner down ter sit on sum
+drownded body."
+
+As the whole court had nodded solemn acquiescence to this, and as none
+had cracked anything remotely resembling a smile, Roos was considerably
+impressed--not to say depressed. (So had I been the first time I heard
+that coroner yarn.) Nor did he find great comfort in the hotel
+proprietor's really well-meant attempt at reassurance. "Don't let that
+story bother you, my boy," the genial McConnell had said; "they _never_
+did take the coroner round the Big Bend. Fact is, there _never_ was a
+coroner here that had the guts to tackle it!"
+
+We met Blackmore at Beavermouth the afternoon of the twenty-eighth of
+September. He reported that his boat had been shipped from Revelstoke by
+that morning's way freight, and should arrive the following day. As I
+had been unable to engage a boatman in Golden, and as Blackmore had
+found only one in Revelstoke to suit him, it was decided to give me an
+oar and a pike-pole and make out the best we could without another man.
+I had brought provisions for a fortnight with me from Golden, and
+Blackmore had tents and canvases. Through the efforts of influential
+friends in Golden I had also been able to secure two bottles of prime
+Demerara rum. Knowing that I was going to pick up at least one cask of
+Scotch on the way, and perhaps two or three, I had not been very keen
+about bothering with the rum. But on the assurance that it might well be
+two or three days before any whisky was found, and that getting wet in
+the Columbia without something to restore the circulation was as good as
+suicide, I allowed myself to be persuaded. It was wonderful
+stuff--thirty per cent. over-proof; which means that it could be diluted
+with four parts of water and still retain enough potency to make an
+ordinary man blink if he tried to bolt it. We did find one man--but he
+was not ordinary by any means; far from it. I will tell about "Wild
+Bill" in the proper place.
+
+There was a wonderful _aurora borealis_ that night--quite the finest
+display of the kind I recall ever having seen in either the northern or
+southern hemispheres. Blackmore--weather-wise from long
+experience--regarded the marvellous display of lambently licking light
+streamers with mixed feelings. "Yes, it's a fine show," he said,
+following the opalescent glimmer of the fluttering pennants with a
+dubious eye; "but I'm afraid we'll have to pay through the nose for it.
+It means that in a couple of days more the rain will be streaming down
+as fast as those lights are streaming up. Just about the time we get
+well into Surprise Rapids there will be about as much water in the air
+as in the river. However, it won't matter much," he concluded
+philosophically, "for we'll be soaked anyway, whether we're running or
+lining, and rain water's ten degrees warmer than river water."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+I. RUNNING THE BEND
+
+_Through Surprise Rapids_
+
+
+We pushed off from Beavermouth at three o'clock of the afternoon of
+September twenty-ninth. We had hoped for an early start, but the
+erratically running local freight, six or eight hours behind time, did
+not arrive with our boat until noon. The introductory shots had already
+been made. Made up momentarily as a gentleman--wearing an ankle length
+polished waterproof and a clean cap, that is,--I jumped the westbound
+Limited as it slowed down on entering the yard, dropping off presently
+at the platform with a "here-I-am" expression when Roos signalled that
+the focus was right. Then I shook hands with the waiting Blackmore, and
+together we strode to the door of the station and met the
+previously-rehearsed agent. (Roos had wanted me to shake hands with the
+agent as well as with Blackmore, but I overruled him by pointing out
+that I was a "gentleman-sportsman" not a "gentleman-politician," and
+served notice on him that pump-handling must henceforth be reduced to a
+minimum.) We tried to perfect the agent in a sweeping gesture that would
+say as plainly as words "The train with your boat is just around that
+next bend, sir," but somehow we couldn't prevent his trying to elevate
+his lowly part. His lips mumbled the words we had put on them all
+right, but the gesture was a grandiose thing such as a Chesterfieldian
+footman might have employed in announcing "My Lord, the carriage waits."
+
+Roos, in all innocence, narrowly missed provoking a fight with a
+hot-tempered half-breed while he was setting up to shoot the incoming
+freight. He had an ingenious method of determining, without bending over
+his finder, just what his lens was going to "pick-up." This consisted of
+holding his arms at full length, with his thumbs placed tip to tip and
+the forefingers standing straight up. The right-angling digits then
+framed for his eye an approximation of his picture. To one not used to
+it this esoteric performance looked distinctly queer, especially if he
+chanced to be standing somewhere near the arch priest's line of vision.
+And that, as it happened, was exactly the place from which it was
+revealed to the choleric near-Shuswap section hand. I didn't need the
+breed's subsequent contrite explanation to know that, from where he had
+been standing, those twiddling thumbs and fingers, through the great
+fore-shortening of the arms, looked to be right on the end of the nose
+of the grimacing little man by the camera. Not even a self-respecting
+white man would have stood for what that twiddling connoted, let alone a
+man in whose veins flowed blood that must have been something like
+fifteen-sixteenths of the proudest of Canadian strains. Luckily, both
+Blackmore and his burly boatman were men of action. Even so, it was a
+near squeeze for both camera and cameraman. Roos emerged unscarred in
+anything but temperament. And, of course, as every one even on the
+fringes of the movies knows, the temperaments of both stars and
+directors are things that require frequent harrowing to keep them in
+good working order.
+
+Roos' filming of the unloading of the boat was the best thing he did on
+the trip. Every available man in Beavermouth was requisitioned. This
+must have been something like twenty-five or thirty. A half dozen, with
+skids and rollers, could have taken the boat off without exerting
+themselves seriously, but could hardly have "made it snappy." And action
+was what the scene demanded. There was no time for a rehearsal. The
+agent simply told us where the car would be shunted to, Blackmore
+figured out the best line from there over the embankment and through the
+woods to the river, and Roos undertook to keep up with the procession
+with his camera. Blackmore was to superintend the technical operation
+and I was ordered to see that the men "acted natural." And thus we went
+to it. The big boat, which must have weighed close to half a ton, came
+off its flat car like a paper shallop, but the resounding thwack with
+which her bows hit a switch-frog awakened Blackmore's concern. "Easy!
+Easy! Don't bust her bottom," he began shouting; while I, on the other
+side, took up my refrain of "Don't look at the camera!--make it snappy."
+The consequence of these diametrically opposed orders was that the dozen
+or more men on my side did most of the work. But even so it was
+"snappy"--very.
+
+Down the embankment we rushed like a speeding centipede, straight at the
+fine hog-proof wire fence of the C. P. R. right-of-way. That fence may
+have been hog-proof, but it was certainly not proof against the charge
+of a thirty-foot boat coming down a fifty per cent. grade pushed by
+twenty-five men. We had intended lifting over it, but our momentum was
+too great, especially after I had failed to desist from shouting "Make
+it snappy!" soon enough. The barrier gave way in two or three places, so
+that we were shedding trailing lengths of wire all the way to the river.
+On through the woods we juggernauted, Roos following in full cry. His
+city "news stuff" training was standing him in good stead, and he showed
+no less cleverness than agility in making successive "set-ups" without
+staying our progress. Only in the last fifty yards, where the going over
+the moss and pine needles was (comparatively speaking) lightning fast,
+did we distance him. Here, as there was plenty of time, he cut a hole in
+the trees and shot the launching through one of his favourite "sylvan
+frames." For the push-off shot he provided his customary heart throb by
+bringing down the station agent's three-year-old infant to wave
+farewell. That he didn't try to feature the mother prominently seemed to
+indicate that what I had said at Windermere on the subject had had some
+effect.
+
+After the "farewell" had been filmed, we landed at the fire ranger's
+cabin to pick up Roos and his camera. The ranger told us that a couple
+of trappers who had been for some weeks engaged in portaging their
+winter supplies round Surprise Rapids would be waiting for us at the
+head of the first fall in the expectation of getting the job of packing
+our stuff down to the foot. "Nothing doing," Blackmore replied
+decisively; "going straight through." The ranger grinned and shook his
+grizzled head. "You're the man to do it," he said; "but jest the same,
+I'm glad it's you and not me that has the job."
+
+The station agent came down with Roos, evidently with the cheering
+purpose of showing us the place where his predecessor and a couple of
+other men had been drowned in attempting to cross the river some months
+previously. "Only man in the boat to be picked up alive was a one-armed
+chap," he concluded impressively. "Too late now for operations on any of
+this crew," laughed Blackmore, pushing off with a pike-pole. "Besides,
+every man jack of us is going to have a two-arm job all the way." To the
+parting cheers of the mackinawed mob on the bank, he eased out into the
+current and headed her down the Bend.
+
+[Illustration: ARRIVAL OF OUR BOAT AT BEAVERMOUTH (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: OUR FIRST CAMP AT BEAVERMOUTH (_centre_)]
+
+[Illustration: THE REMAINS OF A SUNKEN FOREST (_below_)]
+
+[Illustration: TRAPPER'S CABIN WHERE WE FOUND SHELTER FOR THE NIGHT
+(_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: WHERE WE LANDED ABOVE SURPRISE RAPIDS (_centre_)]
+
+[Illustration: WHERE WE TIED UP AT "EIGHT MILE" (_below_)]
+
+Roos stationed himself in the bow, with camera set up on its shortened
+tripod, waiting to surprise any scenery caught lurking along the way.
+Blackmore steered from the stern with his seven-feet-long birch paddle.
+Andy Kitson and I, pulling starboard and port oars respectively, rubbed
+shoulders on the broad 'midship's thwart. Our outfit--a comparatively
+light load for so large a boat--was stowed pretty well aft. I saw
+Blackmore lean out to "con ship" as we got under way. "Good trim," he
+pronounced finally, with an approving nod. "Just load enough to steady
+her, and yet leave plenty of freeboard for the sloppy water. This ought
+to be a dryer run than some the old girl's had." I chuckled to myself
+over that "dryer." I hadn't told Blackmore yet what was hidden down
+Canoe River way. I had promised Captain Armstrong not to do so until I
+had ascertained that we had a teetotal crew--or one comparatively so.
+
+Andy Kitson was a big husky North-of-Irelander, who had spent twenty
+years trapping, packing, hunting, lumbering and boating in western
+Canada. Like the best of his kind, he was deliberate and sparing of
+speech most of the time, but with a fine reserve vocabulary for
+emergency use. He was careful and cautious, as all good river boatmen
+should be, but decidedly "all there" in a pinch. He pulled a good
+round-armed thumping stroke with his big oar, and took to the water (as
+has to be done so frequently on a bad stretch of "lining down") like a
+beaver. Best of all, he had a temper which nothing from a leak in the
+tent dribbling down his neck to a half hour up to his waist in ice-cold
+water seemed equal to ruffling. I liked Andy the moment I set eyes on
+his shining red gill, and I liked him better and better every day I
+worked and camped with him.
+
+As it was three-thirty when we finally pushed off, Blackmore announced
+that he would not try to make farther than "Eight-Mile" that afternoon.
+With comparatively good water all the way to the head of Surprise
+Rapids, we could have run right on through, he said; but that would
+force us to make camp after dark, and he disliked doing that unless he
+had to. In a current varying from three to eight miles an hour, we slid
+along down stream between banks golden-gay with the turning leaves of
+poplar, cottonwood and birch, the bright colours of which were
+strikingly accentuated by the sombre background of thick-growing
+spruce, hemlock, balsam and fir. Yellow, in a score of shades, was the
+prevailing colour, but here and there was a splash of glowing crimson
+from a patch of _chin-chinick_ or Indian tobacco, or a mass of dull
+maroon where a wild rose clambered over the thicket. Closely confined
+between the Rockies to the right and the Selkirks to the west, the river
+held undeviatingly to its general northwesterly course, with only the
+patchiest of flats on either side. And this was the openest part of the
+Bend, Blackmore volunteered; from the head of Surprise Rapids to the
+foot of Priest Rapids the Columbia was so steeply walled that we would
+not find room for a clearing large enough to support a single cow. "It's
+a dismal hole, and no mistake," he said.
+
+We took about an hour to run to "Eight Mile," Andy and I pulling
+steadily all the way in the deep, smoothly-running current. We tied up
+in a quiet lagoon opening out to the west--evidently the mouth of a
+high-water channel. There was a magnificent stand of fir and spruce on a
+low bench running back from the river, not of great size on account of
+growing so thickly, but amazing lofty and straight. We camped in the
+shelter of the timber without pitching a tent, Andy and Blackmore
+sleeping in the open and Roos and I in a tumble-down trapper's cabin. Or
+rather we spread our blankets in the infernal hole. As the place was
+both damp and rat-infested, we did not sleep. Roos spent the night
+chopping wood and feeding the rust-eaten--and therefore
+smoky--sheet-iron stove. I divided my time between growling at Roos for
+enticing me into keeping him company in the cabin against Blackmore's
+advice, and throwing things at the prowling rodents. It did not make for
+increased cheerfulness when I hit him on the ear with a hob-nailed boot
+that I had intended for a pair of eyes gleaming vitreously on a line
+about six inches back of his gloomily bowed head. He argued--and with
+some reason I must admit--that I had no call to draw so fine a bead
+until I was surer of my aim. Largely as a point of repartee, I told him
+not to be too certain I was not sure of my aim. But I really had been
+trying to hit the rat....
+
+I took the temperature of the air and the river water in the morning,
+finding the former to register thirty-eight degrees and the latter
+forty-one. There was a heavy mist resting on the river for a couple of
+hours after daybreak, but it was lifting by the time we were ready to
+push off. In running swift water good visibility is even more imperative
+than at sea, but as there was nothing immediately ahead to bother
+Blackmore did not wait for it to clear completely. The sun was shining
+brightly by nine-thirty, and Roos made several shots from the boat and
+one or two from the bank. One of the most remarkable sights unfolded to
+us was that of "Snag Town." Just what was responsible for this queer
+maze of upended trees it would be hard to say. It seems probable,
+however, that a series of heavy spring floods undermined a considerable
+flat at the bend of the river, carrying away the earth and leaving the
+trees still partially rooted. The broadening of the channel must have
+slowed down the current a good deal, and it appears never to have been
+strong enough to scour out below the tenaciously clinging roots. The
+former lords of the forest are all dead, of course, but still they keep
+their places, inclining down-stream perhaps twenty-degrees from their
+former proud perpendicular, and firmly anchored. It takes careful
+steering to thread the maze even in a small boat, but the current is
+hardly fast enough to make a collision of serious moment.
+
+The current quickened for a while beyond "Snag Town" and then began
+slowing again, the river broadening and deepening meanwhile. I thought I
+read the signs aright and asked Blackmore. "Yes," he replied with a
+confirmatory nod; "it's the river backing up for its big jump. Stop
+pulling a minute and you can probably hear the rapid growling even
+here." Andy and I lay on our oars and listened. There it was surely
+enough, deep and distant but unmistakable--the old familiar drum-roll of
+a big river beating for the charge. It was tremendous music--heavy,
+air-quivering, earth-shaking; more the diapason of a great cataract than
+an ordinary rapid, it seemed to me. I was right. Surprise is anything
+but an ordinary rapid.
+
+We pulled for a half hour or more down a broad stretch of slackening
+water that was more like a lake than a river. Out of the looming shadows
+of the banks for a space, mountain heights that had been cut off leaped
+boldly into view, and to left and right lifted a lofty sky-line notched
+with snowy peaks rising from corrugated fields of bottle-green glacier
+ice. Mt. Sanford, loftiest of the Selkirks, closed the end of the bosky
+perspective of Gold Creek, and the coldly chiselled pyramids of Lyell,
+Bryce and Columbia pricked out the high points on the Continental
+Divide of the Rockies. We held the vivid double panorama--or quadruple,
+really, for both ranges were reflected in the quiet water--for as long
+as it took us to pull to a beach at the narrowing lower end of the long
+lake-like stretch above the rapids, finally to lose it as suddenly as it
+had been opened to us behind the imminently-rearing river walls.
+
+The two trappers of whom the fire-ranger at Beavermouth had spoken were
+waiting for us on the bank. They had permits for trapping on a couple of
+the creeks below Kinbasket Lake, and were getting down early in order to
+lay out their lines by the time the season opened a month or so hence.
+They had been packing their stuff over the three-mile portage to the
+foot of the rapids during the last three weeks, and now, with nothing
+left to go but their canoes, were free to give us a hand if we wanted
+them. Blackmore replied that he could save time and labour by running
+and lining the rapids. "Besides," he added with a grin, "I take it these
+movie people have come out to get pictures of a river trip, not an
+overland journey." The trappers took the dig in good part, but one of
+them riposted neatly. Since he was out for furs, he said, and was not
+taking pictures or boot-legging, time was not much of an object. The
+main thing with him was to reach his destination with his winter's
+outfit. If all the river was like Surprise Rapids he would be quite
+content to go overland all the way. Neither of them made any comments on
+the stage of the water or offered any suggestions in connection with the
+job we had ahead. That was one comfort of travelling with Blackmore. In
+all matters pertaining to river work his judgment appeared to be beyond
+criticism. If he was tackling a stunt with a considerable element of
+risk in it, that was his own business. No one else knew the dangers, and
+how to avoid them, so well as he.
+
+Blackmore looked to the trim of the boat carefully before shoving off,
+putting her down a bit more by the stern it seemed to me. He cautioned
+me on only one point as we pulled across the quarter of mile to where
+the banks ran close together and the quiet water ended. "Don't never dip
+deep in the white water, and 'specially in the swirls," he said,
+stressing each word. "If you do, a whirlpool is more'n likely to carry
+your oar-blade under the boat and tear out half the side 'fore you can
+clear your oar-lock. That's the way that patched gunnel next you came to
+get smashed." As we were about at the point where it is well to confine
+all the talking done in the boat to one man, I refrained from replying
+that I had been told the same thing in a dozen or so languages, on four
+different continents, and by "skippers" with black, yellow and copper as
+well as white skins, at fairly frequent intervals during the last
+fifteen years. There were enough slips I might make, but that of dipping
+deep in rough water was hardly likely to be one of them.
+
+The rumble of the rapid grew heavier as we proceeded, but only a single
+flickering white "eyelash" revealed the imminent ambush lurking beyond
+the black rocks. The current accelerated rapidly as the walls closed in,
+but ran easily, effortlessly, unripplingly, and with an almost uncanny
+absence of swirls and eddies. "Have plenty way on her 'fore she hits
+the suds," cautioned Blackmore, and Andy and I grunted in unison as we
+leaned a few more pounds of beef onto our bending spruces. That started
+our inside elbows to bumping, but without a word each of us sidled along
+an inch or two toward his gunwale to get well set while yet there was
+time.
+
+With an easy bob--quick like a rowboat rides the bow wave of a steamer,
+but smoother, easier in its lift--we ran into the head of the rapid.
+There was a swift V-shaped chute of smooth jade-green water; then we
+slapped right into the "suds." High-headed waves slammed against the
+bows and threw spray all over the boat and far astern of it. But they
+lacked jolt. They had too much froth and not enough green water to make
+them really formidable. We were in rough but not really bad water. I
+tried to grin at Blackmore to show him I understood the situation and
+was enjoying it highly; but his eyes, pin-points of concentration under
+bent brows, were directed over my head and far in advance. Plainly, he
+was thinking as well as looking well ahead.
+
+Reassured by the smart way we were slashing through that first riffle, I
+ventured to steal a look over my shoulder. In the immediate foreground
+Roos, with his waterproof buttoned close around his neck, was shaking
+the spray out of his hair and watching for a chance to snap with his
+kodak. Ahead there was perhaps another hundred yards of about the same
+sort of water as that in which we were running; then a yeasty welter of
+white where the river disappeared round a black cliff into what seemed a
+narrow gorge. Opposite the cliff the river wall sloped slightly and was
+thickly covered with a dense growth of evergreen. The heavy roar we had
+been hearing for hours was still muffled. Evidently the main disturbance
+was somewhere beyond the bend at the cliff.
+
+The thunder of falling water grew louder as we headed down toward the
+white smother in the embrasure of the bend, and it was from Blackmore's
+lips rather than from any words I heard that I gathered that he was
+calling for "More way!" Still keeping fairly good stroke, Andy and I
+quickly had her going enough faster than the current to give the big
+paddle all the steerage "grip" Blackmore could ask for. Swinging her
+sharply to the right, he headed her past the out-reaching rock claws at
+the foot of the cliff, and, with a sudden blaze of light and an
+ear-shattering rush of sound we were into the first and worst fall of
+Surprise Rapids.
+
+That dual onslaught of light and sound had something of the paralyzing
+suddenness of that which occurs when a furnace door is thrown wide and
+eye and ear are assailed at the same instant with the glare and the roar
+from within. One moment we were running in a shadowed gorge with a heavy
+but deadened and apparently distant rumble sounding somewhere ahead; the
+next we were in the heart of a roar that fairly scoured our ear-drums,
+and blinking in a fluttering white light that seemed to sear the
+eyeballs. The one hurried glance that I threw behind me as I began
+floundering on the end of my kicking oar photographed an intensely vivid
+picture on my memory.
+
+What had been merely a swiftly-flowing river with a streak of silver
+riffles down the middle had changed to a tumultuous tumble of cascades
+that gleamed in solid white from bank to bank like the churned snow of a
+freshly descended avalanche. There was no green water whatever; not even
+a streak that was tinged with green. All that relieved the coruscating,
+sun-silvered tumble of whiteness were the black tips of jutting
+bedrock, sticking up through the foam they had churned. The deeply
+shadowed western wall, hanging above the river like a dusky pall, served
+only to accentuate by contrast the intense white light that danced above
+the cascade. It was as though the golden yellow had been filtered out of
+the sunlight in the depths, and only the pure blue-white of calcium
+reflected back into the atmosphere.
+
+Heavy as was the fall of the river over the stretch we had now entered,
+I could just make out a point perhaps a half mile farther down where it
+dropped out of sight entirely. That, I told myself, must be the place
+where there was an unbroken reef of bedrock all the way across the
+stream, and where there was an abrupt drop of eight or ten feet. A great
+throbbing rumble cutting into the slightly higher-keyed roar that
+already engulfed us also seemed to indicate that the steepest pitch had
+not yet been reached. I had, of course, seen worse water than this, but
+certainly had never (as appeared to be the case now) been irretrievably
+committed to running it. I had heard that it was quite unrunnable in any
+kind of a boat, it certainly looked unrunnable, and I seemed to have the
+impression that Blackmore had said he was not intending to run it. Yet
+here we were into it, and without (so far as I could see) anything to do
+but drive ahead. However, that was Blackmore's affair....
+
+The rather smart team-work which Andy and I had maintained for a while
+dissolved like the morning mists as we banged in among the walloping
+rollers at the head of the real cascade. Both of us were in
+difficulties, but his round-armed thumping stroke seemed rather more
+true to form than the shattered remnants of my fine straight-armed
+slide-and-recover, with its dainty surface-skimming "feather." Nothing
+but the sharpest of dabs with the tip of an oar can get any hold in a
+current of fifteen to twenty miles an hour, and the short, wristy pull
+(which is all there is time for) doesn't impart a lot of impulse to a
+thirty-foot boat. That, and the staggering buffets on the bows, for it
+was solid, lumpy water that was coming over us now, quickly reduced our
+headway. (Headway _through_ the current, I mean; our headway floating
+_in_ the current was terrific.) This was, of course, a serious handicap
+to Blackmore, as it deprived him of much of the steerage-way upon which
+he was dependent for quick handling of the boat. The difficulty of
+maintaining steerage-way in rough water with oars makes a bow as well as
+a stern paddle very desirable in running bad rapids. The bow paddler can
+keep a very sharp lookout for rocks immediately ahead, and, in a pinch,
+can jerk the boat bodily to one side or the other, where oarsmen have to
+_swing_ it. However, Blackmore knew just what he was going up against,
+and had made the best disposition possible of his available crew.
+
+I was too busy keeping myself from being bucked off the thwart by my
+floundering oar to steal more than that first hurried look over my
+shoulder. It was not my concern what was ahead anyway. All I had to do
+was to take a slap at the top of a wave every time I saw a chance, and
+be ready to back, or throw my weight into a heavy stroke, when Blackmore
+needed help to turn her this way or that. My signal--a jerk of the
+steersman's head to the left--came sooner than I expected. It looked a
+sheer impossibility to drive through the maze of rocks to the bank, yet
+that--after a long, anxious look ahead--was evidently what he had
+decided to attempt. As it was my oar he called on, I knew it was the
+right or east bank, a sharply sloping reach of black bedrock littered
+with water-scoured boulders.
+
+By the way Blackmore was leaning onto his paddle I knew that he needed
+all the pull I could give him to bring her round. Swinging back hard, I
+threw every pound I had onto my oar. For an instant the lack of
+resistance as the blade tore through foam nearly sent me reeling
+backwards; then it bit into solid water, and, under impulse of oar and
+paddle, the boat pivoted through more than half a quadrant and shot
+straight for the bank. Right in where the black rock tips were scattered
+like the raisins in a pudding he headed her. There was no room to use
+the oars now, but she still carried more than enough way to send her to
+the bank. Or rather, it would have carried her through if the course
+had been clear. Missing two or three rocks by inches, she rasped half
+her length along another, and onto a fourth--lurking submerged by a
+foot--she jammed full tilt. It was her port bow that struck, and from
+the crash it seemed impossible that she could have escaped holing. Andy
+went over the side so suddenly that, until I saw him balancing on a rock
+and trying to keep the boat from backing off into the current, I thought
+he had been thrown overboard by the impact. Thumping her bow with his
+boot, he reported her leaking slightly but not much damaged. Then,
+swinging her round into an eddy, he jumped off into the waist-deep water
+and led her unresistingly up against the bank. It was astonishing to see
+so wild a creature so suddenly become tame.
+
+We would have to "line down" from here to the foot of the first fall,
+Blackmore said. While Roos was setting up his camera the veteran
+explained that he could have run four or five hundred yards farther
+down, right to the brink of the "tip off," but that he preferred getting
+in out of the wet where he had a good landing. I agreed with him
+heartily--without putting it in words. But if that was his idea of a
+"good landing place," I hoped he would continue to avoid bad ones.
+
+The basic principles of "lining down" are the same on all rivers. Where
+water is too rough to run, it is the last resort before portaging. As
+generally practised, one man, walking along the bank, lets the boat down
+with a line, while another--or as many others as are available--keeps it
+off the rocks with poles. "Lining" can be effected more rapidly and with
+much less effort if one man remains in the boat and fends off with his
+pole from there. This is much the better method where the fall is not
+too great and the water comparatively warm. On the upper Columbia, where
+the breaking away of a boat from a line means its almost inevitable loss
+with all on board, it is resorted to only when absolutely necessary, and
+when a man of great experience is handling the line. It takes a natural
+aptitude and years of experience for a man to master all the intricacies
+of "lining." I shall not endeavour to enumerate even the few that I am
+familiar with; but the one thing beyond all others to avoid is letting
+the bow of the boat swing outwards when the stern is held up by a rock.
+This brings the full current of the river against its up-stream side,
+exerting a force that a dozen men could not hold against, let alone one
+or two. As Blackmore was noted for his mastery of the "lining" game,
+however, we had no apprehension of trouble in this department.
+
+Nothing of the outfit save the moving picture camera was removed from
+the boat at this juncture. Coiling his line--something over a hundred
+feet of half-inch Manila hemp--over his left arm, Blackmore signalled
+Andy to shove off. Paying out the line through his right hand, he let
+the eddy carry the boat out into the drag of the current. Armed with
+long pike-poles, Andy and I ran on ahead to keep it clear of the banks
+as it swung in. This was easy enough as long as we had only the bank to
+contend with. But almost immediately the trouble which makes Surprise
+Rapids one of the nastiest stretches on any river in the world to line
+began to develop. This came from the submerged rocks which crop up all
+along between the banks and the deeper water of mid-channel.
+
+Pulling her up and releasing her with a hand that reminded me of that of
+a consummate natural horseman, Blackmore nursed the boat along and
+managed to avoid most of these obstructions. But every now and then she
+would wedge between a close-set pair of boulders and resist the force of
+the current to drive her on. At such times it was up to Andy and me to
+wade in and try to dislodge her with our poles. Failing this, we had to
+wade out still farther and lift her through. Andy always took the lead
+in this lifting business, claiming that it required a lot of experience
+to know just the instant to stop shoving at the boat as she began to
+move, and start bracing against the current to keep from getting carried
+away. I have no doubt he was right. In any event he would never let me
+come out until he had tugged and hauled for several minutes trying to
+budge her alone, and even then--notwithstanding his four or five inches
+less of height--he always took his station in the deepest hole. Two or
+three times, shaking himself like a Newfoundland, he came out wet to the
+armpits with the icy water. As the sun was beating hotly upon the rocks,
+however, neither of us felt the cold much that afternoon. A few days
+later it was another story.
+
+We made something like eight or nine hundred yards before we
+stopped--right to the head of the roaring chute that ran down to the
+sheer drop-off. Roos--always at his best when there was plenty of
+unpremeditated action going on, so that "directorial" worries sat
+lightly on him--followed us closely all the way. It was hard enough
+keeping one's footing on those ice-slippery boulders at all; how he
+managed it with something like a hundred pounds of camera and tripod
+over his shoulder and a bulky case in one hand is more than I can
+figure. But he did it, keeping close enough so that he got just about
+everything without having to ask us to do it over again. This latter was
+a good deal of a comfort, especially in those waist-deep-in-the-Columbia
+lifting stunts. I had always hated "lining down," even in the tropics,
+and I already saw that what we had ahead wasn't going to modify my
+feelings for the better.
+
+At the head of that rough-and-tumble cascade leading to the fall,
+Blackmore decided that we would have to unload the boat completely
+before trying to let her down. It was always bad business there at the
+best, he said, and the present stage of water made the rocks quite a bit
+worse than when either higher or lower. If we hustled, there ought to be
+time to get through before dark, and then a half mile run would take us
+to a good camping place near the head of the second fall. Here Roos
+intervened to point out that the sun was already behind the western
+wall, and asking if it wouldn't be possible to camp where we were. He
+wanted to keep the "continuity" of this particular piece of "lining"
+unbroken, and would need good light to finish it in. Blackmore said he
+could manage the camp if we thought our ear-drums would stand the roar.
+
+So we unloaded the boat, and Blackmore leading her into the quietest
+pool he could find, moored her for the night. As there was a couple of
+feet of "lop" even there, this was rather a nice operation. With lines
+to stern and bow, and held off from the rocks on either side by lashed
+pike-poles, she looked for all the world like some fractious horse that
+had been secured to prevent its banging itself up against the sides of
+its stall. It was a beastly job, carrying the fifteen or twenty heavy
+parcels of the outfit a hundred yards over those huge polished boulders
+to the bit of sand-bar where camp was to be pitched. My old
+ankles--endlessly sprained during my football days--protested every step
+of my several round trips, and I congratulated myself that I had had the
+foresight to bring leather braces to stiffen them. Reeking with
+perspiration after I had thrown down my last load, I decided to use the
+river for a bath that I would have to take anyway on shifting from my
+wet clothes. The half-glacial water was not a lot above freezing, of
+course; but that is of small moment when one has plenty of animal heat
+stored up to react against it. My worst difficulty was from the
+bumpiness of my rocky bathing pool, which also had a rather troublesome
+undercurrent pulling out toward the racing chute of the main channel.
+Blackmore, pop-eyed with astonishment, came down to watch the show. It
+was the first time he had ever seen a man take a voluntary bath in
+Surprise Rapids, he said. And all the others--the involuntary
+bathers--they had picked up later in Kinbasket Lake.
+
+That was about the most restricted space I can recall ever having camped
+in. The great boulders of the high-water channel extended right up to
+the foot of the mountain wall and neither the one nor the other afforded
+enough level space to set a doll's house. A four-by-six patch of sand
+was the most extensive area that seemed to offer, and, doubling this in
+size by cutting away a rotting spruce stump and a section of fallen
+birch, there was just enough room for the little shed-tent. It was a
+snug and comfortable camp, though, and highly picturesque, perched as it
+was almost in the spray of the cascade. The noise was the worst thing,
+and we would have had to stay there even longer than we did to become
+quite used to it. All of us were shouting in each other's ears for days
+afterwards, and even trying to converse in signs in the idyllic quietude
+of Kinbasket Lake.
+
+The storm which Blackmore's seer-like vision had descried in the
+blue-green auroral flutters of a couple of nights previously arrived
+quite on schedule. Although the western sky had glowed for half an hour
+after sunset with that supposedly optimistic tinge of primrose and
+terra-cotta, it was pouring before midnight, and the next morning there
+was truly almost as much water in the air as in the river. Pictures were
+out of the question, so there was nothing to do but hang on until the
+weather cleared. Leaving Roos whittling and Andy struggling to divert a
+swelling young river that was trying to sluice away the sand on which
+the tent was pitched, Blackmore and I pulled on our waterproofs and
+clambered a mile through the woods to a camp of C. P. R. engineers.
+Blackmore wanted to get an extra axe; I to get some further data on the
+fall of the river. We found a crude cable-ferry thrown across just below
+the foot of the big fall, and a rough, boggy path from the eastern end
+of it took us to the camp of three or four comfortable cabins.
+
+The Canadian Pacific, I learned--both on account of the high and
+increasing cost of its oil fuel and because of the trouble experienced
+in clearing their tunnels from smoke--was contemplating the
+electrification of all of its mountain divisions. There were numerous
+high falls along the line where power could be economically developed,
+but it was not considered desirable that the scenic beauty of these
+should be marred by diversion. Besides the Columbia, in a hundred miles
+of the Big Bend, offered the opportunity for developing more
+hydro-electric energy than all the west of Canada could use in the next
+twenty years. The Surprise Rapids project alone would provide far more
+power than the Canadian Pacific could use for traction, and it was
+expected that there would be a large surplus for municipal and
+industrial uses along the line. "All this, of course," the engineer at
+the camp explained, "in the event the company decides to go ahead with
+the development. Raising the money will probably be the greatest
+difficulty, and in the present state of the financial market it is hard
+to see how much can be done for two or three years. In the meantime we
+are measuring the flow of the river every day, and will have accurate
+data to go by when the time for construction comes."
+
+I learned that the total length of Surprise Rapids was three and a third
+miles, in which distance there was a fall of nearly one hundred feet.
+The greatest drop was in that stretch which we were waiting to "line,"
+where there was a fall of twenty-one feet in seven hundred and fifty. At
+the second cascade there was a fall of fifteen feet in twelve hundred,
+and at the third, twenty-five feet in twenty-five hundred. It was
+planned to build the dam across the very narrow canyon near the foot of
+the lower fall, making it of such a height that a lake would be backed
+up as far as Beavermouth, incidentally, of course, wiping out the whole
+of Surprise Rapids. "They can't wipe it out any too soon to suit me,"
+Blackmore commented on hearing this. "It'd have saved me a lot of work
+and many a wetting if they'd wiped it out twenty year ago. And that's
+saying nothing of the men drownded there. It was that big whirlpool down
+through the trees there that did for Walter Steinhoff."
+
+We had left the camp now and were picking our way down the narrow trail
+to the foot of the second fall. I had been waiting to hear Blackmore
+speak of Steinhoff for two reasons: first, because I was curious to know
+how much truth there was in those dramatic versions of his death I had
+heard in Golden, and also because the subject would lead up naturally to
+that of the buried whisky. This latter was rather too delicate a matter
+to broach offhand, and I had therefore been carefully watching for a
+favourable opening. Now that it had come, I was quick to take advantage
+of it.
+
+"Tell me about Steinhoff," I said. "He was on some kind of a
+boot-legging stunt, wasn't he?" I was just a bit diffident about
+bringing up that drink-running business, for although I had been told
+that Blackmore was a smooth hand at the game himself, I had a sort of
+sneaking idea that it was the kind of a thing a man ought to be
+sensitive about, like having had smallpox or a sister in the movies. I
+need not have worried, however. "You bet he was boot-legging," Blackmore
+replied; "and so was I. Both outfits heading for _Tete Jaune Cache_ on
+the Grand Trunk, and racing to get there first. That was what got him
+into trouble--trying to catch up with me after I had passed him by
+running and lining the first fall (the one we are doing the same way
+now) while he had portaged. I reckon it was his first intention to
+portage all the way to the foot of the second fall, but when he saw me
+slip by in the water he put in his canoes at the foot of the first fall
+and came after me."
+
+We had come out above the river now, and I saw a savage stretch of
+foam-white water falling in a roaring cascade to a mighty whirlpool that
+filled all of the bottom of the steeply-walled amphitheatre formed by a
+right-angling bend of the Columbia. Thirty feet or more above the
+present level of the whirlpool were the marks of its swirling scour at
+mid-summer high-water. Awesome enough now (and it was not any the less
+so to me since we still had to take the boat through it), I could see at
+once that, with the power of the floods driving it round and round at
+turbine speed, it must indeed be a veritable thing of terror. It was
+into this whirlpool, as well as others at Revelstoke Canyon and Death
+Rapids, that whole uprooted pines were said to be sucked in flood-time,
+to reappear only as battered logs many miles below. There seemed hardly
+enough water there at the present to make this possible; but the story
+was at least credible to me now, which was more than it had been
+previously.
+
+"So this is your 'All Day Sucker,'" I remarked carelessly, in a studied
+attempt to keep Blackmore from noting how greatly the savage maelstrom
+had impressed me. Seeing through the bluff, he grinned indulgently and
+resumed his story of Steinhoff as soon as we had moved far enough round
+the whirlpool to make his voice comfortably heard above the roar of the
+cascade. A line had parted--sawed through in working round a rocky point
+a few hundred yards above--and Steinhoff's big Peterboro was swept out
+into the current. Striking a rock, it turned over and threw him into the
+water. He made a brave effort to swim out, keeping his head above water
+most of the way down the cascade. The whirlpool had been too much for
+him, however. He was fighting hard to keep up when he was carried into
+the vortex and sucked under. Blackmore took no stock in the story of the
+dramatic gesture of farewell. "A man don't pull that grand opry stuff
+with the cold of the Columbia biting into his spine," was the way he put
+it.
+
+Then I told him about the whisky--spoke to him as a son to his father.
+And he, meeting me point for point in all seriousness of spirit,
+answered as father to son. He thought there was little chance of finding
+anything along the river. He had not done so himself for a number of
+years--and he hadn't been overlooking any bets, either. There was, of
+course, still much good stuff buried in the drift below Middle River,
+but it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack trying to find
+it. But the cache above Canoe River--ah, that was another matter!
+Captain Armstrong could be absolutely depended upon in a matter of that
+kind, and the directions sounded right as rain. Yes, he quite understood
+that I should want to take it all to California with me. He would want
+to do the same thing if he were in my place. It would be easy as picking
+pippins getting it over the line. He could tell me three different ways,
+all of them dead sure. He would not think of taking any of it for
+himself. The rum we had would be ample for the trip, except in extreme
+emergency. That "thirty over-proof" went a long way. And I need not
+worry in the least about Andy. He wasn't a teetotaler exactly, but he
+never took too much under any provocation. Yes, I could depend upon the
+both of them to nose out that stuff at the old ferry. Put it there! We
+looked each other square in the eye, and shook hands solemnly there
+above the big whirlpool which was originally responsible for the good
+fortune that had come to us--or rather to me. Men have clasped hands and
+sworn to stand by each other in lesser things. At least that was the way
+it seemed to me at the moment. I could have embraced the fine old
+woodsman for his loyalty and generosity of spirit. I always called him
+Bob after that.
+
+The rain thinned down and became a light Scotch mist as we picked our
+way back to camp. That struck me as being a good omen--it's being
+"Scotch," I mean. Later it cleared up entirely, and there was a glorious
+fairweather sunset of glowing saffron and flaming poppy red. To the
+northwest--Canoe River-ward--there poured a wonderful light of pale
+liquescent amber. I had never seen such a light on land or sea, I told
+myself; or anywhere else, for that matter--except when holding a glass
+of Scotch up against the sun. That was another good omen. Funny thing,
+but I can still recall the date offhand, so indelibly had the promise of
+that day impressed itself on my mind. It was the first of October.
+
+Although it snowed an inch or two during the night, the following
+morning fulfilled the promise of the sunset by breaking bright and
+cloudless. We were to line the boat down empty for a couple of hundred
+yards, and then load up again and line about an equal distance of
+slightly better water. This would take us to the brink of the abrupt
+fall, where both outfit and boat had to be portaged over the rocks for a
+short distance. That would leave us clear for the short, swift run to
+the head of the second fall.
+
+Cutting himself a "sylvan frame" through the pines on a point a hundred
+yards below the camp, Roos set up to shoot the first piece of lining. It
+was a mean looking job, for the river was tumbling in a half-cataract
+all the way, turning and squirming like a wounded dragon. I could see
+Blackmore was a bit worried over it, and, as the sequel proved, with
+good reason. I never quite understood his explanation of the cause of
+what happened, but I believe he claimed it was due to his obeying
+(against his better judgment) Roos' signal to keep the boat in fairly
+close to the bank so that she would not pass "out of the
+picture"--beyond the range of his lens, that is. At any rate, the boat
+had hardly started before she swung broadside to the current and,
+clapping like a limpet upon a big round boulder, hung there immovable.
+Heeled till her starboard side showed like the belly of a sharply
+sheering shark, her port gunwale dipped deep into the swirling current.
+In a wink she had taken all the water she would hold with the half-heel
+that was on her--enough, perhaps, to fill her half full when on an even
+keel.
+
+It was a case for instant action--a case where the nearest available man
+had to follow his first hunch without thinking it over or counting the
+cost. A few seconds more on that rock, and one of two things must happen
+to the boat: either she would settle a few inches farther, fill
+completely and sink, or else the force of the current would tear her to
+pieces where she was. Blackmore was tugging at his line and shouting
+directions, but the roar stopped the words at his lips. Andy did not
+need to be told what was needed, however. For myself, I was not quite
+sure of what to do, and less so of how to do it. Also, I doubted my
+ability to keep my footing in the current. In short, I found myself
+thinking and weighing chances in one of those emergencies where a man to
+be worth his salt has no business to do either.
+
+There was only one place where a man could get at the boat, and Andy
+beat me to it by a mile. (I would have seen to that even had he moved a
+lot slower than he did.) He was rather more than waist deep, but quite
+safe as long as the boat stuck where she was. Unfortunately, getting her
+off was the very thing he was there for. It was a good deal like a man's
+having to saw off the branch on which he sat. But Andy never
+hesitated--probably because there was not time to think and reckon the
+consequences. Setting his heavy shoulders under her bilge, he gave a
+mighty upward heave. She shuddered through her long red length, and
+then, as the kick of the current got under her submerged gunwale, shot
+up and off as though discharged from a catapult. The job had been well
+done, too, for she came off with her stern down stream, which made it
+comparatively easy for Blackmore to check her way with his line, even
+half-filled as she was.
+
+Whether he failed to recover as the boat was swept away, or whether he
+lost his balance in avoiding entanglement in the line, Andy was not
+quite sure. His first recollection after releasing the boat, he said,
+was of floundering in the water and of finding that his first kick or
+two did not strike bottom. The thing that is always possible when a man
+has lifted off a boat in a swift current had happened: he had lost his
+footing, and in just about the one worst place in the whole Columbia.
+
+Blackmore, dragged down the bank after his floundering boat, was not in
+a position where he could throw the end of his line to any purpose. I
+waded in and reached out my pike-pole, but Andy's back was to it the
+only time he came within grabbing distance. The only thing that saved
+him was luck--the fact that the current at the point he lost his footing
+did not swirl directly into the main chute, but did a little
+double-shuffle of its own along the side of an eddy before taking the
+big leap. Hooking into the solid green water of that eddy, Andy found
+himself a toehold, and presently clambered out. He had not swallowed
+any water, and did not seem much chilled or winded. A violent sickness
+of the stomach, where the cold had arrested digestive operations, was
+about the only ill effect. What seemed to annoy him most was the fact
+that all of his pockets were turned wrong-side-out, with all of their
+contents--save only his watch, which had been secured by a
+thong--missing. Blackmore nodded grimly to me as he came up after
+securing the boat. "_Now_ perhaps you'll believe what I told you about
+the old Columbia picking pockets," he said dryly.
+
+Roos came down complaining that he had been too far away to pick up any
+details of the show even with his "six-inch" lens and cursing his luck
+for not having been set up closer at hand. Considering what he had
+missed, I thought he showed unwonted delicacy in not asking Blackmore
+and Andy to stage it over again for him.
+
+Bailing out the boat, we found one oar missing, but this we subsequently
+recovered from an eddy below. That left our net loss for the mishap only
+the contents of Andy's pockets and the picture Roos did not get. Some
+might have figured in the extra ration of rum Andy drew to straighten
+out the kinks of his outraged stomach; but that seemed hardly the
+sporting way to look at it, especially with our prospects in the drink
+line being what they were.
+
+[Illustration: "SHOOTING" THE FIRST BIT OF LINING AT SURPRISE RAPIDS
+(_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: THE CAMP WHERE THE ROAR OF THE RAPIDS DEAFENED US
+(_centre_)]
+
+[Illustration: WHERE STEINHOF WAS DROWNED (_below_)]
+
+[Illustration: WHERE ANDY JUST MISSED DROWNING IN SURPRISE RAPIDS
+(_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: LOOKING THROUGH THE PINES AT SURPRISE RAPIDS (_centre_)]
+
+[Illustration: HEAD OF SECOND FALL OF SURPRISE RAPIDS (_below_)]
+
+The portage at the fall proved a mighty stiff bit of hard labour. It was
+one thing to skid the boat along on the pine needles at Beavermouth with
+a couple of dozen men pushing it, and quite another for three men to
+take it out of the water, lift it over forty or fifty feet of boulders,
+and put it back into the river again. By the free use of rollers--cut
+from young firs--we managed, however, Roos cranking his camera through
+all of the operation and telling us to "Make it snappy!" and not to be
+"foot-hogs." Almost worse than portaging the boat was the unspeakably
+toil-some task of packing the outfit over the boulders for a couple of
+hundred yards to where there was a quiet spot to load again. Every step
+had to be balanced for, and even then one was down on his knees half the
+time. With my numerous bad joints--there are but three from shoulder to
+heel that had not been sprained or dislocated from two to a dozen
+times--this boulder clambering work was the only thing in connection
+with the whole voyage that I failed to enjoy.
+
+A half mile run with an eight-mile current took us to the head of the
+second fall, all but the first hundred yards of which had to be lined.
+Landing this time on the west bank, we worked the boat down without much
+difficulty past the jutting point where the line of Steinhoff's boat had
+parted. Blackmore had hoped to line her all the way down without
+unloading, but the last fifty yards before the cascade tumbled into the
+big whirlpool were so thickly studded with rocks along the bank that he
+finally decided not to risk it. As there were thirty or forty feet of
+deep pools and eddies between the rocks on which she was stuck and the
+nearest stretch of unsubmerged boulders, unloading was a particularly
+awkward piece of work. Finally everything was shifted out onto a
+flat-topped rock, and Roos and I were left to get this ashore while
+Andy and Blackmore completed lining down. It was an especially nice job,
+taking the boat down that last steep pitch into the big whirlpool and
+then working her round a huge square-faced rock to a quiet eddy, and I
+should greatly like to have seen it. Unluckily, what with stumbling over
+hidden boulders and being down with my nose in the water half of the
+time, and the thin blue mist that hovered round me the rest of the time
+from what I said as a consequence of stumbling, I could only guess at
+the finesse and highly technical skill with which the difficult
+operation was accomplished. The worst part appeared to be getting her
+down the fall. Once clear of the submerged rocks, Blackmore seemed to
+make the whirlpool do his work for him. Poised on a projecting log of
+the jam packed on top of the jutting rock, he paid out a hundred feet of
+line and let the racing swirl of the spinning pool carry the boat far
+out beyond all obstructions. Then, gently and delicately as if playing a
+salmon on a trout rod, he nursed her into an eddy and simply coiled his
+line and let the back-setting current carry her in to the bit of sandy
+beach where he wanted to tie her up for the night. It takes a lifetime
+of swift-water experience to master the intricacies of an operation like
+that.
+
+It was still early in the afternoon, but with a thick mist falling
+Blackmore thought best to stop where we were. The next available camping
+place was below the half-mile-long third cascade, and no old river man
+likes to go into a rapid when the visibility is poor. We pitched the
+tent in a hole cut out of the thick-growing woods on a low bench at the
+inner angle of the bend. Everything was soaking wet, but it was well
+back from the falls, and for the first time in two days we were able to
+talk to each other without shouting. Not that we did so, however; from
+sheer force of habit we continued roaring into each other's ears for a
+week or more yet.
+
+The great pile of logs on top of the flat-topped rock above the
+whirlpool had fascinated me from the first. Over a hundred feet square,
+forty feet high, and packed as though by a titanic hydraulic press, it
+must have contained thousands and thousands of cords of wood. On
+Blackmore's positive assurance as a timberman that there was nothing in
+the pile of any value for lumber, even in the improbable contingency
+that a flood would ever carry it beyond the big drifts of Kinbasket
+Lake, I decided to make a bonfire of it. Never had I had such an
+opportunity, both on the score of the sheer quantity of combustible and
+the spectacular setting for illumination.
+
+The whirlpool was _whouf-whoufing_ greedily as it wolfed the whole
+cascade when I clambered up just before dark to touch off my beacon. It
+was fairly dry at the base, and a pile of crisp shavings off a slab from
+some distant up-river sawmill caught quickly. From a spark of red
+flickering dimly through the mist when we sat down to supper, this had
+grown to a roaring furnace by the time we had relaxed to pipes and
+cigarettes. An hour later the flames had eaten a clear chimney up
+through the jam and the red light from their leaping tips was beginning
+to drive back the encompassing darkness. Roos, who had read about India,
+thought it would have been fine if we only had a few widows to cast
+themselves on the flaming pyre and commit _suttee_. Andy and Blackmore,
+both sentimental bachelors, were a unit in maintaining that it would be
+a shame to waste good widows that way, especially on the practically
+widowless Big Bend. All three were arguing the point rather heatedly
+when they crawled into their blankets. For myself, with a vision of the
+wonder about to unroll impinging on my brain, I could not think of
+turning in for hours yet.
+
+By ten o'clock the pile was well alight underneath, but it was not until
+nearly midnight, when the mist had turned to snow and a strong wind had
+sprung up, that it was blazing full strength. I hardly know what would
+have been the direction of the wind in the upper air, but, cupped in the
+embrasure of the bend, it was sucking round and round, like the big
+whirlpool, only more fitfully and with an upward rather than a downward
+pull. Now it would drag the leaping flame-column a hundred feet in the
+air, twisting it into lambent coils and fining the tip down to a sharp
+point, like that of the Avenging Angel's Sword of Fire in the old
+Biblical prints, now sweep it out in a shivering sheet above the
+whirlpool, now swing it evenly round and round as though the flame,
+arrow-pointed and attenuated, were the radium-coated hand of a
+Gargantuan clock being swiftly revolved in the dark.
+
+But the wonder of wonders was less the fire itself than the marvellous
+transformations wrought by the light it threw. And the staggering
+contrasts! The illuminated snow clouds drifting along the frosted-pink
+curtain of the tree-clad mountain walls made a roseate fairyland; even
+the foam covered sweep of the cascade, its roar drowned in the sharp
+crackle of the flames, was softened and smoothened until it seemed to
+billow like the sunset-flushed canvas of a ship becalmed: but the
+whirlpool, its sinister character only accentuated by the conflict of
+cross-shadows and reflections, was a veritable Pit of Damnation, choking
+and coughing as it swirled and rolled in streaky coils of ox-blood, in
+fire-stabbed welters of fluid coal-tar.
+
+Wrapped in my hooded duffle coat, I paced the snow-covered moss and
+exulted in the awesome spectacle until long after midnight. I have never
+envied Nero very poignantly since. Given a fiddle and a few Christians,
+I would have had all that was his on the greatest night of his life--and
+then some. Father Tiber never had a whirlpool like mine, even on the day
+Horatius swam it "heavy with his armour and spent with changing blows."
+
+The next morning, though too heavily overcast for pictures, was still
+clear enough to travel. The head riffles of the third fall of Surprise
+Rapids began a little below our camp, so that we started lining almost
+immediately. Three or four times we pulled across the river, running
+short stretches and lining now down one side and now the other. There
+was not so great a rate of drop as at the first and second falls, but
+the whole stream was choked with barely submerged rocks and lining was
+difficult on account of the frequent cliffs.
+
+It was about half way down that I all but messed things up by failing to
+get into action quickly enough at a crossing. The fault, in a way, was
+Blackmore's, because of his failure to tell me in advance what was
+expected, and then--when the order had to be passed instantly--for
+standing rather too much on ceremony in the manner of passing it. We
+were about to pull to the opposite side to line down past a riffle which
+Blackmore reckoned too rough to risk running. There was about a ten-mile
+current, and it would have required the smartest kind of a get-away and
+the hardest kind of pulling to make the other bank without being carried
+down onto the riffle. The boat was headed up-stream, and, as Blackmore
+had not told me he intended to cross, I took it for granted he was going
+to run. So, when Roos shoved off and jumped in, I rested on my oar in
+order that Andy could bring the boat sharply round and head it down
+stream. Blackmore's excited yell was the first intimation I had that
+anything was wrong. "Pull like hell! You!... Mister Freeman!"
+
+That "Mister," and his momentary pause before uttering it, defeated the
+purpose of the order. I pulled all right, and so hard that my oar-blade
+picked up a very sizable hunk of river and flung it in Blackmore's face.
+That upset my balance, and I could not recover quickly enough to keep
+the boat's head to the current. With characteristic presence of mind,
+Blackmore changed tactics instantly. "Got to chance it now!" he shouted,
+and threw such a pull onto his steering paddle that the handle bent to
+more than half a right angle where he laid it over the gunwale. There
+was one jutting rock at the head of the riffle that _had_ to be missed;
+the rest was all a matter of whether or not the next couple of hundred
+yards of submerged boulders were deeply enough covered to let us pass
+_over_ them. There was no way of avoiding them, no chance to lay a
+course _between_ them.
+
+Blackmore was a bit wilder about the eyes than I had seen him before;
+but he had stopped swearing and his mouth was set in a hard, determined
+line. Andy, with chesty grunts, was fairly flailing the water with
+swift, short-arm strokes. I did not need to be told to refrain from
+pulling in order that the others could swing her head as far toward the
+west bank as possible before the rock was reached. Instead, I held ready
+for the one quick backing stroke that would be called for in the event a
+collision seemed imminent at the last moment. It was the wave thrown off
+by the rock itself that helped us most when the showdown came. Shooting
+by the jagged barrier so close that Andy could have fended with his
+hand, the boat plunged over a short, sharp pitch and hit the white water
+with a bang.
+
+That was by long odds the roughest stuff we had been into so far. The
+waves were curling up well above our heads, and every one we hit left a
+foot or two of its top with us--solid green water, most of it, that
+began accumulating rather alarmingly in the bottom of the boat. There
+was no regularity in the way they ran, either. One would come
+mushrooming fairly over the bows, another would flop aboard over the
+beam, and every now and then a wild side-winder, missing its spring at
+the forward part of the boat, would dash a shower of spray over the
+quarter. From the bank she must have been pretty well out of sight most
+of the time, for I often saw spray thrown ten or fifteen feet to either
+side and twice as far astern. All hands were drenched from the moment we
+struck the first comber, of course, which was doubtless why a wail from
+Roos that the water was going down his neck seemed to strike Blackmore
+as a bit superfluous. "Inside or outside your neck?" he roared back,
+adding that if it was the former the flow could be checked by the simple
+and natural expedient of keeping the mouth shut. Very properly, our
+"skipper" had the feeling that, in a really tight place, all the talking
+necessary for navigation should be done from the "bridge," and that
+"extraneous" comment should be held over to smooth water.
+
+Before we had run a hundred yards the anxious look on Blackmore's face
+had given way to one of relief and exultation. "There's more water over
+the rocks than I reckoned," he shouted. "Going to run right through."
+And run we did, all of the last mile or more of Surprise Rapids and
+right on through the still swift but comparatively quiet water below.
+Here we drifted with the current for a ways, while all hands turned to
+and bailed. I took this, the first occasion that had offered, to assure
+Blackmore that he needn't go to the length of calling me "Mister" in the
+future when he had urgent orders to give, and incidentally apologized
+for getting off on the wrong foot at the head of the first rapid. "Since
+that worked out to save us half a mile of darn dirty lining and two or
+three hours of time," he replied with a grin, "I guess we won't worry
+about it this crack, Mister--I mean, Freeman. Mebbe I better get used to
+saying it that way 'gainst when I'll need to spit it out quick."
+
+It was a pleasant run from the foot of Surprise Rapids down to Kinbasket
+Lake, or at least it was pleasant until the rain set in again. There is
+a fall of sixty-four feet in the sixteen miles--most of it in the first
+ten. It was a fine swift current, with a number of riffles but no bad
+water at any point. It was good to be free for a while from the tension
+which is never absent when working in really rough water, and I have no
+doubt that Blackmore felt better about it than any of the rest of us.
+Surprise was his especial _bete noir_, and he assured me that he had
+never come safely through it without swearing never to tackle it again.
+Roos, drying out in the bow like a tabby licking her wet coat smooth
+after being rained on, sang "Green River" all the way, and I tried to
+train Andy to pull in time to the rhythm and join in the chorus. As the
+chorus had much about drink in it, it seemed only fitting--considering
+what was waiting for us at Canoe River--that we _should_ sing it. And we
+did. "Floating Down the Old Green River" became the "official song" of
+that particular part of the voyage. Later ... but why anticipate?
+
+We landed for lunch about where the water began to slacken above the
+lake. The water of the little stream at the mouth of which we tied up
+the boat was of a bright transparent amber in colour. Andy, sapient of
+the woods, thought it must flow from a lake impounded behind a
+beaver-dam in the high mountains, and that the stain was that of rotting
+wood. Beaver signs were certainly much in evidence all over the little
+bench where we lunched. Several large cottonwood trunks--one of them all
+of two feet in diameter--had been felled by the tireless little
+engineers, and we found a pile of tooth-torn chips large enough to
+kindle our fire with. While tea was boiling Blackmore pulled a couple of
+three-pound Dolly Varden out of the mouth of the creek, only to lose his
+hooks and line when a still larger one connected up with them. Roos, who
+was under orders to get an effective fishing picture, was unable to go
+into action with his camera on account of the poor light.
+
+It had begun to rain hard by the time we had shoved back into the river
+after lunch. There were still five miles to go to reach the camping
+ground Blackmore had decided upon, half way down the east side of
+Kinbasket Lake, just below Middle River--slack water all the way. Andy
+and I pulled it in a slushy half-snow-half-rain that was a lot wetter
+and unpleasanter than the straight article of either variety. Of a lake
+which is one of the loveliest in all the world in the sunlight, nothing
+was to be seen save a stretch of grey-white, wind-whipped waters beating
+upon grey-brown rocky shores. That the wind and waves headed us did not
+make the pulling any lighter, for the boat's considerable freeboard gave
+both a lot of surface to play upon. The exertion of rowing kept Andy and
+me warm, however, which gave us at least that advantage over Roos and
+Blackmore. The latter had to face it out at his paddle, but Roos, a
+bedraggled lump of sodden despair, finally gave up and crawled under the
+tarpaulin with the bags of beans and bacon, remaining there until we
+reached port.
+
+All in all, I think that was the most miserable camp I ever helped to
+pitch. The snow, refusing persistently either to harden or to soften,
+adhered clingingly to everything it touched. We were two hours clearing
+a space for the tent, setting it up and collecting enough boughs to
+cushion the floor. By that time pretty nearly everything not
+hermetically sealed was wet, including the blankets and the "dry"
+clothes. No one but Andy could have started a camp-fire under such
+conditions, and no one but Blackmore could have cooked a piping hot
+dinner on it. I forget whether it was Roos or myself who contributed
+further to save the day. Anyhow, it was one of the two of us that
+suggested cooking a can of plum-pudding in about its own bulk of "thirty
+per over-proof" rum. That lent the saving touch. In spite of a leaking
+tent and wet blankets, the whole four of us turned in singing "End of a
+Perfect Day" and "Old Green River." The latter was prophetic. A
+miniature one--coming through the roof of the tent--had the range of the
+back of my neck for most of the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+II. RUNNING THE BEND
+
+_Kinbasket Lake and Rapids_
+
+
+It continued slushing all night and most of the next day, keeping us
+pretty close to camp. Andy, like the good housewife he was, kept
+snugging up every time he got a chance, so that things assumed a
+homelier and cheerier aspect as the day wore on. I clambered for a
+couple of miles down the rocky eastern bank of the lake in the forenoon.
+The low-hanging clouds still obscured the mountains, but underfoot I
+found unending interest in the astonishing variety of drift corralled by
+this remarkable catch-all of the upper Columbia. The main accumulation
+of flotsam and jetsam was above our camp, but even among the rocks I
+chanced onto almost everything one can imagine, from a steel rail--with
+the ties that had served to float it down still spiked to it--to a
+fragment of a vacuum-cleaner. What Roos called "the human touch" was
+furnished by an enormous uprooted spruce, on which some amorous
+lumber-jack had been pouring out his love through the blade of his axe.
+This had taken the form of a two-feet-in-diameter "bleeding heart"
+pierced by an arrow. Inside the roughly hewn "pericardium" were the
+initials "K. N." and "P. R.," with the date "July 4, 1910." One couldn't
+be quite sure whether the arrow stood for a heart quake or a heart
+break. Andy, who was sentimental and inclined to put woman in the
+abstract on a pedestal, thought it was merely a heart quake; but
+Blackmore, who had been something of a gallant in his day, and therefore
+inclined to cynicism as he neared the sear and yellow leaf, was sure it
+was heart break--that the honest lumber-jack had hacked in the arrow and
+the drops of blood after he had been jilted by some jade. Roos wanted to
+make a movie of this simple fragment of rustic art, with me standing by
+and registering "pensive memories," or something of the kind; but I
+managed to discourage him by the highly technical argument that it would
+impair the "continuity" of the "sportsmanship" which was the prime
+_motif_ of the present picture.
+
+Blackmore piloted me up to the main area of drift in the afternoon. It
+occupied a hundred acres or more of sand and mud flats which constituted
+the lower part of the extensive delta deposited on the edge of the lake
+by the waters of the good-sized stream of Middle River. At a first
+glance it seemed nothing more than a great wilderness of tree
+trunks--prostrate, upended, woven and packed together--extending for
+hundreds of yards below high-water-mark. It was between these logs that
+the smaller things had lodged. There were a number of boats, not greatly
+damaged, and fragments enough to have reconstructed a dozen more. I am
+convinced that a half day's search would have discovered the material
+for building and furnishing a house, though carpets and wall paper would
+hardly have been all one could desire. I even found a curling
+iron--closely clasped by the bent nail upon which it had been hung on
+the log of a cabin--and a corset. The latter seemed hardly worth
+salving, as it appeared--according to Blackmore--to be a "military
+model" of a decade or so back, and the steel-work was badly rusted.
+
+However, it was not gewgaws or house-furnishing we were after. One could
+hardly be expected to slither about in soft slush for second-hand things
+of that kind. I gave a great glad whoop at my first sight of a
+silt-submerged cask, only to find the head missing and nothing but mud
+in it. So, too, my second and third. Then it was Blackmore who gave the
+"View Halloo," and my heart gave a mighty leap. _His_ treasure trove had
+the head intact, and even the bung _in situ_. But alas! the latter had
+become slightly started, and although the contents had both smell and
+colour they were so heavily impregnated with river mud that they would
+hardly have been deemed fit for consumption except in New York and
+California, and not worth the risk of smuggling even there. That cask
+was the high-water-mark of our luck. Several others had the old familiar
+smell, and that was all. But there is no doubt in the world that there
+is whisky in that drift pile--hundreds of gallons of it, and some very
+old. Blackmore swears to that, and I never knew him to lie--about
+serious matters, I mean. In hunting and trapping yarns a man is expected
+to draw a long bead. I pass on this undeniably valuable information to
+any one that cares to profit by it. There are no strings attached. But
+of course ... in the event of success ... Pasadena always finds me!...
+
+We did have one find, though, that was so remarkable as to be worth all
+the trouble and disappointment of our otherwise futile search. This was
+a road-bridge, with _instinct_. The manner in which this had been
+displayed was so astonishing as to be almost beyond belief; indeed, I
+would hesitate about setting down the facts had I not a photograph to
+prove them. This bridge was perhaps sixty feet in length, and had
+doubtless been carried away by a freshet from some tributary of the
+upper river which it had spanned. This was probably somewhere between
+Golden and Windermere, so that it had run a hundred miles or more of
+swift water, including the falls of Surprise Rapids, without losing more
+than a few planks. This in itself was remarkable enough, but nothing at
+all to the fact that, when it finally decided it had come far enough,
+the sagacious structure had gone and planked itself down squarely across
+another stream. It was still a bridge in fact as well as in form. It had
+actually saved my feet from getting wet when I rushed to Blackmore's aid
+in up-ending the cask of mud-diluted whisky. My photograph plainly shows
+Blackmore standing on the bridge, with the water flowing directly
+beneath him. It would have been a more comprehensive and convincing
+picture if there had been light enough for a snapshot. As it was, I had
+to set up on a stump, and in a position which showed less of both stream
+and bridge than I might have had from a better place. I swear (and so
+does Blackmore) that we didn't place the bridge where it was. It was
+much too large for that. Roos wanted to shoot the whole three of us
+standing on it and registering "unbounded wonderment," but the light
+was never right for it up to the morning of our departure, and then
+there wasn't time.
+
+It rained and snowed all that night and most of the following day.
+During the afternoon of the latter the clouds broke up twice or thrice,
+and through rifts in the drifting wracks we had transient glimpses of
+the peaks and glaciers of the Selkirks gleaming above the precipitous
+western walls of the lake. The most conspicuous feature of the sky-line
+was the three-peaked "Trident," rising almost perpendicularly from a
+glittering field of glacial ice and impaling great masses of pendant
+_cumulo-nimbi_ on its splintered prongs. Strings of lofty glacier-set
+summits marked the line of the back-bone of the Selkirks to southeast and
+northwest, each of them sending down rain-swollen torrents to tumble
+into the lake in cataracts and cascades. Behind, or east of us, we knew
+the Rockies reared a similar barrier of snow and ice, but this was cut
+off from our vision by the more imminent lake-wall under which we were
+camped. If Kinbasket Lake is ever made accessible to the tourist its
+fame will reach to the end of the earth. This is a consummation which
+may be effected in the event the Canadian Pacific wipes out Surprise
+Rapids with its hydro-electric project dam and backs up a lake to
+Beavermouth. The journey to this spot of incomparable beauty could then
+be made soft enough to suit all but the most effete.
+
+A torrential rain, following a warm southerly breeze which sprang up in
+the middle of the afternoon, lowered the dense cloud-curtain again, and
+shortly, from somewhere behind the scenes, came the raucous rumble and
+roar of a great avalanche. Blackmore's practised ear led him to
+pronounce it a slide of both earth and snow, and to locate it somewhere
+on Trident Creek, straight across the lake from our camp. He proved to
+be right on both counts. When the clouds lifted again at sunset, a long
+yellow scar gashed the shoulder of the mountain half way up Trident
+Creek to the glacier, and the clear stream from the latter had
+completely disappeared. Blackmore said it had been dammed up by the
+slide, and that there would be all hell popping when it broke through.
+
+Scouting around for more boughs to soften his bed, Roos, just before
+supper, chanced upon Steinhoff's grave. It was under a small pine, not
+fifty feet from our tent, but so hidden by the dense undergrowth that it
+had escaped our notice for two days. It was marked only by a fragment
+split from the stern of a white-painted boat nailed horizontally on the
+pine trunk and with the single word "STEINHOFF" carved in rude capitals.
+At one corner, in pencil, was an inscription stating that the board had
+been put up in May, 1920, by Joe French and Leo Tennis. With the golden
+sunset light streaming through the trees, Roos, always strong for
+"pathetic human touches" to serve as a sombre background for his Mack
+Sennett stuff, could not resist the opportunity for a picture. Andy and
+Blackmore and I were to come climbing up to the grave from the lake,
+read the inscription, and then look at each other and shake our heads
+ominously, as though it was simply a matter of time until we, too,
+should fall prey to the implacable river. I refused straightaway, on
+the ground that I had signed up to act the part of a light comedy
+sportsman and not a heavy mourner. Blackmore and Andy were more
+amenable. In rehearsal, however, the expressions on their honest faces
+were so wooden and embarrassed that Roos finally called me up to stand
+out of range and "say something to make 'em look natural." I refrain
+from recording what I said; but I still maintain that shot was an
+interruption of the "continuity" of my "gentleman-sportsman" picture. I
+have not yet heard if it survived the studio surgery.
+
+Shortly before dark, Andy, going down to look at his set-line, found a
+three-foot ling or fresh-water cod floundering on the end of it. Roos
+persuaded him to keep it over night so that the elusive "fishing
+picture" might be made the following morning in case the light was good.
+As there were five or six inches of water in the bottom of the boat,
+Andy threw the ling in there for the night in preference to picketing
+him out on a line. There was plenty of water to have given the husky
+shovel-nose ample room to circulate with comfort if only he had been
+content to take it easy and not wax temperamental. Doubtless it was his
+imminent movie engagement that brought on his attack of flightiness. At
+any rate, he tried to burrow under a collapsible sheet-iron stove
+(which, preferring to do with a camp-fire, we had left in the boat) and
+got stuck. The forward five pounds of him had water enough to keep alive
+in, but in the night--when it cleared off and turned cold--his tail,
+which was bent up sharply under a thwart, froze stiff at almost right
+angles. But I am getting ahead of my story.
+
+The next morning, the sixth of October, broke brilliantly clear, with
+the sun gilding the prongs of the "Trident" and throwing the whole snowy
+line of the Selkirks in dazzling relief against a deep turquoise sky.
+Blackmore, keen for an early start, so as not to be rushed in working
+down through the dreaded "Twenty-One-Mile" Rapids to Canoe River, rooted
+us out at daybreak and began breaking camp before breakfast. He had
+reckoned without the "fishing picture," however. Roos wanted bright
+sunlight for it, claiming he was under special instructions to make
+something sparkling and snappy. All through breakfast he coached me on
+the intricate details of the action. "Make him put up a stiff fight," he
+admonished through a mouthful of flapjack. "Of course he won't fight,
+'cause he ain't that kind; but if you jerk and wiggle your pole just
+right it'll make it look like he was. That's what a real actor's
+for--making things look like they is when they ain't. Got me?" Then we
+went down and discovered that poor half-frozen fish with the eight-point
+alteration of the continuity of his back-bone.
+
+The ling or fresh-water cod has an underhung, somewhat shark-like mouth,
+not unsuggestive of the new moon with its points turned downward. Roos'
+mouth took on a similarly dejected droop when he found the condition the
+principal animal actor in his fish picture was in. But it was too late
+to give up now. Never might we have so husky a fighting fish ready to
+hand, and with a bright sun shining on it. Roos tried osteopathy,
+applied chiropractics and Christian Science without much effect. Our
+"lead" continued as rigid and unrelaxing as the bushman's boomerang,
+whose shape he so nearly approximated. Then Andy wrought the miracle
+with a simple "laying on of hands." What he really did was to thaw out
+the frozen rear end of the fish by holding it between his big, warm red
+Celtic paws; but the effect was as magical as a cure at Lourdes. The big
+ling was shortly flopping vigorously, and when Andy dropped him into a
+bit of a boulder-locked pool he went charging back and forth at the
+rocky barriers like a bull at a gate. Roos almost wept in his
+thankfulness, and forthwith promised the restorer an extra rum ration
+that night. Andy grinned his thanks, but reminded him that we ought to
+be at the old ferry by night, where something even better than "thirty
+per over-proof" rum would be on tap. It was indeed the morning of our
+great day. Stimulated by that inspiring thought, I prepared to outdo
+myself in the "fish picture," the "set" for which was now ready.
+
+[Illustration: BLACKMORE AND THE LING THAT REFUSED TO "REGISTER"]
+
+[Illustration: THE WRITER, WITH PIKE-POLE JUST BEFORE LINING DEATH
+RAPIDS]
+
+[Illustration: ANDY AND I PULLING DOWN KINBASKET LAKE]
+
+Standing on the stern of the beached boat, I made a long cast,
+registering "concentrated eagerness." Then Roos stopped cranking, and
+Andy brought the ling out and fastened it to the end of my line with a
+snug but comfortable hitch through the gills. (We were careful not to
+hurt him, for Chester's directions had admonished especially against
+"showing brutality".) When I had nursed him out to about where my
+opening cast had landed, Roos called "Action!" and started cranking
+again. Back and forth in wide sweeps he dashed, while I registered
+blended "eagerness" and "determination," with frequent interpolations of
+"consternation" as carefully timed tugs (by myself) bent my shivering
+pole down to the water. When Roos had enough footage of "fighting," I
+brought my catch in close to the boat and leered down at him,
+registering "near triumph." Then I towed him ashore and Andy and
+Blackmore rushed in to help me land him. After much struggling (by
+ourselves) we brought him out on the beach. At this juncture I was
+supposed to grab the ling by the gills and hold him proudly aloft,
+registering "full triumph" the while. Andy and Blackmore were to crowd
+in, pat me on the back and beam congratulations. Blackmore was then to
+assume an expression intended to convey the impression that this was the
+hardest fighting ling he had ever seen caught. All three of us were
+action perfect in our parts; but that miserable turn-tail of a ling--who
+had nothing to do but flop and register "indignant protest"--spoiled it
+all at the last. As I flung my prize on high, a shrill scream of
+"Rotten!" from Roos froze the action where it was. Then I noticed that
+what was supposed to be a gamy denizen of the swift-flowing Columbia was
+hanging from my hand as rigid as a coupling-pin--a bent coupling-pin at
+that, for he had resumed his former cold-storage curl.
+
+"Rotten!" shrieked Roos in a frenzy; "do it again!" But that was not to
+be. For the "chief actor" the curtain had rung down for good. "You must
+have played him too fierce," said Andy sympathetically. Blackmore was
+inclined to be frivolous. "P'raps he was trying to register 'Big Bend,'"
+said he.
+
+Just after we had pushed off there came a heavy and increasing roar from
+across the lake. Presently the cascade of Trident Creek sprang into
+life again, but now a squirt of yellow ochre where before it was a
+flutter of white satin. Rapidly augmenting, it spread from wall to wall
+of the rocky gorge, discharging to the bosky depths of the delta with a
+prodigious rumbling that reverberated up and down the lake like heavy
+thunder. A moment later the flood had reached the shore, and out across
+the lucent green waters of the lake spread a broadening fan of
+yellow-brown. "I told you hell would be popping after that big slide,"
+said Blackmore, resting on his paddle. "That's the backed-up stream
+breaking through."
+
+Kinbasket Lake is a broadening and slackening of the Columbia, backed up
+behind the obstructions which cause the long series of rapids between
+its outlet and the mouth of Canoe River. It is six or seven miles long,
+according to the stage of water, and from one to two miles wide. Its
+downward set of current is slight but perceptible. The outlet, as we
+approached it after a three-mile pull from our camp at Middle River,
+appeared strikingly similar to the head of Surprise Rapids. Here,
+however, the transition from quiet to swift water was even more abrupt.
+
+The surface of the lake was a-dance with the ripples kicked up by the
+crisp morning breeze, and blindingly bright where the facets of the tiny
+wavelets reflected the sunlight like shaken diamonds. The shadowed
+depths of the narrow gorge ahead was Stygian by contrast. Blackmore
+called my attention to the way the crests of the pines rimming the river
+a few hundred yards inside the gorge appeared just about on the level
+with the surface of the lake. "When you see the tree-tops fall away
+like that," he said, standing up to take his final bearings for the
+opening run, "look out. It means there's water running down hill right
+ahead faster'n any boat wants to put its nose in." The roar rolling up
+to us was not quite so deep-toned or thunderous as the challenging
+bellow of the first fall of Surprise; but it was more "permeative," as
+though the sources from which it came ran on without end. And that was
+just about the situation. We were sliding down to the intake of
+Kinbasket or "The Twenty-One-Mile" Rapids, one of the longest, if not
+_the_ longest, succession of practically unbroken riffles on any of the
+great rivers of the world.
+
+From the outlet of Kinbasket Lake to the mouth of Canoe River is
+twenty-one miles. For the sixteen miles the tail of one rapid generally
+runs right into the head of the next, and there is a fall of two hundred
+and sixty feet, or more than sixteen feet to the mile. For the last five
+miles there is less white water, but the current runs from eight to
+twelve miles an hour, with many swirls and whirlpools. The river is
+closely canyoned all the way. This compels one to make the whole run
+through in a single day, as there is no camping place at any point.
+Cliffs and sharply-sloping boulder banks greatly complicate lining down
+and compel frequent crossings at points where a failure to land just
+right is pretty likely to leave things in a good deal of a mess.
+
+Blackmore ran us down through a couple of hundred yards of slap-banging
+white water, before coming to bank above a steep pitch where the river
+tore itself to rags and tatters across a patch of rocks that seemed to
+block the whole channel. From Captain Armstrong's description, this was
+the exact point where the trouble with his tipsy bow-paddler had
+occurred, the little difficulty which had been the cause of his leaving
+the salvaged cask of Scotch at his next camp. Like pious pilgrims
+approaching the gateway of some long-laboured-toward shrine, therefore,
+we looked at the place with much interest, not to say reverence.
+Blackmore was perhaps the least sentimental of us. "I wouldn't try to
+run that next fall for all the whisky ever lost in the old Columbia," he
+said decisively, beginning to re-coil his long line. Then we turned to
+on lining down the most accursed stretch of river boulders I ever had to
+do with.
+
+Barely submerged rocks crowding the bank compelled us to wade in and
+lift the boat ahead even oftener than in Surprise Rapids. Andy always
+took the lead in this, but time after time my help was necessary to
+throw her clear. For the first time since I had boated in Alaska a good
+many years previously, I began to know the numbing effects of icy water.
+The heavy exertion did a lot to keep the blood moving, but three or four
+minutes standing with the water up to mid-thigh sent the chill right in
+to the marrow of the bones, even when sweat was running off the face in
+streams. That started a sort of dull ache in the leg bones that kept
+creeping higher and higher the longer one remained in the water. That
+ache was the worst part of it; the flesh became dead to sensation very
+quickly, but that penetrating inward pain had more hurt in it every
+minute it was prolonged. It was bad enough in the legs, but when,
+submerged to the waist, as happened every now and then, the chill began
+to penetrate to the back-bone and stab the digestive organs, it became
+pretty trying. One realized then what really short shrift a man would
+have trying to swim for more than four or five minutes even in calm
+water of this temperature. That was about the limit for heart action to
+continue with the cold striking in and numbing the veins and arteries, a
+doctor had told Blackmore, and this seemed reasonable. Andy was
+repeatedly sick at the stomach after he had been wet for long above the
+waist. My own qualms were rather less severe (doubtless because I was
+exposed rather less), but I found myself very weak and unsteady after
+every immersion. A liberal use of rum would undoubtedly have been of
+some help for a while, but Blackmore was adamant against starting in on
+it as long as there was any bad water ahead. And as there was nothing
+but bad water ahead, this meant that--in one sense at least--we were a
+"dry ship."
+
+I shall not endeavour to trace in detail our painful progress down
+"Twenty-One-Mile." Indeed, I could not do so even if I wanted, for the
+very good reason that my hands were so full helping with the boat all
+the way that I had no time to make notes, and even my mental
+record--usually fairly dependable--is hopelessly jumbled. Even Blackmore
+became considerably mixed at times. At the first four or five riffles
+below the lake he called the turn correctly, landing, lining, crossing
+and running just where he should have done so. Then his mind-map became
+less clear. Twice he lined riffles which it presently became plain we
+could have run, and then he all but failed to land above one where a
+well-masked "souse-hole" would have gulped the boat in one mouthful.
+
+It was at this juncture that I asked him why he had never taken the
+trouble of making a rough chart of this portion of the river, so that he
+could be quite sure what was ahead. He said that the idea was a good
+one, and that it had often occurred to him. There were several reasons
+why he had never carried it out. One was, that he was always so mad when
+he was going down "Twenty-One-Mile" that he couldn't see straight, let
+alone write and draw straight. This meant that the chart would be of no
+use to him, even if some one else made it--unless, of course, he brought
+the maker along to interpret it. The main deterrent, however, had been
+the fact that he had always sworn each passage should be his last, so
+that (according to his frame of mind of the moment) there would be no
+use for the chart even if he could have seen straight enough to make it,
+and to read it after it had been made.
+
+The scenery--so far as I recall it--was grand beyond words to describe.
+Cliff fronted cliff, with a jagged ribbon of violet-purple sky between.
+Every few hundred yards creeks broke through the mountain walls and came
+cascading into the river over their spreading boulder "fans." Framed in
+the narrow notches from which they sprang appeared transient visions of
+sun-dazzled peaks and glaciers towering above wedge-shaped valleys
+swimming full of lilac mist. I saw these things, floating by like double
+strips of movie film, only when we were running in the current; when
+lining I was aware of little beyond the red line of the gunwale which I
+grasped, the imminent loom of Andy's grey-shirted shoulder next me, and
+the foam-flecked swirl of liquefied glacier enfolding my legs and
+swiftly converting them to stumpy icicles.
+
+There was one comfort, though. The farther down river we worked away
+from the lake, the shorter became the stretches of lining and the longer
+the rapids that were runnable. That accelerated our progress materially,
+but even so Blackmore did not reckon that there was time to stop for
+pictures, or even for lunch. We were still well up to schedule, but he
+was anxious to work on a good margin in the event of the
+always-to-be-expected "unexpected." It was along toward three in the
+afternoon that, after completing a particularly nasty bit of lining a
+mile or two above the mouth of Yellow Creek, he came over and slapped me
+on the back. "That finishes it for the day, young man," he cried gaily.
+"We can turn loose and run the rest of it now, and we'll do it hell
+sizzling fast. It may also rejoice you to know that all the lining left
+for the whole trip is a couple of hundred yards at 'Rock Slide' and
+Death Rapids. All aboard for the Ferry!"
+
+All of a sudden life had become a blessed thing again. For the first
+time I became aware that there were birds singing in the trees, flowers
+blooming in the protected shelves above high-water-mark, and maiden-hair
+ferns festooning the dripping grottoes of the cliffs. Dumping the water
+from our boots, Andy and I resumed our oars and swung the boat right out
+into the middle of the current. The first rapid we hit was a vicious
+side-winder, shaped like a letter "S," with overhanging cliffs playing
+battledore-and-shuttlecock with the river at the bends. Blackmore said
+he would have lined it if the water had been two feet lower; as it was
+now we would get wetter trying to worry a boat round the cliffs than in
+slashing through. We got quite wet enough as it was. The rocks were not
+hard to avoid, but banging almost side-on into the great back-curving
+combers thrown off by the cliffs was just a bit terrifying. Slammed back
+and forth at express-train speed, with nothing but those roaring
+open-faced waves buffeting against the cliffs, was somewhat suggestive
+of the sensation you get from a quick double-bank in a big biplane. Only
+it was wetter--much wetter. It took Blackmore ten minutes of hard
+bailing to get rid of the splashage.
+
+The succeeding rapids, though no less swift, were straighter, and
+easier--and dryer. Roos, perched up in the bow, announced that all was
+over but the digging, and started to sing "Old Green River." Andy and I
+joined in lustily, and even Blackmore (though a lip-reader would have
+sworn he was mumbling over a rosary) claimed to be singing. Exultant as
+we all were over the prize so nearly within our grasp, we must have put
+a world of feeling into that heart-stirring chorus.
+
+    "I was drifting down the old Green River
+        On the good ship _Rock-and-Rye_--
+      I drifted too far;
+      I got stuck on the bar;
+      I was out there alone,
+      Wishing that I were home--
+
+    The Captain was lost, with all of the crew,
+    So that there was nothing left to do;
+      And I had to drink the whole Green River dry-igh
+      To get back ho-ohm to you-oo-ou!"
+
+Smoother and smoother became the going, and then--rather unexpectedly,
+it seemed to me--the water began to slacken its dizzy speed. Blackmore
+appeared considerably puzzled over it, I thought. Roos, turning
+sentimental, had started singing a song that he had learned from a
+phonograph, and in which, therefore, appeared numerous hiati.
+
+    "Now I know da-da-da-da-da--
+      Now I know the reason why--
+    Da-da-da-da----da-da-da-daah--
+      Now I know, yes, now I know!
+    Da-da-da, my heart...."
+
+Blackmore frowned more deeply as the treble wail floated back to him,
+and then broke into the next "da-da" with a sudden growl. "I say, young
+feller," he roared, slapping sharply into the quieting water with his
+paddle blade; "if you know so _geesly_ much, I'm wondering if you'd mind
+loosening up on one or two things that have got _me_ buffaloed. First
+place, do I look like a man that had took a shot of hop?" "Not at all,
+sir," quavered Roos, who seemed rather fearful of an impending
+call-down. "I don't, huh?" went on the growl. "Then please tell me why
+what I knows is a ten-mile-an-hour current looks to me like slack water,
+and why I think I hear a roar coming round the next bend." "But the
+water _is_ slack," protested Roos, "and I've heard that roar for five
+minutes _myself_. Just another rapid, isn't it? The water always...."
+
+"Rot!" roared the veteran. "There ain't no fall with a rip-raring
+thunder like that 'tween Yellow Creek and Death Rapids. Rot, I tell you!
+I must ha' been doped after all."
+
+Nevertheless, when that ground-shaking rumble assailed us in a raw,
+rough wave of savage sound as we pulled round the bend, Blackmore was
+not sufficiently confident of his "dope theory" to care to get any
+nearer to it without a preliminary reconnaissance. Landing a hundred
+yards above where a white "eyelash" of up-flipped water showed above a
+line of big rocks, we clambered down along the right bank on foot.
+Presently all that had occurred was written clear for one who knew the
+way of a slide with a river, and the way of a river with a slide, to
+read as on the page of a book.
+
+"A new rapid, and a whale at that!" gasped Blackmore in astonishment;
+"the first one that's ever formed on the Columbia in my time!"
+
+The amazing thing that had happened was this: Sometime in the spring, a
+landslide of enormous size, doubtless started by an avalanche of snow
+far up in the Selkirks, had ripped the whole side of a mountain out and
+come down all the way across the river. As the pines were hurled
+_backward_ for a couple of hundred feet above the river on the right or
+Rocky Mountain bank, it seemed reasonable to believe that the dam formed
+had averaged considerably more than that in height. As this would have
+backed up the river for at least ten or twelve miles, it is probable
+that the lake formed must have been rising for a number of days before
+it flowed over the top of the barrier and began to sluice it away. On an
+incalculably larger scale, it was just the sort of thing we had heard
+and seen happening on Trident Creek, opposite our Kinbasket Lake camp.
+Not the least remarkable thing in connection with the stupendous
+convulsion was the fact that a large creek was flowing directly down the
+great gash torn out by the slide and emptying right into the rapid which
+was left when the dam had been washed away. Blackmore was quite positive
+that there had been no creek at this point the last time he was there.
+It seemed reasonable to suppose, therefore, that the slide, in removing
+a considerable section of mountain wall, had opened a new line of
+drainage for some little valley in the high Selkirks.
+
+It was the great, rough fragments of cliff and native rock left after
+the earth had been sluiced out of the dam that remained to form the
+unexpected rapid which now confronted us. They had not yet been worn
+smooth like the rest of the river boulders, and it was this fact,
+doubtless, that gave the cascade tumbling through and over them such a
+raw, raucous roar.
+
+The solution of the mystery of the appearance of the rapid was only an
+incident compared with the problem of how to pass it. There was a
+comparatively straight channel, but there was no possibility that the
+boat could live in the huge rollers that billowed down the middle of it.
+Just to the right of the middle there was a smoother chute which looked
+better--provided the boat could be kept to it. Blackmore said that it
+looked like too much of a risk, and decided to try to line down the
+right bank--the one on which we had landed. As the river walls were too
+steep and broken to allow any of the outfit to be portaged, the boat
+would have to go through loaded.
+
+A big uprooted pine tree, extending out fifty feet over the river and
+with its under limbs swept by the water, seemed likely to prove our
+worst difficulty, and I am inclined to believe it would have held us up
+in the end, even after we reached it. As things turned out, however, it
+troubled us not a whit, for the boat never got down that far. Right at
+the head of the rapid her bows jammed between two submerged boulders
+about ten feet from the bank, and there she stuck. As it was quickly
+evident that it was out of the question to lift her on through, it now
+became a problem of working her back up-stream out of the jaws that held
+her. But with the full force of the current driving her tighter between
+the rocks, she now refused to budge even in the direction from which she
+had come.
+
+As I look back on it now, the fifteen minutes Andy and I, mid-waist deep
+in the icy water, spent trying to work that hulking red boat loose so
+that Blackmore could haul her back into quiet water for a fresh start
+takes pride of place as the most miserable interval of the whole trip.
+After Andy's experience in Surprise Rapids, neither of us was inclined
+to throw his whole weight into a lift that might leave him overbalanced
+when the boat was swept out of his reach. And so we pulled and hauled
+and cursed (I should hate to have to record all we said about the
+ancestry of the river, the boat, and the two rocks that held the boat),
+while the tentacles of the cold clutched deeper with every passing
+minute. Roos, sitting on a pine stump and whittling, furnished no help
+but some slight diversion. When he started singing "Old Green River"
+just after I had slipped and soused my head in the current, I stopped
+tugging at the boat for long enough to wade out and shy a stone at him.
+"Green River"[1] was all right in its place, but its place was swirling
+against the _inside_ of the ribs, not the _outside_. Roos had the cheek
+to pick the rock up out of his lap and heave it back at me--but with an
+aim less certain than my own. A few minutes later he called out to
+Blackmore to ask if this new rapid had a name, adding that if it had
+not, he would like to do his employer, Mr. Chester, the honour of naming
+it after him. Blackmore relaxed his strain on the line for a moment to
+roar back that no rapid was ever named after a man unless he had been
+"drownded" in it. "We'll name this one after you if you'll do the
+needful," he growled as an afterthought, throwing his weight again onto
+his line. That tickled Andy and me so mightily that we gave a prodigious
+heave in all recklessness of consequences, and off she came. Gaining the
+bank with little trouble, we joined Blackmore and helped him haul her up
+by line into slower water.
+
+    [1] For the benefit of those who have forgotten, or may never
+    have known, I will state that "Green River" was the name of a
+    brand of whisky consumed by ancient Americans with
+    considerable gusto. L. R. F.
+
+"No good lining," the "Skipper" announced decidedly, as we sat down to
+rest for a spell; "I'm going to drive her straight through." Chilled,
+weary and dead-beat generally, I was in a state of mind that would have
+welcomed jumping into the rapid with a stone tied to my neck rather than
+go back to the half-submerged wading and lifting. Roos said he hated to
+risk his camera, and so would try to crawl with it over the cliff and
+rejoin us below the rapid. Andy said he was quite game to pull his oar
+for a run if we had to, but that he would first like to try lining down
+the opposite bank. He thought we could make it _there_, and he had just
+a bit of a doubt about what might happen in mid-river. That was
+reasonable enough, and Blackmore readily consented to try the other
+side.
+
+[Illustration: OUR WETTEST CAMP AT KINBASKET LAKE (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD FERRY TOWER ABOVE CANOE RIVER (_below_)]
+
+[Illustration: WHERE WE TIED UP AT KINBASKET LAKE (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: THE BRIDGE WHICH THE COLUMBIA CARRIED A HUNDRED MILES AND
+PLACED ACROSS ANOTHER STREAM (_center_)]
+
+[Illustration: LINING DOWN TO THE HEAD OF DEATH RAPIDS (_below_)]
+
+Almost at once it appeared that we had landed in the same trouble as on
+the right bank. Directly off the mouth of the stream that came down from
+the slide the bow of the boat was caught and held between two submerged
+rocks, defying our every attempt to lift it over. Blackmore was becoming
+impatient again, and was just ready to give up and run, when Andy, with
+the aid of a young tree-trunk used as a lever, rolled one of the
+boulders aside and cleared the way. Five minutes later we had completed
+lining down and were pushing off for the final run to the Ferry. No more
+"mystery rapids" cropped up to disturb our voyage, and, pulling in deep,
+swift water, we made the next five miles in twenty-five minutes. A part
+of the distance was through the rocky-walled Red Canyon, one of the
+grandest scenic bits of the Bend. At one point Blackmore showed us a
+sheer-sided rock island, on which he said he had once found the
+graves of two white men, with an inscription so worn as to be
+indecipherable. He thought they were probably those of miners lost
+during the Cariboo gold-field excitement of the middle of the last
+century, or perhaps even those of Hudson Bay _voyageurs_ of a century or
+more back. There were many unidentified graves all the way round the
+Bend, he said.
+
+The river walls fell back a bit on both sides as we neared our
+destination, and the low-hanging western sun had found a gap in the
+Selkirks through which it was pouring its level rays to flood with a
+rich amber light the low wooded benches at the abandoned crossing. The
+old Ferry-tower reared itself upward like the Statue of Liberty, bathing
+its head in the golden light of the expiring day. Steering for it as to
+a beacon, Blackmore beached the boat on a gravel bar flanking an eddy
+almost directly under the rusting cable. We would cross later to spend
+the night in a trapper's cabin on the opposite bank, he said; as there
+was sure to be a shovel or two in the old ferry shacks, he had come
+there at once so as to get down to business without delay.
+
+Right then and there, before we left the boat, I did a thing which I
+have been greatly gratified that I did do--right then and there. I drew
+my companions close to me and assured them that I had made up my mind to
+divide the spoils with them. Blackmore and Andy should have a gallon
+apiece, and Roos a quart. (I scaled down the latter's share sharply,
+partly because he had thrown that stone back at me, and the nerve of it
+rankled, and partly--I must confess--out of "professional jealousy."
+"Stars" and "Directors" never do hit off.) The rest I would retain and
+divide with Captain Armstrong as agreed. I did not tell them that I had
+high hopes that Armstrong would soften in the end and let me keep it all
+to take home. After all of them (including Roos) had wrung my hand with
+gratitude, we set to work, each in his own way.
+
+The spot was readily located the moment we took the compass bearing.
+Pacing off was quite unnecessary. It was in the angle of a V-shaped
+outcrop of bedrock, where a man who knew about what was there could feel
+his way and claw up the treasure in the dark. It was an "inevitable"
+hiding place, just as Gibraltar is an inevitable fortress and Manhattan
+an inevitable metropolis. Yes, we each went to work in our own way.
+Blackmore and Andy found a couple of rusty shovels and went to digging;
+Roos climbed up into the old ferry basket to take a picture of them
+digging; I climbed up on the old shack to take a picture of Roos taking
+a picture of them digging. Nothing was omitted calculated to preserve
+historical accuracy. I had been in Baalbek just before the war when a
+German archćological mission had inaugurated excavation for Phoenician
+antiquities, and so was sapient in all that an occasion of the kind
+required.
+
+The picture cycle complete, I strolled over to where Andy and Blackmore
+were making the dirt fly like a pair of Airedales digging out a badger.
+The ground was soft, they said, leaning on their shovels; it ought to be
+only the matter of minutes now. The "showings" were good. They had
+already unearthed a glove, a tin cup and a fragment of barrel iron.
+"Gorgeous stroke of luck for us that chap, K----, hit the stuff so hard
+up at Kinbasket," I murmured ecstatically. Blackmore started and
+straightened up like a man hit with a steel bullet. "What was that name
+again?" he gasped. "K----," I replied wonderingly; "some kind of a
+Swede, I believe Armstrong said. But what difference does his name make
+as long as...."
+
+Blackmore tossed his shovel out of the hole and climbed stiffly up after
+it before he replied. When he spoke it was in a voice thin and trailing,
+as though draggled by the Weariness of the Ages. "Difference, boy! All
+the difference between hell and happiness. About two years ago K----
+dropped out of sight from Revelstoke, and it was only known he had gone
+somewhere on the Bend. A week after he returned he died in the hospital
+of the 'D. T's.'"
+
+Roos (perhaps because he had the least to lose by the disaster) was the
+only one who had the strength to speak. It seemed that he had studied
+Latin in the high school. "_Sic transit gloria spiritum frumenti_," was
+what he said. Never in all the voyage did he speak so much to the point.
+
+Blackmore frowned at him gloomily as the mystic words were solemnly
+pronounced. "Young feller," he growled, "I don't savvy what the last
+part of that drug-store lingo you're spitting means; but you're dead
+right about the first part. _Sick_ is sure the word."
+
+We spent the night in an empty trapper's cabin across the river. Charity
+forbids that I lift the curtain of the house of mourning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+III. RUNNING THE BEND
+
+_Boat Encampment to Revelstoke_
+
+
+We were now close to the historic Boat Encampment, where at last our
+course would join with that followed by the early _voyageurs_ and
+explorers. No point in the whole length of the Columbia, not even
+Astoria, has associations more calculated to stir the imagination than
+this tiny patch of silt-covered overflow flat which has been formed by
+the erosive action of three torrential rivers tearing at the hearts of
+three great mountain ranges. Sand and soil of the Rockies, Selkirks and
+the Gold Range, carried by the Columbia, Canoe and Wood rivers, meet and
+mingle to form the remarkable halting place, where the east and
+westbound pioneering traffic of a century stopped to gather breath for
+the next stage of its journey.
+
+Before pushing off from the Ferry on the morning of October seventh I
+dug out from my luggage a copy of a report written in 1881 by Lieutenant
+Thomas W. Symons, U. S. A., on the navigation of the Upper Columbia.
+This was chiefly concerned with that part of the river between the
+International Boundary and the mouth of the Snake, but Lieutenant Symons
+had made a long and exhaustive study of the whole Columbia Basin, and
+his geographical description of the three rivers which unite at Boat
+Encampment is so succinct and yet so comprehensive that I am impelled
+to make a liberal quotation from it here. Of the great assistance I had
+from Lieutenant Symons' invaluable report when I came to the passage of
+that part of the river covered by his remarkable voyage of forty years
+ago I shall write later.
+
+     "Amid the universal gloom and midnight silence of the north, a
+     little above the fifty-second parallel of latitude, seemingly
+     surrounded on all sides by cloud-piercing snow-clad mountains,
+     and nestled down among the lower and nearer cedar-mantled hills,
+     there lies a narrow valley where three streams meet and blend
+     their waters, one coming from the southeast, one from the
+     northwest, and one from the east. The principal one of these
+     streams is the one from the southeast ... and is the headwater
+     stream, and bears the name of the Columbia.
+
+     "The northwestern stream is the extreme northern branch of the
+     Columbia, rising beyond the fifty-third parallel of latitude, and
+     is known among the traders and _voyageurs_ as Canoe River, from
+     the excellence of the barks obtained on its banks for canoe
+     building. This is a small river, forty yards wide at its mouth,
+     flowing through a densely timbered valley in which the trees
+     overhang the stream to such an extent as almost to shut it out
+     from the light of heaven....
+
+     "Portage River, the third of the trio of streams, the smallest
+     and the most remarkable of them, is the one which enters from the
+     east. It has its source in the very heart of the Rocky Mountains
+     and flows through a tremendous cleft in the main range between
+     two of its loftiest peaks, Mounts Brown and Hooker. Just
+     underneath these giant mountains, on the divide known as 'The
+     Height of Land,' lie two small lakes, each about thirty yards in
+     diameter, and which are only a few yards from each other. One has
+     its outlet to the west, Portage River, flowing to the Columbia;
+     the other has its outlet to the east, Whirlpool River, a branch
+     of the Athabaska, which joins the Mackenzie and flows to the
+     Arctic Ocean.
+
+     "The elevated valley in which these lakes are situated is called
+     'The Committee's Punchbowl,' and the nabobs of the fur trade
+     always treated their companions to a bucket of punch when this
+     point was reached, if they had the ingredients from which to make
+     it, and they usually had.
+
+     "The pass across the mountains by the Portage River, 'The
+     Committee's Punchbowl' and Whirlpool River, known as the
+     Athabaska Pass, was for many years the route of the British fur
+     traders in going from one side of the Rocky Mountains to the
+     other. This route is far from being an easy one, and a
+     description of the difficulties, dangers and discomforts of a
+     trip over it will certainly deter any one from making the journey
+     for pleasure. A great part of the way the traveller has to wade
+     up to his middle in the icy waters of Portage River. The journey
+     had to be made in the spring before the summer thaws and rains
+     set in, or in the autumn after severe cold weather had locked up
+     the mountain drainage. During the summer the stream becomes an
+     impetuous impassable mountain torrent."
+
+Considering that Lieutenant Symons had never traversed the Big Bend nor
+the Athabaska Pass, this description (which must have been written from
+his careful readings of the diaries of the old _voyageurs_) is a
+remarkable one. It is not only accurate topographically and
+geographically, but it has an "atmosphere" which one who _does_ know
+this region at first hand will be quick to appreciate. How and when the
+stream which he and the men before him called Portage River came to
+have its name changed to Wood, I have not been able to learn.
+
+A mile below the Ferry Blackmore called my attention to a sharp wedge of
+brown-black mountain which appeared to form the left wall of the river a
+short way ahead. That lofty out-thrust of rock, he said, was the extreme
+northern end of the Selkirk Range. The Columbia, after receiving the
+waters of Wood and Canoe rivers, looped right round this cape and
+started flowing south, but with the _massif_ of the Selkirks still
+forming its left bank. But the Rockies, which had formed its right bank
+all the way from its source, were now left behind, and their place was
+taken by the almost equally lofty Gold Range, which drained east to the
+Columbia and west to the Thompson.
+
+The Columbia doubles back from north to south at an astonishingly sharp
+angle,--as river bends go, that is. Picture mentally Madison Square, New
+York. Now suppose the Columbia to flow north on Broadway, bend round the
+Flatiron Building (which represents the Selkirks), and then flow south
+down Fifth Avenue. Then East Twenty-Third Street would represent Wood
+River, and North Broadway, Canoe River. Now forget all the other streets
+and imagine the buildings of Madison Square as ten to twelve
+thousand-feet-high mountains. And there you have a model of the apex of
+the Big Bend of the Columbia.
+
+A milky grey-green flood--straight glacier water if there ever was
+such--staining the clear stream of the Columbia marked the mouth of Wood
+River, and we pulled in for a brief glimpse in passing of what had once
+been Boat Encampment. I had broken my thermometer at Kinbasket Lake, so
+I could not take the temperatures here; but Wood River was beyond all
+doubt the coldest stream I had ever dabbled a finger-tip in. What the
+ascent to Athabaska Pass must have been may be judged from this
+description by Alexander Ross--one of the original Astoria
+party--written over a hundred years ago.
+
+     "Picture in the mind a dark, narrow defile, skirted on one side
+     by a chain of inaccessible mountains rising to a great height,
+     covered with snow, and slippery with ice from their tops down to
+     the water's edge; and on the other a beach comparatively low, but
+     studded in an irregular manner with standing and fallen trees,
+     rocks and ice, and full of driftwood, over which the torrent
+     everywhere rushes with such irresistible impetuosity that very
+     few would dare to adventure themselves in the stream. Let him
+     again imagine a rapid river descending from some great height,
+     filling up the whole channel between the rocky precipices on the
+     south, and the no less dangerous barrier on the north; and,
+     lastly, let him suppose that we were obliged to make our way on
+     foot against such a torrent, by crossing and recrossing it in all
+     its turns and windings, from morning till night, up to the middle
+     in water, and he will understand the difficulties to be overcome
+     in crossing the Rocky Mountains."
+
+I have been able to learn nothing of records which would indicate that
+any of the early explorers or _voyageurs_ traversed that portion of the
+Columbia down which we had just come. David Thompson, who is credited
+with being the first man to travel the Columbia to the sea, although he
+spent one winter at the foot of Lake Windermere, appears to have made
+his down-river push-off from Boat Encampment. Mr. Basil G. Hamilton, of
+Invermere, sends me an authoritative note on this point, based on
+Thompson's own journal. From this it appears that the great
+astronomer-explorer crossed the Rockies by Athabaska Pass and came down
+to what has since been known by the name of Boat Encampment in March,
+1811. Having built himself a hut, he made preparation for a trip down
+the Columbia, by which he hoped to reach the mouth in advance of either
+of the Astor parties, and thus be able to lay claim to the whole region
+traversed in the name of the Northwest Company. He writes: "We first
+tried to get birch rind wherewith to make our trip to the Pacific Ocean,
+but without finding any even thick enough to make a dish. So we split
+out thin boards of cedar wood, about six inches in breadth, and built a
+canoe twenty-five feet in length and fifty inches in breadth, of the
+same form as a common canoe. As we had no nails we sewed the boards to
+each other round the timbers, making use of the fine roots of the pine
+which we split."
+
+This ingeniously constructed but precarious craft was finished on the
+sixteenth of April, and Thompson's party embarked in it on the
+seventeenth. Mr. Hamilton doubts if this was the same craft in which
+they finally reached Astoria. From my own knowledge of what lies between
+I am very much inclined to agree with him. Certainly no boat of the
+construction described could have lasted even to the Arrow Lakes without
+much patching, and if a boat seeming on the lines of the original really
+reached the Pacific, it must have been many times renewed in the course
+of the voyage. I shall hardly need to add that Thompson's remarkable
+journey, so far as its original object was concerned, was a failure. He
+reached the mouth of the Columbia well in advance of Astor's land party,
+but only to find the New Yorker fur-trader's expedition by way of Cape
+Horn and Hawaii already in occupation.
+
+Boat Encampment of to-day is neither picturesque nor interesting;
+indeed, there are several camp-sites at the Bend that one would choose
+in preference to that rather damp patch of brush-covered, treeless
+clearing. All that I found in the way of relics of the past were some
+huge cedar stumps, almost covered with silt, and the remains of a
+demolished _batteau_. I salved a crude oar-lock from the latter to carry
+as a mascot for my down-river trip. As a mascot it served me very well,
+everything considered; though it _did_ get me in rather bad once when I
+tried to use it for an oar-lock.
+
+Before the sparkling jade-green stream of the Columbia had entirely
+quenched the milky flow of Wood River, the chocolate-brown torrent of
+Canoe River came pouring in to mess things up anew. The swift northern
+affluent, greatly swelled by the recent rains, was in flood, and at the
+moment appeared to be discharging a flow almost if not quite equal to
+that of the main river. For a considerable distance the waters of the
+right side of the augmented river retained their rich cinnamon tint, and
+it was not until a brisk stretch of rapid a mile below the Bend got in
+its cocktail-shaker action that the two streams became thoroughly
+blended. Then the former crystalline clearness of the Columbia was a
+thing of the past. It was still far from being a muddy river. There was
+still more of green than of brown in its waters, but they were dully
+translucent where they had been brilliantly transparent. Not until the
+hundred-mile-long settling-basin of the Arrow Lakes allowed the sediment
+to deposit did the old emerald-bright sparkle come back again.
+
+A couple of quick rifle shots from the left bank set the echoes ringing
+just after we had passed Canoe River, and Blackmore turned in to where a
+man and dog were standing in front of an extremely picturesquely located
+log cabin. It proved to be a French-Canadian half-breed trapper called
+Alphonse Edmunds. His interest in us was purely social, and after a five
+minutes' yarn we pulled on. Blackmore said the chap lived in Golden, and
+that to avoid the dreaded run down through Surprise and Kinbasket
+rapids, he was in the habit of going a couple of hundred miles by the C.
+P. R. to Kamloops, thence north for a hundred miles or more by the
+Canadian Northern, thence by packtrain a considerable distance over the
+divide to the head of Canoe River, and finally down the latter by boat
+to the Bend, where he did his winter trapping. This was about four times
+the distance as by the direct route down the Columbia, and probably at
+least quadrupled time and expense. It threw an illuminative side-light
+on the way some of the natives regarded the upper half of the Big Bend.
+
+The river was deeper now, but still plugged along at near to the
+ten-miles-an-hour it had averaged from the foot of Kinbasket Rapids. As
+the western slopes of the Selkirks were considerably more extensive
+than the eastern, the drainage to the Columbia from that side was
+proportionately greater. Cascades and cataracts came tumbling in every
+few hundred yards, and every mile or two, from one side or the other, a
+considerable creek would pour down over its spreading boulder "fan." We
+landed at twelve-thirty and cooked our lunch on the stove of a perfect
+beauty of a trapper's cabin near the mouth of Mica Creek. The trapper
+had already begun getting in his winter grub, but was away at the
+moment. The whole place was as clean as a Dutch kitchen. A recent shift
+of channel by the fickle-minded Mica Creek had undermined almost to the
+door of this snug little home, and Andy reckoned it would go down river
+on the next spring rise.
+
+[Illustration: TRAPPER'S CABIN BEING UNDERMINED BY STREAM]
+
+[Illustration: THE CAMP ABOVE TWELVE-MILE]
+
+[Illustration: LANDING AT SUNSET ABOVE CANOE RIVER (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: ANDY AND BLACKMORE SWINGING THE BOAT INTO THE HEAD OF
+ROCK SLIDE RAPIDS (_centre_)]
+
+[Illustration: THE BIG ROLLERS, FROM 15 TO 20 FEET FROM HOLLOW TO CREST,
+AT HEAD OF DEATH RAPIDS (_below_)]
+
+We ran the next eighteen miles in less than two hours, tying up for the
+night at a well-built Government cabin three miles below Big Mouth
+Creek. It was occupied for the winter by a Swede trapper named Johnston.
+He was out running his trap-lines when we arrived, but came back in time
+to be our guest for dinner. He made one rather important contribution to
+the menu--a "mulligan," the _pičce de résistance_ of which, so he
+claimed, was a mud-hen he had winged with his revolver that morning.
+There were six or seven ingredients in that confounded Irish stew
+already, and--much to the disgust of Roos and myself, who didn't fancy
+eating mud-hen--Andy dumped into it just about everything he had been
+cooking except the prunes. That's the proper caper with "mulligans," and
+they are very good, too, unless some one of the makings chances to be
+out of your line. And such most decidedly was mud-hen--fish-eating
+mud-hen! As we were sort of company, Roos and I put on the best faces we
+could and filled up on prunes and marmalade. It was only after the other
+three had cleaned out the "mulligan" can that Andy chanced to mention
+that "mud-hen" was the popularly accepted euphemism for grouse shot out
+of season!
+
+Andy and Blackmore and Johnston talked "trapper stuff" all
+evening--tricks for tempting marten, how to prevent the pesky wolverine
+from robbing traps, "stink-baits," prices, and the prospects for beaver
+when it again became lawful to take them. Johnston was a typical Swede,
+with little apparent regard for his physical strength if money could be
+made by drawing upon it. The previous season he had had to sleep out in
+his blankets many nights while covering his lines, and he counted
+himself lucky that this year he had two or three rough cabins for
+shelter. He was a terrific worker and ate sparingly of the grub that
+cost him twenty cents a pound to bring in. He was already looking a bit
+drawn, and Blackmore said the next morning that he would be more or less
+of a physical wreck by spring, just as he had been the previous season.
+The hardships these trappers endure is something quite beyond the
+comprehension of any one who has not been with them. A city man, a
+farmer, even a sailor, knows nothing to compare with it.
+
+We were a mile down stream the next morning before Blackmore discovered
+that his rifle had been left in Johnston's cabin, and it took him an
+hour of hard breaking through the wet underbrush to recover it. The
+river was still rising from the rains, and the current swift with
+occasional rapids. Blackmore approached the head of Gordon Rapids
+(named, of course, from a man of that name who had lost his life there)
+with considerable caution. He intended to run them, he said, but the
+convergence of currents threw a nasty cross-riffle that was not to be
+taken liberties with. He appeared considerably relieved when he found
+that the high water made it possible to avoid the main rapid by a swift
+but comparatively clear back-channel. We had a good view of the riffle
+from below when we swung back into the main channel. It was certainly a
+vicious tumble of wild white water, and even with our considerable
+freeboard it would have been a sloppy run. I should have been very
+reluctant to go into it all with a smaller boat.
+
+Still deeply canyoned between lofty mountains, the scenery in this part
+of the Bend was quite equal to the finest through which we had passed
+above Canoe River. The steady drizzle which had now set in, however,
+made pictures out of the question. This did not deter Roos from looking
+for "location." He was under special instructions to make some effective
+camp shots, and had been on the lookout for a suitable place ever since
+we started. This day he found what he wanted. Shooting down a swift,
+rough rapid shortly after noon, we rounded a sharp bend and shot past
+the mouth of a deep black gorge with the white shimmer of a big
+waterfall just discernible in its dusky depths. Almost immediately
+opposite a rocky point jutted out into the eddy. It was thickly
+carpeted with moss and grass, and bright with the reds and yellows of
+patches of late flowers. At its base was an almost perfect circle of
+towering cedars and sugar pines, their dark green foliage standing out
+in fret-work against the pale purple mists filling the depths of a
+wedge-shaped bit of mountain valley behind. There were glaciers and
+peaks hanging giddily above, but these were obscured by the rain clouds.
+
+In response to Roos' glad "Eureka!" Blackmore threw the boat's head
+sharply toward the left bank, and hard pulling just won us the edge of
+the eddy. Missing that, we would have run on into the rough-and-tumble
+of Twelve-Mile Rapids, where (as we found the next day) there was no
+landing for another half mile. The place looked even lovelier at close
+range than from the river, and Roos announced decisively that we were
+not going to stir from there until the sun came to give him light for
+his camp shots. Fortunately, this befell the next morning. After that,
+to the best of my recollection, we did not see the sun again until we
+crossed over to the U. S. A. many days later.
+
+Roos took a lot of trouble with his camp picture, and I have since heard
+that it was most favourably reported upon from the studio. Setting up on
+the end of the point, he made his opening shot as the boat ran down the
+rapid (we had had to line back above for this, of course) and floundered
+through the swirls and whirlpools past the mouth of the gloomy gorge and
+its half-guessed waterfall. After landing and packing our outfit up the
+bank, trees were felled, boughs cut and spread and the tent set up.
+Finally, we fried bacon, tossed flapjacks and baked bannocks. I could
+tell by his expression that Roos dearly wanted to lend a Mack Sennett
+"custard-pie" touch by having some one smear some one else in the face
+with a mushy half-baked bannock, but discretion prevailed. Qualified
+"smearers" there were in plenty--Andy and Blackmore were wood-choppers
+and I was an ex-pitcher and shot-putter,--but the designation of a
+"smear-ee" was quite another matter. Roos did well to stop where he did.
+
+Pushing off about noon, we dropped down to near the head of
+"Twelve-Mile," and put Roos ashore on the right bank for a shot as we
+ran through. We had expected to land to pick him up at the foot of the
+rapid, but Blackmore, in order to make the picture as spectacular as
+possible, threw the boat right into the midst of the white stuff. There
+was a good deal of soft fluff flying in the air, but nothing with much
+weight in it. We ran through easily, but got so far over toward the left
+bank that it was impossible to pull into the eddy we had hoped to make.
+Andy and I pulled our heads off for five minutes before we could reach
+slack water near the left bank, and by then we were a quarter of a mile
+below the foot of the rapid. Andy had to go back to help Roos down over
+the boulders with his machine and tripod. Another mile in fast water
+brought us to the head of Rock Slide Rapids, and we landed on the right
+bank for our last stretch of lining on the Big Bend.
+
+The Rock Slide is the narrowest point on the whole Columbia between Lake
+Windermere and the Pacific. An almost perpendicular mountainside has
+been encroaching on the river here for many years, possibly damming it
+all the way across at times. From the Slide to the precipitous left bank
+there is an average channel seventy feet in width, through which the
+river rushes with tremendous velocity over and between enormous
+sharp-edged boulders. This pours into a cauldron-like eddy at a
+right-angled bend, and over the lower end of that swirling maelstrom the
+river spills into another narrow chute to form the _Dalles des Morts_ of
+accursed memory. I know of no place on the upper half of the Bend where
+the river is less than a hundred feet wide. The Little Dalles, just
+below the American line, are about a hundred and forty feet across in
+their narrowest part, and the Great Dalles below Celilo Falls are
+slightly wider. Kettle Falls, Hell-Gate and Rock Island Rapids have side
+channels of less than a hundred feet, but the main channels are much
+broader. Save only the _Dalles des Morts_ (which are really its
+continuation) the Rock Slide has no near rival anywhere on the river.
+
+It has struck me as quite probable that the Rock Slide, and the
+consequent constriction of the river at that point, are of comparatively
+recent occurrence, almost certainly of the last hundred years. In the
+diaries of Ross, Cox and Franchiere, on which most of the earlier
+Columbian history is based, I can find no mention of anything of the
+kind at this point, a location readily identifiable because of its
+proximity to the _Dalles des Morts_, which they all mention. But in
+Ross' record I _do_ find this significant passage:
+
+     "A little after starting (_from the Dalles des Morts_) we backed
+     our paddles and stood still for some minutes admiring a striking
+     curiosity. The water of a cataract creek, after shooting over the
+     brink of a bold precipice, falls in a white sheet onto a broad,
+     flat rock, smooth as glass, which forms the first step; then upon
+     a second, some ten feet lower down, and lastly, on a third,
+     somewhat lower. It then enters a subterranean vault, formed at
+     the mouth like a funnel, and after passing through this funnel it
+     again issues forth with a noise like distant thunder. After
+     falling over another step it meets the front of a bold rock,
+     which repulses back the water with such violence as to keep it
+     whirling around in a large basin. Opposite to this rises the wing
+     of a shelving cliff, which overhangs the basin and forces back
+     the rising spray, refracting in the sunshine all the colours of
+     the rainbow. The creek then enters the Columbia."
+
+On the left bank, immediately above the _Dalles des Morts_, an extremely
+beautiful little waterfall leaps into the river from the cliffs, but
+neither this (as will readily be seen from my photograph of it) nor any
+other similar fall I saw in the whole length of the Columbia, bears the
+least suggestion of a resemblance to the remarkable cataract Ross so
+strikingly describes. But I _did_ see a very sizable stream of water
+cascading right down the middle of the great rock slide, and at a point
+which might very well coincide with that at which Ross saw his
+"stairway-and-tunnel" phenomenon. Does it not seem quite possible that
+the latter should have undermined the cliff over and through which it
+was tumbling, precipitating it into the river and forming the Rock Slide
+of the present day?
+
+The middle of the channel at Rock Slide was a rough, smashing cascade
+that looked quite capable of grinding a boat to kindling wood in a
+hundred feet; but to the right of it the water was considerably better.
+Blackmore said the chances would be all in favour of running it safely,
+_but_, if anything at all went wrong (such as the unshipping of an oar,
+for instance), it might make it hard to get into the eddy at the bend;
+and if we missed the eddy--Death Rapids! He didn't seem to think any
+further elucidation was necessary. It would be best to line the whole
+way down, he said.
+
+On account of the considerable depth of water right up to the banks, the
+boat struck on the rocks rather less than usual; but the clamber over
+the jagged, fresh-fallen granite was the worst thing of the kind we
+encountered. I _did_ get a bit of a duck here, though, but it was not
+near to being anything serious, and the sequel was rather amusing.
+Losing my footing for a moment on the only occasion I had to give Andy a
+lift with the boat, I floundered for a few strokes, kicked into an eddy
+and climbed out.
+
+Ever since Andy had his souse and came out with empty pockets, I had
+taken the precaution of buttoning mine securely down before starting in
+to line. The buttons had resisted the best efforts of the kleptomaniacal
+river current, and I came out with the contents of my pocket wet but
+intact. But there was a trifling casualty even thus. A leg of my riding
+breeches was missing from the knee down. It was an ancient pair of East
+Indian _jodpurs_ I was wearing (without leggings, of course), and age
+and rough usage had opened a slit at the knee. Possibly I caught this
+somewhere on the boat without noting it in my excitement; or it is even
+possible the current _did_ tear it off. There was nothing especially
+remarkable about it in any case. All the same, Blackmore and Andy always
+solemnly declared that the _geesly_ river, baulked by my buttons of its
+designs on the contents of my pockets, had tried to get away with my
+whole pair of pants! If that was so, it had its way in the end. Before I
+set out on the second leg of my voyage from the foot of the Arrow Lakes,
+I threw the river god all that was left of that bedraggled pair of
+_jodpurs_ as a propitiatory offering.
+
+The deeper rumble of Death Rapids became audible above the higher-keyed
+grind of Rock Slide as we worked down toward the head of the intervening
+eddy. Of all the cataracts and cascades with sinister records on the
+Columbia this Dalles of the Dead has undoubtedly been the one to draw to
+itself the greatest share of execration. The terrific toll of lives they
+have claimed is unquestionably traceable to the fact that this swift,
+narrow chute of round-topped rollers is many times worse than it looks,
+especially to a comparatively inexperienced river man, and there have
+been many such numbered among its victims. There are two or three places
+in Surprise Rapids, and one or two even in Kinbasket, that the veriest
+greenhorn would know better than to try to run; Death Rapids it is
+conceivable that a novice might try, just as many of them have, and to
+their cost. However, it is probable that the greatest number that have
+died here were comparatively experienced men who were sucked into the
+death-chute in spite of themselves. Of such was made up the party whose
+tragic fate gave the rapid its sinister name. Ross Cox, of the original
+Astorians, tells the story, and the account of it I am setting down here
+is slightly abridged from his original narrative.
+
+     On the sixteenth of April, 1817, Ross Cox's party of twenty-three
+     left Fort George (originally and subsequently Astoria) to ascend
+     the Columbia and cross the Rockies by the Athabaska Pass, en
+     route Montreal. On the twenty-seventh of May they arrived at Boat
+     Encampment after the most severe labours in dragging their boats
+     up the rapids and making their way along the rocky shores. Seven
+     men of the party were so weak, sick and worn out that they were
+     unable to proceed across the mountains, so they were given the
+     best of the canoes and provisions, and were to attempt to return
+     down river to Spokane House, a Hudson Bay post near the mouth of
+     the river of that name. They reached the place which has since
+     borne the name of _Dalles des Morts_ without trouble. There, in
+     passing their canoe down over the rapids with a light cod line,
+     it was caught in a whirlpool. The line snapped, and the canoe,
+     with all the provisions and blankets, was lost.
+
+     The men found themselves utterly destitute, and at a time of year
+     when it was impossible to procure any wild fruit or roots. The
+     continual rising of the water completely inundated the beach,
+     which compelled them to force their way through a dense forest,
+     rendered almost impervious by a thick growth of prickly
+     underbrush. Their only nourishment was water. On the third day a
+     man named Macon died, and his surviving comrades, though
+     unconscious of how soon they might be called on to follow him,
+     divided his remains into equal parts, on which they subsisted for
+     several days. From the sore and swollen state of their feet,
+     their daily progress did not exceed two or three miles. A tailor
+     named Holmes was the next to die, and the others subsisted for
+     some days on his emaciated remains. In a little while, of the
+     seven men, only two remained alive--Dubois and La Pierre. La
+     Pierre was subsequently found on the upper Arrow Lake by two
+     Indians who were coasting it in a canoe. They took him to Kettle
+     Falls, from where he was carried to Spokane House.
+
+     He stated that after the death of the fifth man of the party,
+     Dubois and he remained for some days at the spot, living on the
+     remains. When they felt strong enough to continue, they loaded
+     themselves with as much of the flesh as they could carry; that
+     with this they succeeded in reaching the Upper Lake, around the
+     shores of which they wandered for some time in search of Indians;
+     that their food at length became exhausted, and they were again
+     reduced to the prospects of starvation. On the second night after
+     their last meal La Pierre observed something suspicious in the
+     conduct of Dubois, which induced him to be on his guard; and that
+     shortly after they had lain down for the night, and while he
+     feigned sleep, he observed Dubois cautiously opening his
+     clasp-knife, with which he sprang at La Pierre, inflicting on the
+     hand the blow evidently intended for the neck. A silent and
+     desperate conflict followed, in which, after severe struggling,
+     La Pierre succeeded in wresting the knife from his antagonist,
+     and, having no other resource left, was finally obliged to cut
+     Dubois' throat. It was several days after this that he was
+     discovered by the Indians.
+
+This was one of the earliest, and certainly the most terrible, of all
+the tragedies originating at the _Dalles des Morts_. There are a number
+of graves in the vicinity, but more numerous still are the inscriptions
+on the cliffs in memory of the victims whose bodies were never recovered
+for burial.
+
+Compared to what we had been having, lining down Death Rapids was
+comparatively simple. It was only when one got right down beside them
+that the terrible power of the great rolling waves became evident. From
+crest to trough they must have been from twelve to fifteen feet high,
+with the water--on account of the steep declivity and the lack of
+resistance from rocks--running at race-horse speed. We had become so
+used to expecting big boulders to underlie heavy waves that it was
+difficult to realize that there was all of a hundred feet of green water
+between these giant rollers and the great reefs of bedrock which were
+responsible for them.
+
+For a quarter of a mile below where the rolling waves ceased to comb
+there was a green-white chaos of whirlpools and the great geyser-like
+up-boils where the sucked-down water was ejected again to the surface.
+This was another of the places where the river was said to "eat up"
+whole pine trees at high water, and it was not hard to believe. Even now
+the voracious vortices were wolfing very considerable pieces of
+driftwood, and one had to keep a very sharp lookout to see the
+spewed-forth fragments reappear at all. This was no water for a small
+boat or canoe. It would, for instance, have engulfed the sixteen-foot
+skiff which I used on the lower river as an elephant gulps a tossed
+peanut. But our big double-ended thirty-footer was more of a mouthful.
+Blackmore pushed off without hesitation as soon as we had lined below
+the rollers, but _not_ without reiterating the old warning about not
+dipping too deep, and being quick about throwing the oar free from its
+oar-lock if a whirlpool started to drag down the blade. We had a lively
+five minutes of it, what with the whirlpools trying to suck her stern
+under and the geysers trying to toss her bow on high; but they never had
+us in serious trouble. They did spin her all the way round, though, in
+spite of all the three of us could do to hold her, and as for our
+course--a chart of it would make the track of an earthquake on a
+seismograph look as if drawn with a straight-edge!
+
+Another mile took us to the head of Priest Rapids, so named because two
+French-Canadian priests had been drowned there. This was to be our great
+rapid-running picture. Bad light had prevented our getting anything of
+the kind in Surprise and Kinbasket rapids, and "Twelve-Mile," though
+white and fast, was hardly the real thing. But Priest Rapids was reputed
+the fastest on the whole river--certainly over twenty miles an hour,
+Blackmore reckoned. It had almost as much of a pitch as the upper part
+of the first drop of Surprise Rapids down to the abrupt fall. But, being
+straight as a city street and with plenty of water over the rocks,
+running it was simply a matter of having a large enough boat and being
+willing to take the soaking. Blackmore had the boat, and, for the sake
+of a real rip-snorting picture, he said he was willing to take the
+soaking. So were Andy and I.
+
+[Illustration: LOOKING ACROSS TO BOAT ENCAMPMENT (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: "WOOD SMOKE AT TWILIGHT" ABOVE TWELVE-MILE (_below_)]
+
+[Illustration: LINING DOWN ROCK SLIDE RAPIDS (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: WHEN THE COLUMBIA TOOK HALF OF MY RIDING BREECHES
+(_below_)]
+
+We dropped Roos at the head of the rumbling "intake," and while Andy
+went down to help him set up in a favourable position, Blackmore and
+I lined back up-stream a hundred yards so as to have a good jump on when
+we started. Andy joined us presently, to report that Roos appraised the
+"back-lighting" effect across the white caps as "cheap at a million
+dollars." He was going to make the shot of his life. Pushing off we laid
+on our oars, floating down until we caught Roos' signal to come on. Then
+Andy and I swung into it with all of the something like four hundred and
+fifty pounds of beef we scaled between us. Blackmore headed her straight
+down the "V" into the swiftest and roughest part of the rapid. It was a
+bit less tempestuous toward the right bank, but a quiet passage was not
+what he was looking for this trip.
+
+The boat must have had half her length out of water when she hurdled off
+the top of that first wave. I couldn't see, of course, but I judged it
+must have been that way from the manner in which she slapped down and
+buried her nose under the next comber. That brought over the water in a
+solid green flood. Andy and I only caught it on our hunched backs, but
+Blackmore, on his feet and facing forward, had to withstand a full
+frontal attack. My one recollection of him during that mad run is that
+of a freshly emerged Neptune shaking his grizzly locks and trying to
+blink the water out of his eyes.
+
+Our team-work, as usual, went to sixes-and-sevens the moment we hit the
+rough water, but neither Andy nor I stopped pulling on that account.
+Yelling like a couple of _locoed_ Apaches, we kept slapping out with our
+oar-blades into every hump of water within reach, and I have an idea
+that we managed to keep a considerable way even over the speeding
+current right to the finish. It was quite the wettest river run I ever
+made. A number of times during the war I was in a destroyer when
+something turned up to send it driving with all the speed it had--or all
+its plates would stand, rather--into a head sea. That meant that it made
+most of the run tunnelling under water. And that was the way it seemed
+going down Priest Rapids, only not so bad, of course. We were only about
+a quarter full of water when we finally pulled up to the bank in an eddy
+to wait for the movie man.
+
+I could see that something had upset Roos by the droop of his shoulders,
+even when he was a long way off; the droop of his mouth confirmed the
+first impression on closer view. "You couldn't do that again, could
+you?" he asked Blackmore, with a furtive look in his eyes. The "Skipper"
+stopped bailing with a snort. "Sure I'll do it again," he growled
+sarcastically. "Just line the boat back where she was and I'll bring her
+down again--only not to-night. I'll want to get dried out first. But
+what's the matter anyhow? Didn't we run fast enough to suit you?"
+
+"Guess _you_ ran fast enough," was the reply; "but the film didn't.
+Buckled in camera. Oil-can! Washout! Out of luck!" Engulfed in a deep
+purple aura of gloom, Roos climbed back into the boat and asked how far
+it was to camp and dinner.
+
+For a couple of miles we had a fast current with us, but by the time we
+reached the mouth of Downie Creek--the centre of a great gold rush half
+a century ago--the river was broadening and deepening and slowing down.
+A half hour more of sharp pulling brought us to Keystone Creek and
+Boyd's Ranch, where we tied up for the night. This place had the
+distinction of being the only ranch on the Big Bend, but it was really
+little more than a clearing with a house and barn. Boyd had given his
+name to a rapid at the head of Revelstoke Canyon--drowned while trying
+to line by at high water, Blackmore said--and the present owner was an
+American Civil War Pensioner named Wilcox. He was wintering in
+California for his health, but Andy, being a friend of his, knew where
+to look for the key. Hardly had the frying bacon started its sizzling
+prelude than there came a joyous yowl at the door, and as it was opened
+an enormous tiger-striped tomcat bounded into the kitchen. Straight for
+Andy's shoulder he leaped, and the trapper's happy howl of recognition
+must have met him somewhere in the air. Andy hugged the ecstatically
+purring bundle to his breast as if it were a long-lost child, telling us
+between nuzzles into the arched furry back that this was "Tommy" (that
+was his name, of course), with whom he had spent two winters alone in
+his trapper's cabin. It was hard to tell which was the more delighted
+over this unexpected reunion, man or cat.
+
+He had little difficulty in accounting for "Tommy's" presence at Boyd's.
+He had given the cat to Wilcox a season or two back, and Wilcox, when he
+left for California, had given him to "Wild Bill," who had a cabin ten
+miles farther down the river. "Bill" already had a brother of "Tommy,"
+but a cat of much less character. As "Bill" was much given to periodic
+sprees, Andy was satisfied that "Tommy," who was a great sizer-up of
+personality, had left him in disgust and returned to his former deserted
+home to shift for himself. As he would pull down rabbits as readily as
+an ordinary cat caught mice, this was an easy matter as long as the snow
+did not get too deep. Of what might happen after that Andy did not like
+to think. He would have to make some provision for his pet before full
+winter set in.
+
+That evening we sat around the kitchen fire, telling all the cat stories
+we knew and quarrelling over whose turn it was to hold "Tommy" and put
+him through his tricks. The latter were of considerable variety. There
+was all the usual "sit-up," "jump-through" and "roll-over" stuff, but
+with such "variations" as only a trapper, snow-bound for days with
+nothing else to do, would have the time to conceive and perfect. For
+instance, if you only waved your hand in an airy spiral, "Tommy" would
+respond with no more than the conventional "once-over;" but a gentle
+tweak of the tail following the spiral, brought a roll to the left,
+while two tweaks directed him to the right. Similarly with his "front"
+and "back" somersaults, which took their inspiration from a slightly
+modified form of aerial spiral. Of course only Andy could get the fine
+work out of him, but the ordinary "jump-through" stuff he would do for
+any of us.
+
+I am afraid the cat stories we told awakened, temporarily at least, a
+good deal of mutual distrust. Roos didn't figure greatly, but Andy and
+Blackmore and I were glowering back and forth at each other with
+"I-suppose-you-don't-believe-_that_" expressions all evening. The two
+woodsmen, "hunting in couples" for the occasion, displayed considerable
+team-work. One of their best was of a trapper of their acquaintance--name
+and present address mentioned with scrupulous particularity--who had
+broken his leg one winter on Maloney Creek, just as he was at the end of
+his provisions. Dragging himself to his cabin, he lay down to die of
+starvation. The next morning his cat jumped in through the window with a
+rabbit in his mouth. Then the trapper had his great idea. Leaving the
+cat just enough to keep him alive, he took the rest for himself. That
+made the cat go on hunting, and each morning he came back with a rabbit.
+And so it went on until springtime brought in his partner and relief. I
+asked them why, if the cat was so hungry, he didn't eat the rabbit up in
+the woods; but they said that wasn't the way of a cat, or at least of
+this particular cat.
+
+Then I told them of a night, not long before the war, that I spent with
+the German archćologists excavating at Babylon. Hearing a scratching on
+my door, I got up and found a tabby cat there. Entering the room, she
+nosed about under my mosquito netting for a few moments with
+ingratiating mewings and purrings, finally to trot out through the open
+door with an "I'll-see-you-again-in-a-moment" air. Presently she
+returned with a new-born kitten in her mouth. Nuzzling under the net and
+coverlets, she deposited the mewing atom in my bed, and then trotted off
+after another. When the whole litter of five was there, she crawled in
+herself and started nursing them. I spent the night on the couch, and
+without a net.
+
+According to the best of my judgment, that story of mine was the only
+true one told that night. And yet--confound them--they wouldn't believe
+it--any more than I would theirs!
+
+Considerable feeling arose along toward bed-time as to who was going to
+have "Tommy" to sleep with. Roos--who hadn't cut much ice in the
+story-telling--came strong at this juncture by adopting cave-man tactics
+and simply picking "Tommy" up and walking off with him. Waiting until
+Roos was asleep, I crept over and, gently extricating the furry pillow
+from under his downy cheek, carried it off to snuggle against my own
+ear. Whether Andy adopted the same Sabine methods himself, I never quite
+made sure. Anyhow, it was out of his blankets that "Tommy" came crawling
+in the morning.
+
+As we made ready to pack off, Andy was in considerable doubt as to
+whether it would be best to leave his pet where he was or to take him
+down to "Wild Bill" again. "Tommy" cut the Gordian Knot himself by
+following us down to the boat like a dog and leaping aboard. He was
+horribly upset for a while when he saw the bank slide away from him and
+felt the motion of the boat, but Roos, muffling the dismal yowls under
+his coat, kept him fairly quiet until "Wild Bill's" landing was reached.
+Here he became his old self again, following us with his quick little
+canine trot up to the cabin. Outside the door he met his twin brother,
+and the two, after a swift sniff of identification, slipped away across
+the clearing to stalk rabbits.
+
+"Wild Bill," as Andy had anticipated, was still in bed, but got up and
+welcomed us warmly as soon as he found who it was. He was a small
+man--much to my surprise, and looked more like a French-Canadian
+gentleman in reduced circumstances than the most tumultuous
+booze-fighter on the upper Columbia. I had heard scores of stories of
+his escapades in the days when Golden and Revelstoke were wide-open
+frontier towns and life was really worth living. But most of them just
+miss being "drawing-room," however, and I refrain from setting them
+down. There was one comparatively polite one, though, of the time he
+started the biggest free-for-all fight Revelstoke ever knew by using the
+white, woolly, cheek-cuddling poodle of a dance-hall girl to wipe the
+mud off his boots with. And another--but no, that one wouldn't quite
+pass censor.
+
+"Bill" had shot a number of bear in the spring, and now asked Andy to
+take the unusually fine skins to Revelstoke and sell them for him. He
+also asked if we could let him have any spare provisions, as he was
+running very short. He was jubilant when I told him he could take
+everything we had left for what it had cost in Golden. That was like
+finding money, he said, for packing in his stuff cost him close to ten
+cents a pound. But it wasn't the few dollars he saved on the grub that
+etched a silver--nay, a roseate--lining on the sodden rain clouds for
+"Wild Bill" that day; rather it was the sequel to the consequences of a
+kindly thought I had when he came down to the boat to see us off.
+
+"'Bill,'" I said, as he started to wring our hands in parting, "they
+tell me you've become a comparative teetotaler these last few years. But
+we have a little 'thirty per over-proof' left--just a swallow.
+Perhaps--for the sake of the old days...."
+
+That quick, chesty cough, rumbling right from the diaphragm, was the one
+deepest sound of emotion I ever heard--and I've heard a fair amount of
+"emoting," too. "Don't mind--if I do," he mumbled brokenly, with a long
+intake of breath that was almost a sob. I handed him a mug--a hulking
+big half-pint coffee mug, it was--and uncorked the bottle. "Say
+when...."
+
+"Thanks--won't trouble you," he muttered, snatching the bottle from me
+with a hand whose fingers crooked like claws. Then he inhaled another
+deep breath, took out his handkerchief, brushed off a place on one of
+the thwarts, sat down, and, pouring very deliberately, emptied the
+contents of the bottle to the last drop into the big mug. The bottle--a
+British Imperial quart--had been a little less than a quarter full; the
+mug was just short of brimming. "Earzow!" he mumbled, with a sweepingly
+comprehensive gesture with the mug. Then, crooking his elbow, he dumped
+the whole half pint down his throat. Diluted four-to-one, that liquid
+fire would have made an ordinary man wince; and "Wild Bill" downed it
+without a blink. Then he wiped his lips with his sleeve, set mug and
+bottle carefully down on the thwart, bowed low to each of us, and
+stepped ashore with dignified tread. Blackmore, checking Roos'
+hysterical giggle with a prod of his paddle handle, pushed off into the
+current. "Wait!" he admonished, eyeing the still figure on the bank with
+the fascinated glance of a man watching a short length of fuse sputter
+down toward the end of a stick of dynamite.
+
+We had not long to wait. The detonation of the dynamite was almost
+instantaneous. The mounting fumes of that "thirty per" fired the
+slumbering volcano of the old trapper as a dash of kerosene fires a bed
+of dormant coals. And so "Wild Bill" went wild. Dancing and whooping
+like an Indian, he shouted for us to come back--that he would give us
+his furs, his cabin, the Columbia, the Selkirks, Canada.... What he was
+going to offer next we never learned, for just then a very sobering
+thing occurred--"Tommy" and his twin brother, attracted by the noise,
+came trotting down the path from the cabin to learn what it was all
+about.
+
+Andy swore that he had told "Bill" that we had brought "Tommy" back, and
+that "Bill" had heard him, and replied that he hoped the cat would stay
+this time. But even if this was true, it no longer signified. "Bill" had
+forgotten all about it, and _knew_ that there ought to be only one
+tiger-striped tomcat about the place, whereas his eyes told him there
+were two. So he kept counting them, and stopping every now and then to
+hold up two fingers at us in pathetic puzzlement. Finally he began to
+chase them--or rather "it"--now one of "it" and now the other. The last
+we saw of him, as the current swept the boat round a point, he had
+caught "Tommy's" twin brother and was still trying to enumerate
+"Tommy." Very likely by that time there were two of him in fancy as well
+as in fact--possibly mauve and pink ones.
+
+Blackmore took a last whiff at the neck of the rum bottle and then
+tossed it gloomily into the river. "The next time you ask a man to take
+a 'swallow,'" he said, "probably you'll know enough to find out how big
+his 'swallow' is in advance."
+
+We pulled hard against a head wind all morning, and with not much help
+from the current. The latter began to speed up at Rocky Point Rapids,
+and from there the going was lively right on through Revelstoke Canyon.
+Sand Slide Rapid, a fast-rolling serpentine cascade near the head of the
+Canyon, gave us a good wetting as Blackmore slashed down the middle of
+it, and he was still bailing when we ran in between the sides of the
+great red-and-black-walled gorge. Between cliffs not over a hundred feet
+apart for a considerable distance, the river rushes with great velocity,
+throwing itself in a roaring wave now against one side, now against the
+other. As the depth is very great (Blackmore said he had failed to get
+bottom with a hundred-and-fifty-foot line), the only things to watch out
+for were the cliffs and the whirlpools. Neither was a serious menace to
+a boat of our size at that stage of water, but the swirls would have
+made the run very dangerous for a skiff or canoe at any time.
+Unfortunately, the drizzling rain and lowering clouds made pictures of
+what is one of the very finest scenic stretches of the Big Bend quite
+out of the question. If it had been the matter of a day or two, we would
+gladly have gone into camp and waited for the light; but Blackmore was
+inclined to think the spell of bad weather that had now set in was the
+beginning of an early winter, in which event we might stand-by for weeks
+without seeing the sky. It was just as well we did not wait. As I have
+already mentioned, we did not feel the touch of sunlight again until we
+were on the American side of the border.
+
+From the foot of the Canyon to Blackmore's boat-house was four miles.
+Pulling down a broadening and slackening river flanked by ever receding
+mountains, we passed under the big C. P. R. bridge and tied up at four
+o'clock. In spite of taking it easy all the time, the last twenty miles
+had been run in quite a bit under two hours.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+REVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE
+
+
+The voyage round the Big Bend, in spite of the atrocious weather, had
+gone so well that I had just about made up my mind to continue on down
+river by the time we reached Revelstoke. A letter which awaited me at
+the hotel there from Captain Armstrong, stating that he would be free to
+join me for my first week or ten days south from the foot of the lakes,
+was all that was needed to bring me to a decision. I wired him that I
+would pick him up in Nelson as soon as I had cleaned up a pile of
+correspondence which had pursued me in spite of all directions to the
+contrary, and in the meantime for him to endeavour to find a suitable
+boat. Nelson, as the metropolis of western British Columbia, appeared to
+be the only place where we would have a chance of finding what was
+needed in the boat line on short notice. While I wrote letters, Roos got
+his exposed film off to Los Angeles, laid in a new stock, and received
+additional instructions from Chester in connection with the new
+picture--the one for which the opening shots had already been made at
+Windermere, and which we called "The Farmer Who Would See the Sea."
+
+As there was no swift water whatever between Revelstoke and Kootenay
+Rapids, I had no hesitation in deciding to make the voyage down the
+Arrow Lakes by steamer. Both on the score of water-stage and weather, it
+was now a good month to six weeks later than the most favourable time
+for a through down-river voyage. Any time saved now, therefore, might be
+the means of avoiding so many days of winter further along. I was hoping
+that, with decreasing altitude and a less humid region ahead, I would at
+least be keeping ahead of the snows nearly if not quite all the way to
+Portland. I may mention here that, all in all, I played in very good
+luck on the score of weather. There were to be, however, a few _geesly_
+cold days on the river along about Wenatchee, and two or three mighty
+blustery blows in the Cascades.
+
+The Arrow Lakes are merely enlargements of the Columbia, keeping
+throughout their lengths the same general north-to-south direction of
+this part of the river. The upper lake is thirty-three miles in length,
+and has an average width of about three miles. Sixteen miles of
+comparatively swift river runs from the upper to the lower lake. The
+latter, which is forty-two miles long and two and a half wide, is
+somewhat less precipitously walled than the upper lake, and there are
+considerable patches of cultivation here and there along its
+banks--mostly apple orchards. There is a steamer channel all the way up
+the Columbia to Revelstoke, but the present service, maintained by the
+Canadian Pacific at its usual high standard, starts at the head of the
+upper lake and finishes at West Robson, some miles down the Columbia
+from the foot of the lower lake. This is one of the very finest lake
+trips anywhere in the world; I found it an unending source of delight,
+even after a fortnight of the superlative scenery of the Big Bend.
+
+There is a stock story they tell of the Arrow Lakes, and which appears
+intended to convey to the simple tourist a graphic idea of the
+precipitousness of their rocky walls. The skipper of my steamer told it
+while we were ploughing down the upper lake. Seeing a man struggling in
+the water near the bank one day, he ran some distance off his course to
+throw the chap a line. Disdaining all aid, the fellow kept right on
+swimming toward the shore. "Don't worry about me," he shouted back;
+"this is only the third time I've fallen off my ranch to-day."
+
+I told the Captain that the story sounded all right to me except in one
+particular--that even my glass failed to reveal any ranches for a man to
+fall off of. "Oh, that's all right," was the unperturbed reply; "there
+_was_ one when that yarn was started, but I guess it fell into the lake
+too. But mebbe I _had_ ought to keep it for the lower lake, though," he
+added; "there is still some un-slid ranches down there."
+
+Nelson is a fine little city that hangs to a rocky mountainside right at
+the point where Kootenay Lake spills over and discharges its surplus
+water into a wild, white torrent that seems to be trying to atone at the
+last for its long delay in making up its mind to join the Columbia.
+Nelson was made by the rich silver-lead mines of the Kootenay district,
+but it was so well made that, even now with the first fine frenzy of the
+mining excitement over, it is still able to carry on strongly as a
+commercial distributing and fruit shipping centre. It is peopled by the
+same fine, out-door loving folk that one finds through all of western
+Canada, and is especially noted for its aquatic sports. I am only sorry
+that I was not able to see more of both Nelson and its people.
+
+As soon as I saw Captain Armstrong I made a clean breast to him about my
+failure to unearth the treasure at the Bend. He was a good sport and
+bore up better than one would expect a man to under the circumstances.
+"I wish that matter of K---- and his D. T.'s had come up before you
+left," was his only comment.
+
+"Why?" I asked. "I can't see what difference that would have made. We
+didn't waste a lot of time digging."
+
+"That's just it," said the Captain with a wry grin. "Wouldn't you have
+gone right on digging if you had known that the spell of jim-jams that
+finished K---- came from some stuff he got from a section-hand at
+Beavermouth? Now I suppose I'll have to watch my chance and run down and
+salvage that keg of old Scotch myself." It shows the stuff that
+Armstrong was made of when I say that, even after the way I had betrayed
+the trust he had reposed in me, he was still game to go on with the
+Columbia trip. That's the sort of man he was.
+
+Boats of anywhere near the design we would need for the river were
+scarce, the Captain reported, but there was one which he thought might
+do. This proved to be a sixteen-foot, clinker-built skiff that had been
+constructed especially to carry an out-board motor. She had ample beam,
+a fair freeboard and a considerable sheer. The principal thing against
+her was the square stern, and that was of less moment running down
+river than if we had been working up. It _did_ seem just a bit like
+asking for trouble, tackling the Columbia in a boat built entirely for
+lake use; but Captain Armstrong's approval of her was quite good enough
+for me. Save for her amiable weakness of yielding somewhat overreadily
+to the seductive embraces of whirlpools--a trait common to all
+square-sterned craft of inconsiderable length--she proved more than
+equal to the task set for her. We paid fifty-five dollars for her--about
+half what she had cost--and there was a charge of ten dollars for
+expressing her to West Robson, on the Columbia.
+
+We left Nelson by train for Castlegar, on the Columbia just below West
+Robson, the afternoon of October nineteenth. The track runs in sight of
+the Kootenay practically all of the way. There is a drop of three
+hundred and fifty feet in the twenty-eight miles of river between the
+outlet of the lake and the Columbia, with no considerable stretch that
+it would be safe to run with a boat. A large part of the drop occurs in
+two fine cataracts called Bonnington Falls, where there is an important
+hydro-electric plant, serving Nelson and Trail with power; but most of
+the rest of the way the river is one continuous series of foam-white
+cascades with short quiet stretches between. The last two or three miles
+to the river the railway runs through the remarkable colony of Russian
+Doukobours, with a station at Brilliant, where their big co-operative
+jam factory and administrative offices are located. We had a more
+intimate glimpse of this interesting colony from the river the
+following day.
+
+We found the express car with the boat on the siding at West Robson, and
+the three of us--Armstrong, Roos and myself--had little difficulty in
+sliding her down the quay and launching her in the Columbia. Pulling a
+mile down the quiet current, we tied her up for the night at the
+Castlegar Ferry. Then we cut across the bend through the woods for a
+look at Kootenay Rapids, the first stretch of fast water we were to
+encounter. After the rough-and-rowdy rapids of the Big Bend, this
+quarter-mile of white riffle looked like comparatively easy running. It
+was a very different sort of a craft we had now, however, and Armstrong
+took the occasion to give the channel a careful study. There were a lot
+of big black rocks cropping up all the way across, but he thought that,
+by keeping well in toward the right bank, we could make it without much
+trouble.
+
+On the way back to the hotel at Castlegar, the Captain was hailed from
+the doorway of a cabin set in the midst of a fresh bit of clearing. It
+turned out to be a boatman who had accompanied him and Mr. Forde, of the
+Canadian Department of Public Works, on a part of their voyage down the
+Columbia in 1915. They reminisced for half an hour in the gathering
+twilight, talking mostly of the occasion when a whirlpool had stood
+their Peterboro on end in the Little Dalles. I found this just a bit
+disturbing, for Armstrong had already confided to me that he intended
+running the Little Dalles.
+
+The boat trimmed well when we came to stow the load the next morning,
+but when the three of us took our places she was rather lower in the
+water than we had expected she was going to be. She seemed very small
+after Blackmore's big thirty-footer, and the water uncomfortably close
+at hand. She was buoyant enough out in the current, however, and
+responded very smartly to paddle and oars when Armstrong and I tried a
+few practice manoeuvres. The Captain sat on his bedding roll in the
+stern, plying his long paddle, and I pulled a pair of oars from the
+forward thwart. Roos sat on the after thwart, facing Armstrong, with his
+tripod, camera and most of the luggage stowed between them. She was
+loaded to ride high by the head, as it was white water rather than
+whirlpools that was in immediate prospect. With a small boat and a
+consequent comparatively small margin of safety, one has to make his
+trim a sort of a compromise. For rough, sloppy rapids it is well to have
+the bows just about as high in the air as you can get them. On the other
+hand, it is likely to be fatal to get into a bad whirlpool with her too
+much down by the stern. As the one succeeds the other as a general rule,
+about the best you can do is to strike a comfortable mean based on what
+you know of the water ahead.
+
+[Illustration: BONNINGTON FALLS OF THE KOOTENAY (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: PLASTERED LOG CABIN IN THE DOUKHOBOR VILLAGE (_below_)]
+
+[Illustration: TRUCKING THE SKIFF THROUGH KETTLE FALLS]
+
+[Illustration: TWILIGHT IN THE GORGE AT KETTLE FALLS]
+
+I found it very awkward for a while pulling with two oars after having
+worked for so long with one, and this difficulty--especially in bad
+water--I never quite overcame. In a really rough rapid one oar is all a
+man can handle properly, and he does well if he manages that. Your
+stroke is largely determined by the sort of stuff the blade is going
+into, and--as on the verge of an eddy--with the water to port running in
+one direction, and that to starboard running another, it is obviously
+impossible for a man handling two oars to do full justice to the
+situation. He simply has to do the best he can and leave the rest to the
+man with the paddle in the stern. When the latter is an expert with the
+experience of Captain Armstrong there is little likelihood of serious
+trouble.
+
+The matter of keeping a lookout is also much more difficult in a small
+boat. In a craft with only a few inches of freeboard it is obviously out
+of the question for a steersman to keep his feet through a rapid, as he
+may do without risk in a _batteau_ or canoe large enough to give him a
+chance to brace his knees against the sides. Armstrong effected the best
+compromise possible by standing and getting a good "look-see" while he
+could, and then settling back into a securer position when the boat
+struck the rough water. The three or four feet less of vantage from
+which to con the channel imposes a good deal of a handicap, but there is
+no help for it.
+
+We ran both pitches of Kootenay Rapids easily and smartly. Her bows
+slapped down pretty hard when she tumbled off the tops of some of the
+bigger rollers, but into not the softest of the souse-holes would she
+put her high-held head. We took in plenty of spray, but nothing
+green--nothing that couldn't be bailed without stopping. It was a lot
+better performance than one was entitled to expect of a lake boat
+running her maiden rapid.
+
+"She'll do!" chuckled the Captain with a satisfied grin, resting on his
+paddle as we slid easily out of the final run of swirls; "you ought to
+take her right through without a lot of trouble." "_Imshallah!_" I
+interjected piously, anxious not to offend the River God with a display
+of overmuch confidence. I began to call her "_Imshallah_" in my mind
+from that time on, and "_Imshallah_"--"God willing"--she remained until
+I tied her up for her well-earned rest in a Portland boat-house. It was
+in the course of the next day or two that I made a propitiatory offering
+to the River God in the form of the remnants of the _jodpurs_ he had
+tried so hard to snatch from me at Rock Slide Rapids. I've always had a
+sneaking feeling offerings of that kind are "good medicine;" that the
+old Greeks knew what they were doing when they squared things with the
+Gods in advance on venturing forth into unknown waters.
+
+Big and Little Tin Cup Rapids, which are due to the obstruction caused
+by boulders washed down by the torrential Kootenay River, gave us little
+trouble. There is a channel of good depth right down the middle of both,
+and we splashed through this without getting into much besides flying
+foam. Just below we pulled up to the left bank and landed for a look at
+one of the Doukobour villages.
+
+The Doukobours are a strange Russian religious sect, with beliefs and
+observances quite at variance with those of the Greek Church. Indeed, it
+was the persecutions of the Orthodox Russians that were responsible for
+driving considerable numbers of them to Canada. They are best known in
+America, not for their indefatigable industry and many other good
+traits, but for their highly original form of protesting when they have
+fancied that certain of their rights were being restricted by Canadian
+law. On repeated occasions of this kind whole colonies of them--men,
+women and children--have thrown aside their every rag of clothing and
+started off marching about the country. Perhaps it is not strange that
+more has been written about these strange pilgrimages than of the fact
+that the Doukobours have cleared and brought to a high state of
+productivity many square miles of land that, but for their unflagging
+energy, would still be worthless. In spite of their somewhat
+unconventional habits, these simple people have been an incalculably
+valuable economic asset to western Canada.
+
+On the off chance that there might be an incipient "protest" brewing,
+Roos took his movie outfit ashore with him. He met with no luck. Indeed,
+we found the women of the astonishingly clean little village of
+plastered and whitewashed cabins extremely shy of even our hand cameras.
+The Captain thought that this was probably due to the fact that they had
+been a good deal pestered by kodak fiends while Godivaing round the
+country on some of their protest marches. "The people were very
+indignant about it," he said; "but I never heard of any one pulling down
+their blinds." Coventry was really very "Victorian" in its attitude
+toward Lady Godiva's "protest."
+
+There was good swift water all the way from Castlegar to Trail, and we
+averaged close to nine miles an hour during the time we were on the
+river. At China Bar the river was a good deal spread out, running in
+channels between low gravel islands. Any one of these was runnable for a
+small boat, and we did not need to keep to the main channel that had
+once been maintained for steamers. Sixteen miles below Castlegar, and
+about half a mile below the mouth of Sullivan Creek, there was a long
+black reef of basaltic rock stretching a third of the way across the
+river. We shot past it without difficulty by keeping near the left bank.
+The sulphurous fumes of the big smelter blotching the southern sky with
+saffron and coppery red clouds indicated that we were nearing Trail. The
+stacks, with the town below and beyond, came into view just as we hit
+the head of a fast-running riffle. We ran the last half mile at a swift
+clip, pulling up into about the only place that looked like an eddy on
+the Trail side of the river. That this proved to be the slack water
+behind the crumbling city dump could not be helped. He who rides the
+running road cannot be too particular about his landing places.
+
+We reached Trail before noon, and, so far as time was concerned, could
+just as well have run right on across the American line to Northport
+that afternoon. However, October twenty-first turned out to be a date of
+considerable importance to British Columbians, for it was the day of the
+election to determine whether that province should continue dry or, as
+the proponents of wetness euphemized it, return to "moderation." As
+there was a special provision by which voters absent from their place of
+registration could cast their ballots wherever they chanced to be,
+Captain Armstrong was anxious to stop over and do his bit for
+"moderation." Indeed, I was a bit worried at first for fear, by way of
+compensating in a measure for the injury we had done him in failing to
+come through with the treasure from the Big Bend, he would expect Roos
+and me to put in a few absentee ballots for "moderation." There was a
+rumour about that a vote for "moderation" would be later redeemable--in
+case "moderation" carried, of course--in the voter's weight of the old
+familiar juice. I never got further than a pencilled computation on the
+"temperance" bar of the Crown Point Hotel that two hundred and
+thirty-five pounds (I was down to that by now) would work out to
+something like one hundred seventeen and a half quarts. This on the rule
+that "A pint's a pound, the world round." That was as far as I got, I
+say, for there seemed rather too much of a chance of international
+complications sooner or later. But I am still wondering just what _is_
+the law covering the case of a man who sells his vote in a foreign
+country--and for his weight in whisky that he would probably never have
+delivered to him. I doubt very much if there is any precedent to go by.
+
+Between votes--or rather before Captain Armstrong voted--we took the
+occasion to go over the smelter of the Consolidated Mining and Smelting
+Company. It is one of the most modern plants of its kind in the world,
+and treats ore from all over western Canada. We were greatly interested
+in the recently installed zinc-leaching plant for the handling of an
+especially refractory ore from the company's own mine in the Kootenays.
+This ore had resisted for years every attempt to extract its zinc at a
+profit, and the perfection of the intricate process through which it is
+now put at Trail has made a mine, which would otherwise have remained
+practically valueless, worth untold millions. The two thousand and more
+employés of the smelter are the main factor in the prosperity of this
+live and by no means unattractive little town.
+
+We had two very emphatic warnings before leaving Trail the next
+morning--one was on no account to attempt to take any drinkables across
+the line by the river, and the other was to keep a weather eye lifting
+in running the rapids at the Rock Islands, two miles below town. As we
+reached the latter before we did the International Boundary Line, we
+started 'wareing the rapids first. This was by no means as empty a
+warning as many I was to have later. The islands proved to be two
+enormous granite rocks, between which the river rushed with great
+velocity. The Captain headed the boat into the deep, swift channel to
+the right, avoiding by a couple of yards a walloping whale of a
+whirlpool that came spinning right past the bow. I didn't see it, of
+course, until it passed astern; but it looked to me then as though its
+whirling centre was depressed a good three feet below the surface of the
+river, and with a black, bottomless funnel opening out of that. I was
+just about to register "nonchalance" by getting off my "all-day-sucker"
+joke, when I suddenly felt the thwart beneath me begin to push upwards
+like the floor of a jerkily-started elevator, only with a rotary action.
+Fanning empty air with both oars, I was saved from falling backwards by
+the forty-five degree up-tilt of the boat. Way beneath me--down below
+the surface of the river--Armstrong, pop-eyed, was leaning sharply
+forward to keep from being dumped out over the stern. Roos, with a
+death-grip on either gunwale, was trying to keep from falling into the
+Captain's lap. Round we went like a prancing horse, and just as the boat
+had completed the hundred and eighty degrees that headed her momentarily
+up-river, something seemed to drop away beneath her bottom, and as she
+sunk into the hole there came a great snorting "ku-whouf!" and about a
+barrel of water came pouring its solid green flood over the stern and,
+incidentally, the Captain. A couple of seconds later the boat had
+completed her round and settled back on a comparatively even keel as
+hard-plied oars and paddle wrenched her out of the grip of the Thing
+that had held her in its clutch. I saw it plainly as it did its dervish
+dance of disappointment as we drew away. It looked to me not over half
+as large as that first one which the Captain had so cleverly avoided.
+
+"That was about the way we got caught in the Little Dalles," observed
+Armstrong when we were in quieter water again. "Only it was a worse
+whirlpool than that one that did it. This square stern gives the water
+more of a grip than it can get on a canoe. We'll have to watch out for
+it."
+
+Save over a broad, shallow bar across the current at the mouth of the
+Salmon, there was deep, swift water all the way to Waneta, the Canadian
+Customs station. Here we landed Roos to await the morning train from
+Nelson to Spokane and go through to Northport to arrange the American
+Customs formalities. At a final conference we decided to heed the
+warning about not attempting to carry any drinkables openly into the
+United States. Stowing what little there was left where not the most
+lynx-eyed or ferret-nosed Customs Officer could ever get at it, we
+pushed off.
+
+There is a fairly fast current all the way to Northport, but from the
+fact that we made the eleven miles in about three-quarters of an hour,
+it seems likely that, between paddle and oars, the boat was driven
+somewhat faster than the Columbia. Just below Waneta and immediately
+above the International Boundary Line, the Pend d'Oreille or Clark's
+Fork flows, or rather falls into the Columbia. This really magnificent
+stream comes tumbling down a sheer-walled gorge in fall after fall,
+several of which can be seen in narrowing perspective from the Columbia
+itself. Its final leap is over a ten-feet-high ledge which extends all
+the way across its two-hundred-feet-wide mouth. Above this fine cataract
+it is the Pend d'Oreille, below it, the Columbia. I know of no place
+where two such rivers come together with such fine spectacular effect,
+in a way so fitting to the character of each.
+
+The Pend d'Oreille is generally rated as the principal tributary of the
+upper Columbia. Although the Kootenay--because it flows through a region
+of considerably greater annual rainfall--carries rather the more water
+of the two, the Pend d'Oreille is longer and drains a far more extensive
+watershed--that lying between the main chain of the Rockies and the
+Bitter Root and Coeur d'Alene ranges. Great as is the combined
+discharge of these two fine rivers, their effect on the Columbia is not
+apparent to the eye. If anything, the latter looks a bigger stream where
+it flows out of the lower Arrow Lake, above the Kootenay, than it does
+where it crosses the American Line below the Pend d'Oreille. As a matter
+of fact, its flow must be nearly doubled at the latter point, but the
+swifter current reduces its apparent volume. Nothing but the most
+careful computations, based on speed of current and area of
+cross-section, will give anything approximating the real discharge of a
+river.
+
+I was a good deal interested in the Pend d'Oreille, because it was on
+one of its upper tributaries, the Flathead in Montana, that I had made
+my first timid effort at rapid-running a good many years previously. It
+hadn't been a brilliant success--for two logs tied together with ropes
+hardly make the ideal of a raft; but the glamour of the hare-brained
+stunt had survived the wetting. I should dearly have loved to explore
+that wonderful black-walled canyon, with its unending succession of
+cataracts and cascades, but lack of time forbade. The drizzling rain
+made it impossible even to get a good photograph of the fine frenzy of
+that final mad leap into the Columbia.
+
+It was funny the way that rain acted. For something like a month now
+there had been only two or three days of reasonably fair weather, and
+for the last fortnight the sun had hardly been glimpsed at all. Pulling
+up to Waneta in a clammy drizzle, Captain Armstrong remarked, as he drew
+the collar of his waterproof closer to decrease the drainage down the
+back of his neck, that he reckoned they wouldn't stand for weather of
+that kind over in "God's Country." As there was nothing but sodden
+clouds to the southward, I didn't feel like giving him any definite
+assurance on the point at the moment. However, when we crossed the Line
+an hour later the rain had ceased. A couple of miles farther down the
+clouds were breaking up, and at Northport the sun was shining. I did not
+have another rainy day, nor even one more than slightly overcast, until
+I was almost at the Cascades. I trust my good Canadian friend was as
+deeply impressed as he claimed to be.
+
+Beyond a sharp riffle between jagged rock islands above Deadman's Eddy,
+and one or two shallow boulder bars where the channels were a bit
+obscure, it was good open-and-above-board water all the way to
+Northport. The "Eddy" is a whirling back-sweep of water at a bend of the
+river, and is supposed to hold up for inspection everything floatable
+that the Columbia brings down from Canada. "Funny they never thought of
+calling it 'Customs Eddy,'" Armstrong said. From the condition of its
+littered banks, it looked to be almost as prolific of "pickings" as the
+great drift pile of Kinbasket Lake. Being near a town, however, it is
+doubtless much more thoroughly gone over.
+
+We tied up below the Ferry at Northport, which was the rendezvous to
+which Roos was to bring the Customs Inspector. The ferry-man, who had
+once seen Captain Armstrong run the rapids of the upper Kootenay with
+one of his steamers, was greatly elated over having such a notable
+walking the quarterdeck of his own humble craft. Armstrong, in turn,
+was scarcely less excited over an automatic pumping contrivance which
+the ferry-man had rigged up to keep his pontoons dry. After waiting for
+an hour, we took our bags and walked up to the hotel on the main street
+at the top of the bluff. We found Roos in the office reading a last
+year's haberdashery catalogue. He said he had not expected us for a
+couple of hours yet, and that he had arranged for inspection at three
+o'clock. That gave us time for a bath and lunch ourselves. As our bags
+were now well beyond the tentacles of the Customs, we did a little
+figuring on the table-cloth between courses. By this we proved that, had
+we had the nerve to disregard the warnings of well-meaning friends in
+Trail and filled our hand-bags with Scotch instead of personal effects,
+Armstrong would now have had fourteen quarts up in his room, and I
+eighteen quarts. Then the waitress gave us current local quotations, and
+we started to figure values. I shall never know whether or not there
+would have been room on the corner of that gravy and egg broidered
+napery for my stupendous total. Just as I was beginning to run over the
+edge, the Inspector came in and asked if we would mind letting him see
+those two suit-cases we had brought to the hotel with us! Many and
+various are the joys of virtue, but none of the others comparable to
+that one which sets you aglow as you say "Search me!" when, by the
+special intervention of the providence which watches over fools and
+drunks, you haven't got goods.
+
+The inspection, both at the hotel and at the ferry, was _fairly_
+perfunctory, though I did notice that the Customs man assumed a rather
+springy step when he trod the light inner bottom of the skiff. Roos
+filmed the operation as a part of the picture, I acting as much as I
+could like I thought a farmer would act at his first Customs inspection.
+Roos, complaining that I didn't "do it natural," wanted to shoot over
+again. The Customs man was willing, but Armstrong and I, trudging
+purposefully off up the road, refused to return. Roos followed us to the
+hotel in considerable dudgeon. "Why wouldn't you let me make that shot
+over?" he asked. "It was an 'oil-can'--rotten!" "Because," I replied
+evenly, looking him straight in the eye, "I was afraid the Inspector
+might try that jig-a-jig step of his on the false bottom in the bow if
+we put him through the show a second time. I don't believe in tempting
+providence. We can get a street-car conductor and make that Inspection
+shot again in Portland. This isn't...." "You're right," cut in Roos,
+with a dawning grin of comprehension. "I beg your pardon. You're a
+deeper bird than I gave you credit for. Or perhaps it was the
+Captain...."
+
+[Illustration: WAITING FOR THE FOG TO LIFT ABOVE BISHOP'S RAPIDS]
+
+[Illustration: ROSS AND ARMSTRONG REGISTERING "GLOOM"]
+
+[Illustration: THE "INTAKE" AT THE LITTLE DALLES (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: WHERE WE STARTED TO LINE THE LITTLE DALLES (_below_)]
+
+A heavy fog filled the river gorge from bank to bank when we pushed off
+the following morning, and we had to nose down carefully to avoid the
+piers of the bridge of the Great Northern branch line to Rossland. A
+quarter of a mile farther down the river began shoaling over gravel
+bars, and out of the mist ahead came the rumble of water tumbling over
+boulders. This was an inconsiderable riffle called Bishop's Rapid, but
+the Captain was too old a river man to care to go into it without light
+to choose his channel. A half hour's wait on a gravel bar in mid-stream
+brought a lifting of the fog, and we ran through by the right hand of
+the two shallow channels without difficulty. In brilliant sunshine we
+pulled down a broad stretch of deep and rapidly slackening water to the
+gleaming white lime-stone barrier at the head of the Little Dalles.
+
+All of Northport had been a unit in warning us not to attempt to run the
+Little Dalles. Nearly every one, as far as I could judge, had lost some
+relative there, and one man gave a very circumstantial description of
+how he had seen a big _batteau_, with six Swede lumbermen, sucked out of
+sight there, never to reappear. On cross-questioning, he admitted that
+this was at high water, and that there was nothing like so much "suck"
+in the whirlpools at the present stage. The Captain, however, having
+just received telephonic word from Nelson that "moderation" had carried
+in B. C. by a decisive majority, felt that nothing short of running the
+Little Dalles would be adequate celebration. He had managed to come
+through right-side-up in a Peterboro once, and he thought our skiff
+ought to be equal to the stunt. He held that opinion just long enough
+for him to climb to the top of the cliff that forms the left wall of
+river at the gorge and take one good, long, comprehensive look into the
+depths.
+
+"Nothing doing," he said, with a decisive shake of his broad-brimmed
+Stetson. "The river's four or five feet higher than when we ran through
+here in 'fifteen, and that makes all the difference. It was touch-and-go
+for a minute then, and now it's out of the question for a small boat. If
+we can't line, we'll have to find some way to portage."
+
+The Little Dalles are formed by a great reef of lime-stone which, at one
+time, probably made a dam all the way across the river. The narrow
+channel which the Columbia has worn through the stone is less than two
+hundred feet in width for a considerable distance, and has lofty
+perpendicular walls. The river is divided by a small rock island into
+two channels at the head, the main one, to the right, being about two
+hundred feet in width, and the narrow left-hand one not over forty feet.
+The depth of the main channel is very great--probably much greater than
+its narrowest width; so that here, as also at Tumwater and "Five-Mile"
+in the Great Dalles, it may be truly said that the Columbia "has to turn
+on its side to wriggle through."
+
+It is that little rock island at the head of the gorge, extending, as it
+does, almost longitudinally _across_ the current that makes all the
+trouble. It starts one set of whirlpools running down the right-hand
+channel and another set down the left-hand. Every one of the vortices in
+this dual series of spinning "suckers" is more than one would care to
+take any liberties with if it could be avoided; and either line of
+whirlpools, taken alone, probably _could_ be avoided. The impassable
+barrage comes a hundred feet below the point where the left-hand torrent
+precipitates itself at right-angles into the current of the right-hand
+one, and the two lines of whirlpools converge in a "V" and form one big
+walloping sockdolager. Him there would still be room to run by if he
+were "whouf-ing" there alone; but his satellites won't have it. Their
+accursed team-work is such that the spreading "V" above catches
+everything that comes down stream and feeds it into the maw of the big
+whirlpool as into a hopper. Logs, ties, shingle-bolts, fence-posts--all
+the refuse of sawmills and the flotsam and jetsam of farms and
+towns--are gulped with a "whouf!" and when they reappear again, a mile
+or two down river, they are all scoured smooth and round-cornered by
+their passage through the monster's alimentary canal.
+
+"I'm sorry not to celebrate the victory of 'moderation,'" said the
+Captain finally, with another regretful shake of his head; "but
+'moderation' begins at home. It would be immoderately foolish to put the
+skiff into that line of whirlpools, the way they're running now." Roos
+was the only one who was inclined to dispute that decision, and as his
+part would have been to stand out on the brink of the cliff and turn the
+crank, it was only natural that he should take the "artistic" rather
+than the "humanitarian" view.
+
+As a last resort before portaging, we tried lining down, starting at the
+head of the narrow left-hand channel. We gave it up at the end of a
+hundred feet. A monkey at one end of the line and a log of wood at the
+other would have made the only combination calculated to get by that
+way. It was no job for a shaky-kneed man and a sinkable boat. There was
+nothing to do but look up a team or truck. What appeared to be the
+remains of the ancient portage road ran down from an abandoned farm to
+the river, and it seemed likely some kind of vehicle could be brought
+over it.
+
+As the highway ran along the bench, four or five hundred feet above the
+river, I set off by the railroad track, which was comparatively close
+at hand. At the end of a couple of miles I reached a small station
+called Marble, the shipping point for a large apple orchard project
+financed by the J. G. White Company of New York. Mr. Reed, the resident
+manager, immediately ordered a powerful team and wagon placed at my
+disposal, and with that I returned northward over the highway. We had a
+rough time getting down through brush and dead-falls to the river, but
+finally made it without an upset. Roos having finished what pictures he
+wanted--including one of the Captain standing on the brink of the cliff
+and registering "surprise-cum-disappointment-cum-disgust,"--we loaded
+the skiff and our outfit onto the wagon and started the long climb up to
+the top of the bench. The discovery of an overgrown but still passable
+road offered a better route than that followed in coming down, and we
+made the highway, and on to the village, in good time. Mr. Reed dangled
+the bait of a French _chef_ and rooms in the company's hotel as an
+inducement to spend the night with him, but we had not the time to
+accept the kind invitation. His ready courtesy was of the kind which I
+learned later I could expect as a matter of course all along the river.
+Never did I have trouble in getting help when I needed it, and when it
+was charged for, it was almost invariably an under rather than an
+over-charge. The running road is the one place left where the people
+have not been spoiled as have those on the highways frequented by motor
+tourists.
+
+Launching the boat from the Marble Ferry at four o'clock, we pulled off
+in a good current in the hope of reaching Bossburg before dark. Between
+the windings of the river and several considerable stretches of slack
+water, however, our progress was less than anticipated. Shut in by high
+hills on both sides, night descended early upon the river, and at
+five-thirty I found myself pulling in Stygian blackness. Knowing there
+was no really bad water ahead, the Captain let her slide through a
+couple of easy riffles, the white-topped waves barely guessed as they
+flagged us with ghostly signals. But a deepening growl, borne on the
+wings of the slight up-river night-breeze, demanded more consideration.
+No one but a lunatic goes into a strange rapid in a poor light, to say
+nothing of complete darkness. Pulling into an eddy by the left bank, we
+stopped and listened. The roar, though distant, was unmistakable. Water
+was tumbling among rocks at a fairly good rate, certainly too fast to
+warrant going into it in the dark.
+
+While we were debating what to do, a black figure silhouetted itself
+against the star-gleams at the top of the low bank. "Hello, there!"
+hailed the Captain. "Can you tell us how far it is to Bossburg?" "_This_
+is Bossburg," was the surprising but gratifying response. "You're
+there--that is, you're here." It proved to be the local ferry-man, and
+Columbia ferry-men are always obliging and always intelligent, at least
+in matters relating to the river. Tying up the boat, we left our stuff
+in his nearby house and sought the hotel with our hand-bags. It was not
+a promising looking hotel when we found it, for Bossburg was that
+saddest of living things, an all-but-extinguished boom-town; but the
+very kindly old couple who lived there and catered to the occasional
+wayfarer bustled about and got us a corking good meal--fried chicken and
+biscuits as light as the whipped cream we had on the candied
+peaches--and our beds were clean and comfortable.
+
+As we were now but a few miles above Kettle Falls, the most complete
+obstruction in the whole length of the Columbia, I took the occasion to
+telephone ahead for a truck with which to make the very considerable
+portage. There would be two or three miles at the falls in any case,
+Captain Armstrong said, and he was also inclined to think it would be
+advisable to extend the portage to the foot of Grand Rapids, and thus
+save a day's hard lining. It was arranged that the truck should meet us
+at the ruins of the old Hudson Bay post, on the east bank some distance
+above the upper fall.
+
+We pushed off from Bossburg at eight o'clock on the morning of October
+twenty-third. The water was slack for several hundred yards, which was
+found to be due to a reef extending all of the way across the river and
+forming the rapid which we had heard growling in the dark. This was
+called "Six Mile," and while it would have been an uncomfortable place
+to tangle up with in the night, it was simple running with the light of
+day. "Five Mile," a bit farther down, was studded with big black rocks,
+but none of them hard to avoid. As we were running rather ahead of the
+time of our rendezvous with the truck, we stretched our legs the length
+and back of the main street of Marcus, a growing little town which is
+the junction point for the Boundary Branch of the Great Northern. We
+passed the mouth of the Kettle River shortly after running under the
+railway bridge, and a pull across a big eddy carried us to the lake-like
+stretch of water backed up by the rocky obstructions responsible for
+Kettle Falls. The roar of the latter filled the air as we headed into a
+shallow, mud-bottomed lagoon widening riverward from the mouth of a
+small creek and beached the skiff under a yellowing fringe of willows.
+The site of the historic post was in an extremely aged apple orchard
+immediately above. It was one of those "inevitable" spots, where the
+_voyageurs_ of all time passing up or down the river must have begun or
+ended their portages. I was trying to conjure up pictures of a few of
+these in my mind, when the chug-chugging of an engine somewhere among
+the pines of the distant hillside recalled me to a realization of the
+fact that it was time to get ready for my own portage. Before we had our
+stuff out of the boat the truck had come to a throbbing standstill
+beyond the fringe of the willows. It promised to be an easier portage
+than some of our predecessors had had, in any event.
+
+To maintain his "continuity," Roos filmed the skiff being taken out of
+the water and loaded upon the truck, the truck passing down the main
+street of the town of Kettle Falls, and a final launching in the river
+seven miles below. Half way into town we passed an old Indian mission
+that must have been about contemporaneous with Hudson Bay operations.
+Although no nails had been used in its construction, the ancient
+building, with its high-pitched roof, still survived in a comparatively
+good state of preservation. The town is some little distance below the
+Falls, and quite out of sight of the river, which flows here between
+very high banks. We stopped at the hotel for lunch before completing the
+portage.
+
+After talking the situation over with Captain Armstrong, I decided to
+fall in with his suggestion to pass Grand Rapids as well as Kettle Falls
+in the portage. There were only about five miles of boatable water
+between the foot of the latter and the head of the former, and then an
+arduous three-quarters of a mile of lining that would have entailed the
+loss of another day. There is a drop of twelve feet in about twelve
+hundred yards in Grand Rapids, with nothing approaching a clear channel
+among the huge black basaltic rocks that have been scattered about
+through them as from a big pepper shaker. As far as I could learn, there
+is no record of any kind of a man-propelled craft of whatever size ever
+having run through and survived, but a small stern-wheeler, the
+_Shoshone_, was run down several years ago at high water. She reached
+the foot a good deal of a hulk, but still right side up. This is rated
+as one of the maddest things ever done with a steamer on the Columbia,
+and the fact that it did not end in complete disaster is reckoned by old
+river men as having been due in about equal parts to the inflexible
+nerve of her skipper and the intervention of the special providence that
+makes a point of watching over mortals who do things like that. I met
+Captain McDermid a fortnight later in Potaris. He told me then, what I
+hadn't heard before, that he took his wife and children with him.
+"Nellie thought a lot of both me and the little old _Shoshone_," he
+said with a wistful smile, "and she reckoned that, if we went, she
+wouldn't exactly like to be left here alone. And so--I never could
+refuse Nellie anything--I took her along. And now she and the _Shoshone_
+are both gone." He was a wonderful chap--McDermid. All old Columbia
+River skippers are. They wouldn't have survived if they hadn't been.
+
+There was a low bench on the left bank, about a mile below the foot of
+Grand Rapids, which could be reached by a rough road, and from which the
+boat could be slid down over the rocks to the river. Running to this
+point with the truck, we left our heavier outfit at a road camp and
+dropped the boat at the water's edge, ready for launching the following
+morning. Returning to the town, we were driven up to the Falls by Dr.
+Baldwin, a prominent member of this live and attractive little
+community, where Roos made a number of shots. The upper or main fall has
+a vertical drop of fifteen feet at low water, while the lower fall is
+really a rough tumbling cascade with a drop of ten feet in a quarter of
+a mile. The river is divided at the head of the Falls by an arrow-shaped
+rock island, the main channel being the one to the right. The left-hand
+channel loops in a broad "V" around the island and, running between
+precipitous walls, accomplishes in a beautiful rapid the same drop that
+the main channel does by the upper fall. A rocky peninsula, extending
+squarely across the course of the left-hand channel, forces the rolling
+current of the latter practically to turn a somersault before accepting
+the dictum that it must double back northward for five or six hundred
+feet before uniting with the main river. It was the savage swirling of
+water in that rock-walled elbow where the "somersault" takes place that
+prompted the imaginative French-Canadian _voyageurs_ to apply the
+appropriately descriptive name of _Chaudičre_ to the boiling maelstrom.
+
+Up to the present the development of the enormous power running to waste
+over Kettle Falls has gone little further than the dreams of the brave
+community of optimists who have been attracted there in the belief that
+a material asset of such incalculable value cannot always be ignored in
+a growing country like our own. And they are right, of course, but a few
+years ahead of time. It is only the children and grandchildren of the
+living pioneers of the Columbia who will see more than the beginning of
+its untold millions of horse-power broken to harness. And in the
+meantime the optimists of Kettle Falls are turning their attention to
+agriculture and horticulture. Never have I seen finer apple orchards
+than those through which we drove on the way to resume our down-river
+voyage.
+
+The point from which we pushed off at ten o'clock on the morning of
+October twenty-fourth must have been only a little below that at which
+Lieutenant Symons launched the _batteau_ for his historic voyage to the
+mouth of the Snake in 1881. Forty years have gone by since that
+memorable undertaking, yet Symons' report is to-day not only the most
+accurate description of an upper Columbia voyage that has ever been
+written, but also the most readable. During the time I was running the
+three hundred and fifty miles of river surveyed by Lieutenant Symons, I
+found his admirable report only less fascinating on the human side than
+it was of material assistance on the practical.
+
+Of his preparations for the voyage Lieutenant Symons writes:
+
+     "I was fortunate enough to procure from John Rickey, a settler
+     and trader, who lives at the Grand Rapids, a strongly built
+     _batteau_, and had his assistance in selecting a crew of Indians
+     for the journey. The _batteau_ was about thirty feet long, four
+     feet wide at the gunwales, and two feet deep, and is as small a
+     boat as the voyage should ever be attempted in, if it is
+     contemplated to go through all the rapids. My first lookout had
+     been to secure the services of 'Old Pierre Agare' as steersman,
+     and I had to carry on negotiations with him for several days
+     before he finally consented to go. Old Pierre is the only one of
+     the old Hudson Bay _voyageurs_ now left who knows the river
+     thoroughly at all stages of water, from Colville to its mouth....
+     The old man is seventy years of age, and hale and hearty,
+     although his eyesight is somewhat defective.... The other Indians
+     engaged were Pen-waw, Big Pierre, Little Pierre, and Joseph. They
+     had never made the trip all the way down the river, and their
+     minds were full of the dangers and terrors of the great rapids
+     below, and it was a long time before we could prevail upon them
+     to go, by promising them a high price and stipulating for their
+     return by rail and stage. Old Pierre and John Rickey laboured and
+     talked with them long and faithfully, to gain their consent, and
+     I am sure that they started off with as many misgivings about
+     getting safely through as we did who had to trust our lives to
+     their skill, confidence and obedience."
+
+Lieutenant Symons does not state whether any confusion ever arose as a
+consequence of the fact that three of his five Indians bore the
+inevitable French-Canadian name of "Pierre." Of the method of work
+followed by himself and his topographical assistant, Downing, throughout
+the voyage, he writes:
+
+     "Mr. Downing and myself worked independently in getting as
+     thorough knowledge of the river as possible, he taking the
+     courses with a prismatic compass, and estimating distances by the
+     eye, and sketching in the topographical features of the
+     surrounding country, while I estimated also the distances to
+     marked points, and paid particular attention to the bed of the
+     river, sounding wherever there were any indications of
+     shallowness. Each evening we compared notes as to distances, and
+     we found them to come out very well together, the greatest
+     difference being six and three-fourths miles in a day's run of
+     sixty-four miles. Some days they were identical. The total
+     distance from our starting point ... to the mouth of the Snake
+     River was estimated by Mr. Downing to be three hundred and
+     sixty-three miles, and by myself to be three hundred and fifty.
+     His distances were obtained by estimating how far it was to some
+     marked point ahead, and correcting it when the point was reached;
+     mine by the time required to pass over the distances, in which
+     the elements considered were the swiftness of the current and the
+     labour of the oarsmen."
+
+I may state that it was only rarely that we found the distances arrived
+at by Lieutenant Symons and Mr. Downing to be greatly at variance with
+those established by later surveys. In the matter of bars, rapids,
+currents, channels and similar things, there appeared to have been
+astonishingly little change in the four decades that had elapsed since
+he had made his observations. Where he advised, for instance, taking the
+right-hand in preference to the middle or left-hand channels, it was not
+often that we went far wrong in heeding the direction. Bars of gravel,
+of course, shift from season to season, but reefs and projections of the
+native rock are rarely altered by more than a negligible erosion. The
+prominent topographical features--cliffs, headlands, _coulees_,
+mountains--are immutable, and for mile after mile, bend after bend, we
+picked them up just as Symons reported them.
+
+The river is broad and slow for a few miles below Grand Rapids (they are
+called Rickey's Rapids locally), with steep-sided benches rising on
+either hand, and the green of apple orchards showing in bright fringes
+along their brinks. There had been the usual warnings in Kettle Falls of
+a bad rapid to be encountered "somewhere below," but the data available
+on this part of the river made us practically certain that nothing worse
+than minor riffles existed until the swift run of Spokane Rapids was
+reached. Seven miles below Grand Rapids several islands of black basalt
+contracted the river considerably, but any one of two or three channels
+offered an easy way through them. The highest of them had a driftwood
+crown that was not less than fifty feet above the present stage of the
+river, showing graphically the great rise and fall at this point.
+
+At the shallow San Poil bar we saw some Indians from the Colville
+Reservation fishing for salmon--the crooked-nosed "dogs" of the final
+run. If they were of the tribe from which the bar must have been named,
+civilization had brought them its blessing in the form of hair-restorer.
+They were as hirsute a lot of ruffians as one could expect to find out
+of Bolshevia--and as dirty.
+
+Turtle Rapid was the worst looking place we found during the day, but
+the menace was more apparent than real. The riffle took its name from a
+number of turtle-backed outcroppings of bedrock pushing up all the way
+across the river. The current was swift and deep, making it just the
+sort of place one would have expected to encounter bad swirls. These
+were, indeed, making a good deal of a stir at the foot of several of the
+narrow side runs, but by the broader middle channel which we followed
+the going was comparatively smooth. We finished an easy day by tying up
+at four o'clock where the road to the Colville Reservation comes down to
+the boulder-bordered bank at Hunter's Ferry.
+
+Columbia River ferry-men are always kindly and hospitable, and this one
+invited us to sleep on his hay and cook our meals in his kitchen. He was
+an amiable "cracker" from Kentucky, with a delectable drawl, a
+tired-looking wife and a houseful of children. Ferry-men's wives always
+have many children. This one was still pretty, though, and her
+droop--for a few years yet--would be rather appealing than otherwise. I
+couldn't be quite sure--from a remark she made--whether she had a sense
+of humor, or whether she had not. Seeing her sitting by the kitchen
+stove with a baby crooked into her left arm, a two-year-old on her lap,
+and a three-year-old riding her foot, the while she was trying to fry
+eggs, bake biscuit and boil potatoes, I observed, by way of bringing a
+brighter atmosphere with my presence, that it was a pity that the human
+race hadn't been crossed with octopi, so that young mothers would have
+enough arms to do their work with. She nodded approvingly at first,
+brightening visibly at the emancipative vision conjured up in her tired
+brain, but after five minutes of serious cogitation relapsed into gloom.
+"I reckon it wouldn't be any use, mistah," she said finally; "them
+octupusses would only give the young 'uns mo' ahms to find troubl'
+with." Now _did_ she have a sense of humour, or did she not?
+
+We had a distinctly bad night of it hitting the hay. The mow was built
+with a horseshoe-shaped manger running round three sides of it, into
+which the hay was supposed to descend by gravity as the cows devoured
+what was below. As a labour-saving device it had a good deal to
+recommend it, but as a place to sleep--well, it might not have been so
+bad if each of the dozen cows had not been belled, and if the weight of
+our tired bodies on the hay had not kept pressing it into the manger all
+night, and so made a continuous performance of feeding and that bovine
+bell-chorus. I dozed off for a spell along toward morning, awakening
+from a Chinese-gong nightmare to find my bed tilted down at an angle of
+forty-five degrees and a rough tongue lapping my face. With most of my
+mattress eaten up, I was all but in the manger myself. Turning out at
+daybreak, we pushed off at an early hour.
+
+A run of nine miles, made in about an hour, took us to Gerome, where
+another ferry crossed to the west or Colville Reservation bank. A couple
+of swift, shallow rapids above and below Roger's Bar was the only rough
+water encountered. We were looking for a point from which Spokane could
+be reached by car, as Captain Armstrong, who had originally planned to
+go with us only to Kettle Falls, was now quite at the end of the time he
+was free to remain away from Nelson and business. There were two reasons
+for our making a temporary halt at Gerome Ferry. One was the fact that
+Spokane could be reached as readily from there as from any point lower
+down, and the other was Ike Emerson. I shall have so much to say of Ike
+a bit further along that I shall no more than introduce him for the
+moment.
+
+As much of the worst water on the American course of the Columbia occurs
+in the two hundred and thirty miles between the head of Spokane Rapids
+and the foot of Priest Rapids,[2] I was considerably concerned about
+finding a good river man to take Captain Armstrong's place and help me
+with the boat. Roos made no pretensions to river usefulness, and I was
+reluctant to go into some of the rapids that I knew were ahead of us
+without a dependable man to handle the steering paddle and to help with
+lining. Men of this kind were scarce, it appeared--even more so than on
+the Big Bend, in Canada, where there was a certain amount of logging and
+trapping going on. Two or three ferry-men had shaken their heads when I
+brought the matter up. There was nothing they would like better if they
+were free, they said, but, as ferries couldn't be expected to run by
+themselves, that was out of the question on such short notice.
+
+    [2] Not be confused with the rapids of the same name we had
+    run on the Big Bend in Canada. L. R. F.
+
+It was that genial "cracker" at Hunter's Ferry who was the first to
+mention Ike Emerson. Ike would be just my man, he said, with that
+unmistakable grin that a man grins when the person he speaks of is some
+kind of a "character." Or, leastways, Ike would be just my man--_if I
+could find him_. "And where shall I be likely to find him?" I asked. He
+wasn't quite sure about that, but probably "daun rivah sumwhah." There
+was no telling about Ike, it appeared. Once he had been seen to sink
+when his raft had gone to pieces in Hell Gate, and he had been mourned
+as dead for a fortnight. At the end of that time he had turned up in
+Kettle Falls, but quite unable--or else unwilling--to tell why the river
+had carried him eighty-five miles _up_ stream instead of down to the
+Pacific. A keg of moonshine which had been Ike's fellow passenger on the
+ill-fated raft _may_ have had something to do both with the wreck and
+that long up-stream swim after the wreck. At any rate, it had never been
+explained. However, Gerome was Ike's headquarters--if any place might be
+called that for a man who lived on or in the river most of the time--and
+that would be the place to inquire for him.
+
+When I asked the ferry-man at Gerome if Ike Emerson had been seen
+thereabouts recently, he grinned the same sort of grin his colleague at
+Hunter's had grinned when the same subject was under discussion. Yes, he
+had seen Ike only the night before. He was a real old river rat; just
+the man I wanted--_if I could find him_. He was as hard as a flea to put
+your hand on when you _did_ want him, though. Well, it took us four
+hours to run our man down, but luck was with us in the end. Every
+lumber-jack, farmer and Indian that we asked about Ike, grinned that same
+grin, dropped whatever he was doing and joined in the search. There were
+a score of us when the "View Halloo" was finally sounded, and we looked
+more like a lynching party on vengeance bent than anything else I can
+think of. Ike, who was digging potatoes (of all the things in the world
+for a river rat to be doing), glowered suspiciously as we debouched from
+a _coulee_ and streamed down toward him, but his brow cleared instantly
+when I hastily told him what we had come for.
+
+You bet, he would go with us. But, wait a moment! Why should we not go
+with him? He was overdue with a raft of logs and cordwood he had
+contracted to take down below Hell Gate, and was just about to get to
+work building it. We could just throw our boat aboard, and off we would
+go together. If he could get enough help, he could have the raft ready
+in two or three days, and, once started, it would not be a lot slower
+than the skiff, especially if we took a fast motor-boat he knew of for
+towing purposes and to "put her into the rapids right." It would make a
+lot more of a show for the movies, and he had always dreamed of having
+himself filmed on a big raft running Hell Gate and Box Canyon. Just let
+us leave it to him, and he would turn out something that would be the
+real thing.
+
+All of this sounded distinctly good to me, but I turned to Roos and
+Captain Armstrong for confirmation before venturing a decision. Roos
+said it would be "the cat's ears" (late slang meaning _au fait_, or
+something like that, in English); that a raft would photograph like a
+million dollars. Armstrong's face was beaming. "It will be the chance of
+a lifetime," he said warmly. "Go by all means. I'm only sorry I can't be
+with you." So we gave Ike _carte blanche_ and told him to go ahead; we
+would arrange the financial end when he knew more about what he would be
+spending. I was glad of the wait for one reason; it would give us a
+chance to speed the Captain on his way as far as Spokane.
+
+Running over a Spokane paper in the post office and general store at
+Gerome, the program of the Chamber of Commerce luncheon for the morrow,
+October the twenty-sixth, recalled to me that I had a conditional
+engagement to perform at that function. Major Laird, the Publicity
+Secretary of the Chamber, had phoned me before we left Nelson, asking if
+I would run up to Spokane from some convenient point on the river and
+give them a bit of a yarn about our voyage at the next Tuesday luncheon.
+I had replied that, as it was quite out of the question keeping to any
+definite schedule in river travel, I could give him no positive
+assurance of turning up in time, but suggested that if he would sign up
+some one else for _pičce de résistance_, he could be free to use me for
+soup or nuts in the event I put in an appearance. As it now appeared
+that we had arrived within a few hours of Spokane, I phoned Major Laird,
+and he said he would start a car off at once to take us there.
+
+We spent the afternoon helping Roos patch up the continuity of his
+"farmer" picture. Although Captain Armstrong had appeared in all the
+scenes shot since we started with the skiff, he had never made his
+official entry into the picture. Properly, this should have been done in
+one of the introductory scenes shot at the source of the river, near
+Lake Windermere. It will be remembered that, when I leaned on my
+hay-fork and gazed pensively off toward the river, I was supposed to see
+a prospector tinkering with his boat. I had walked out of two scenes on
+my way to join that prospector: the first time to ask if he would take
+me with him, and the second time, with a blanket-roll on my shoulder
+(the improvised one with the two "nicht-goons" and other foreign
+knick-knacks in it), to jump into the boat and push off. Obviously, as
+we had neither prospector nor boat at the time, these shots could not be
+made until later. Now, with the "prospector" about to leave us, it was
+imperative to continuity that we should get him into the picture before
+we could go ahead getting him out of it.
+
+"Location" was our first care, and in this fortune favoured us. The
+mouth of a small creek flowing in just below Gerome furnished a "source
+of the Columbia" background that would have defied an expert to tell
+from an original. In fact, it looked more like the popular idea of a
+"source" than did the real one; and that is an important point with the
+movies. Here we made the "tinkering" and the "first push-off" shots. Of
+course, I had a different blanket-roll on my shoulder this time, but I
+took great care to make it as close an imitation as possible of the one
+I had so hastily flung together out of "Jock's" bedding. A close
+imitation externally, I mean--there were no "frou-frous" in it.
+
+Now that we had the "prospector" properly into the picture, we were
+ready for the "farewell" shot--the getting him out of it. For this the
+Captain and I were "picked up" on a picturesque rocky point, regarding
+with interest something far off down-river. Presently he registers
+"dawning comprehension," and tells me in fluent French-Canadian
+pantomime that it is a raft--a whale of a big one. That will offer a way
+for me to continue my voyage now that he has to leave me. Then we go
+down to the boat, which he presents to me with a comprehensive
+"it-is-all-yours" gesture, before shouldering his sack of ore (one of
+our bags of canned stuff answered very well for this) and climbing off
+up the bank toward the "smelter." (We had intended to make a real
+smelter scene at Trail or Northport, but the light was poor at both
+places.) Finally I pushed off alone, pulling down and across the current
+to throw in my fortunes with the "raft." That left the thread of
+"continuity" dangling free, to be spliced up as soon as Ike had the raft
+completed. That worthy was losing no time. All afternoon we heard the
+rumble of logs rolling over boulders, and every now and then a
+fan-shaped splash of spray would flash up with a spangle of iridescence
+in the light of the declining sun.
+
+The car arrived for us at seven-thirty that evening. It was driven by
+Commissioner Howard, of the Spokane County Board, who had courteously
+volunteered to come for us when it appeared there would be some delay in
+getting a hired car off for the hundred and sixty-mile round trip. He
+was accompanied by his son, a high-school youngster. As they had eaten
+lunch on the way, they announced themselves ready to start on the return
+trip at once. The road turned out to be a rough mountain track, and
+rather muddy. Ten miles out from Gerome a suspicious clicking set in
+somewhere under the rear seat, and at twenty miles the differential had
+gone. Mr. Howard finally induced an empty truck to take us in tow, and
+behind that lumbering vehicle we did the last sixty miles. The tow-chain
+parted on an average of once a mile while we were still in the
+mountains, but did better as the roads improved. The temperature fell as
+the altitude increased, and it must have been well under twenty before
+daylight--and a mean, marrow-searching cold at that. Mr. Howard,
+refusing every offer of relief, stuck it out at the wheel all the way
+in--a remarkable example of nerve and endurance, considering that he had
+only recently come out of a hospital. Armstrong, as always, was
+indomitable, singing French-Canadian boating songs of blood-stirring
+_tempo_ most of the way. I shall ever associate his
+
+    "_Rouli, roulant, ma boule roulant,
+     En roulant, ma boule roulant!_"
+
+rather with the chug-chugging of a motor truck than with the creak of
+oars from which it derived its inspiration.
+
+We struck the paved state highway at Davenport about four o'clock, and
+in the very grey dawn of the morning after came rumbling into Spokane.
+Somewhere in the dim shadowy outskirts we stopped rumbling. The truck
+driver reported he had run out of gas. Assiduous milking of the Cole's
+tank yielded just enough to carry us on to the hotel. The Davenport of
+Spokane is one of the very finest hotels in all the world, but if it had
+been just a cabin with a stove, it would still have seemed a rose-sweet
+paradise after those last two nights we had put in--one on the hay with
+belled cows eating up the beds beneath our backs, and the other jerked
+over a frosty road in the wake of a skidding truck. Soaking for an hour
+in a steaming bath, I rolled in between soft sheets, leaving orders not
+to be called until noon.
+
+Spokane is one of the finest, cleanest and most beautiful cities of the
+West, and I have never left it after a visit without regret. This time,
+brief as our stay had to be, was no exception. It was an unusually keen
+looking lot of business and professional men that turned out for the
+Chamber luncheon, among whom I found not a few old college friends and
+others I had not seen for a number of years. Notable of these were
+Herbert Moore and Samuel Stern, with whom I had spent six weeks on a
+commercial mission in China in 1910. I was also greatly interested to
+meet Mr. Turner, the field engineer of the great project for reclaiming
+a million and three-quarters acres of land in the Columbia Basin of
+eastern Washington by diverting to it water from the Pend d'Oreille. The
+incalculable possibilities, as well as the great need of this daring
+project I was to see much of at firsthand during that part of my voyage
+on which I was about to embark.
+
+Captain Armstrong left by train for Nelson the evening of the 27th, and
+the following morning Major Laird drove Roos and me back to Gerome. For
+a considerable part of the distance we followed the highly picturesque
+route along the Spokane River, stopping for lunch at the hydro-electric
+plant of the Washington Power Company at Long Lake. This enterprising
+corporation has power installations already in operation on the Spokane
+which must make that stream pretty nearly the most completely harnessed
+river of its size in America. The lofty concrete barrier which backs up
+Long Lake has the distinction of being the highest spillway dam in the
+world. The "Spokane interval" proved a highly enjoyable spell of
+relaxation before tackling the rough stretch of river ahead. I knew I
+was going to miss greatly the guiding hand and mind of Captain
+Armstrong, but had high hopes of Ike Emerson. I was not to be
+disappointed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+RAFTING THROUGH HELL GATE
+
+
+Ike had been working at high speed during our absence, but his
+imagination appeared rather to have run ahead of his powers of
+execution. The hundred-feet-long, thirty-feet-wide raft he had set
+himself to construct (so as to have something that would "stack up big
+in the movie") took another two days to complete, and even then was not
+quite all that critical artist wanted to make it. After filling in the
+raft proper with solid logs of spruce and cedar, he began heaping
+cordwood upon it. He was trying to make something that would loom up
+above the water, he explained; "somethin' tu make a showin' in the
+pictur'." He had three or four teams hauling, and as many men piling,
+for two days. We stopped him at fifty cords in order to get under way
+the second day after our return. There was some division of opinion
+among the 'long shore loafers as to whether or not this was the
+_largest_ raft that had ever started down this part of the Columbia, but
+they were a unit in agreeing that it was the _highest_. Never was there
+a raft with so much "freeboard." The trouble was that every foot of that
+"freeboard" was cordwood, and then some; for the huge stacks of
+four-foot firewood had weighted down the logs under them until those
+great lengths of spruce and cedar were completely submerged. When you
+walked about "on deck" you saw the river flowing right along through
+the loosely stacked cordwood beneath. Roos was exultant over the way
+that mighty mass of rough wood charging down a rock-walled canyon was
+going to photograph, and Ike was proud as a peacock over the Thing he
+had brought into being. But Roos was going to be cranking on the cliff
+when we went through Hell Gate, and Ike didn't care a fig what happened
+to him anyhow. And I _did_ care. There were a lot of things that could
+happen to a crazy contraption of that kind, _if ever it hit anything
+solid_; and I knew that the walls of Hell Gate and Box Canyon must be
+solid or they wouldn't have stood as long as they had. And as for
+hitting ... that raft must be pretty nearly as long as Hell Gate was
+wide, and if ever it got to swinging.... It's funny the things a man
+will think of the night before he is going to try out a fool stunt that
+he doesn't know much about.
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF THE UPPER COLUMBIA]
+
+[Illustration: A "CLOSE-UP" OF IKE BUILDING HIS RAFT]
+
+[Illustration: MY FIFTY POUND SALMON]
+
+A fine motherly old girl called Mrs. Miller had put us up in her big,
+comfortable farm-house during our wait while Ike completed his
+ship-building operations. She must have known all of seven different
+ways of frying chicken, and maybe twice that number of putting up apple
+preserves. We had just about all of them for breakfast the morning we
+started. Jess, the ferry-man, treated us to vanilla extract cordials and
+told us the story of a raft that had struck and broken up just above his
+father's ranch near Hawk Creek. Only guy they fished out was always
+nutty afterward. Cracked on the head with a length of cordwood while
+swimming. Good swimmer, too; but a guy had no chance in a swish-swashing
+bunch of broke-loose logs. Thus Jess, and thus--or in similar
+vein--about a dozen others who came down to see us off from the ferry
+landing. They all told stories of _raft_ disasters, just as they would
+have enlarged on _boat_ disasters if it had been a boat in which we were
+starting to run Hell Gate and Box Canyon.
+
+I pulled across and landed Roos at the raft to make an introductory shot
+or two of Ike before picking up the thread of his "continuity" with my
+(pictorial) advent. A corner of the raft had been left unfinished for
+this purpose. Ike was discovered boring a log with a huge auger, after
+which he notched and laid a stringer, finishing the operation by pegging
+the latter down with a twisted hazel withe. The old river rat seemed to
+know instinctively just what was wanted of him, going through the action
+so snappily that Roos clapped him on the back and pronounced him "the
+cat's ears" as an actor.
+
+Ike showed real quality in the next scene; also the single-minded
+concentration that marks the true artist. Looking up from his boring, he
+sees a boat paddling toward him from up-river. The nearing craft was
+_Imshallah_, with the "farmer" at the oars, just as he had started (for
+the still unbuilt raft) when the "prospector" gave him the boat before
+disappearing up the bank to the "smelter" with his sack of "ore" over
+his shoulder. Thus "continuity" was served.
+
+The "farmer" pulls smartly alongside, tosses Ike the painter and
+clambers aboard the raft. An animated colloquy ensues, in which the
+"farmer" asks about the river ahead, and Ike tells him, with dramatic
+gestures, that it will be death to tackle it in so frail a skiff. A
+raft is the only safe way to make the passage and--here Ike spreads out
+his hands with the manner of a butler announcing that "dinner is
+served!"--the raft is at the "farmer's" disposal. That suits the
+"farmer" to a "T;" so the skiff is lifted aboard and they are ready to
+cast off.
+
+Where Ike displayed the concentration of a true artist was in the
+skiff-lifting shot. Just as the green bow of _Imshallah_ came over the
+side, a boy who had been stacking cordwood, in rushing forward to clear
+the fouled painter, stepped on an unsecured log and went through into
+the river. By this time, of course, I knew better than to spoil a shot
+by suspending or changing action in the middle of it, but that Ike
+should be thus esoterically sapient was rather too much to expect. Yet
+the sequel proved how much more consummate an artist of the two of us
+that untutored (even by Roos) old river rat was. When we had finished
+"Yo-heave-ho-ing" as the skiff settled into place, I (dropping my
+histrionics like a wet bathing suit) shouted to Ike to come and help me
+fish that kid out. "What kid?" he drawled in a sort of languid surprise.
+Then, after a kind of dazed once-over of the raft, fore-and-aft: "By
+cripes, the kid _is_ gone!" Now has that ever been beaten for artistic
+concentration?
+
+The lad, after bumping down along the bottom to the lower end of the
+raft, had come to the surface no whit the worse for his ducking. He was
+clambering up over the logs like a wet cat before either Ike or I,
+teetering across the crooked, wobbly cordwood, had stumbled half the
+distance to the "stern." "It must be a right sma't betta goin' daun
+unda than up heah," was Ike's only comment.
+
+The motor-boat which Ike had engaged to tow the raft was already on
+hand. It had been built by a Spokane mining magnate for use at his
+summer home on Lake Coeur d'Alene, and was one of the prettiest little
+craft of the kind I ever saw. With its lines streaming gracefully back
+from its sharp, beautifully-flared bow, it showed speed from every
+angle. Hardwood and brass were in bad shape, but the engines were
+resplendent; and the engines were the finest thing about it. They had
+been built to drive it twenty-five miles an hour when she was new, the
+chap running it said, and were probably good for all of twenty-two yet
+when he opened up. Except that its hull wasn't rugged enough to stand
+the banging, it was an ideal river boat, though not necessarily for
+towing rafts. However, it was mighty handy even at that ignominious
+work.
+
+I couldn't quite make up my mind about the engineer of the motor
+boat--not until he settled down to work, that is. His eye was quite
+satisfactory, but his habit of hesitating before answering a question,
+and then usually saying "I dunno," conveyed rather the impression of
+torpid mentality if not actual dulness. Nothing could have been further
+from the truth, as I realized instantly the moment he started swinging
+the raft into the current. He merely said "I dunno" because he really
+didn't know, where an ordinary man would have felt impelled to make half
+an answer, or at least to say something about the weather or the stage
+of the river. Earl (I never learned his last name) was sparing with his
+tongue because he was unsparing with his brain. His mind was always
+ready to act--and to react. There were to arise several situations well
+calculated to test the mettle of him, and he was always "there." I have
+never known so thoroughly useful and dependable a man for working a
+launch in swift water.
+
+While Ike was completing his final "snugging down" operations, I chanced
+to observe a long steel-blue and slightly reddish-tinged body working up
+the bottom toward the stern of the raft. It looked like a salmon, except
+that it was larger than any member of that family I had ever seen. A
+blunt-pointed pike-pole is about the last thing one would use for a
+fish-spear, but, with nothing better ready to hand, I tried it. My first
+thrust was a bad miss, but, rather strangely, I thought--failed to
+deflect the loggily nosing monster more than a foot or two from his
+course. The next thrust went home, but where I was half expecting to
+have the pole torn from my hands by a wild rush, there was only a
+sluggish, unresentful sort of a wriggle. As there was no hook or barb to
+the pike, the best I could do was to worry my prize along the bottom to
+the bank, where a couple of Indians lifted it out for me. It was a
+salmon after all--a vicious looking "dog," with a wicked mouthful of
+curving teeth--but of extraordinary size. It must have weighed between
+fifty and sixty pounds, for the pike-pole all but snapped when I tried
+to lift the monster with it. Indeed, its great bulk was undoubtedly
+responsible for the fact that it was already half-dead from battering on
+the rocks before I speared it. As the flesh was too soft even for the
+Indians, I gave it to a German farmer from a nearby clearing to feed to
+his hogs. Or rather, I traded it. The German had a dog which, for the
+sake of "human interest," Roos very much wanted to borrow. (Why, seeing
+it was a dog, he should not have called it "canine interest," I never
+quite understood; but it was the "heart touch" he wanted, at any rate).
+So Ike proposed to the "Dutchman" that we give him fifty pounds of dead
+"dog" for half that weight of live dog, the latter to be returned when
+we were through with him. That was Ike's _proposition_. As soon as we
+were under way, however, he confided to me that he never was going to
+give that good collie back to a Dutchman. A people that had done what
+the "Dutchmen" did to Belgium had no right to have a collie anyhow. If
+they must have dogs, let them keep dachshunds--or pigs. And he forthwith
+began to alienate that particular collie's affection by feeding him milk
+chocolate. Poor old Ike! Being only a fresh-water sailor, I fear he did
+not have a wife in every port, so that there was an empty place in his
+heart that craved affection.
+
+We cast off at ten o'clock, Earl swung the raft's head out by a steady
+pull with the launch, and the current completed the operation of
+turning. Once in mid-stream she made good time, the motor-boat
+maintaining just enough of a tug to keep the towing-line taut and give
+her a mile an hour or so of way over the current. That gave Earl a
+margin to work with, and, pulling sharply now to one side, now to the
+other, he kept the great pile of logs headed where the current was
+swiftest and the channel clearest. It was all in using his power at the
+right time and in the right way. A hundred-ton tugboat would have been
+helpless in stopping the raft once it started to go in the wrong
+direction. The trick was to start it right and not let it go wrong, Ike
+explained--just like raising pups or kids. It was certainly no job for a
+novice, and I found constant reassurance in the consummate
+"raftsmanship" our taciturn engineer was displaying.
+
+The hills on both sides of the river grew loftier and more rugged as we
+ran to the south, and the trees became patchier and scrubbier. The bunch
+grass on the diminishing benches at the bends was withered and brown. It
+was evident from every sign that we were nearing the arid belt of
+eastern Washington, the great semi-desert plateau that is looped in the
+bend of the Columbia between the mouth of the Spokane and the mouth of
+the Snake. The towering split crest of Mitre Rock marked the approach to
+the slack stretch of water backed up by the boulder barrage over which
+tumbles Spokane Rapids. The run through the latter was to be our real
+baptism; a short rapid passed a few miles above proving only rough
+enough to set the raft rolling in fluent undulations and throw a few
+light gobs of spray over her "bows." We were now going up against
+something pretty closely approximating the real thing. It wasn't Hell
+Gate or Box Canyon by a long way, Ike said, but at the same time it
+wasn't any place to risk any slip-up.
+
+Save for two or three of the major riffles on the Big Bend of Canada,
+Spokane Rapids has a stretch of water that must go down hill just about
+as fast as any on all the Columbia. The channel--although running
+between boulders--was narrow in the first place, and the deepest part of
+it was still further restricted by an attempt to clear a way through for
+steamer navigation in the years when a through service up and down the
+Columbia was still dreamed of. The channel was deepened considerably,
+but the effect of this was to divert a still greater flow into it and
+form a sort of a chute down which the water rushed as through a flume.
+Being straight, this channel is not very risky to run, even with a small
+boat--provided one keeps to it. A wild tumble of rollers just to the
+left of the head must be avoided, however, even by a raft. That was why
+we had the motor-boat--to be sure of "hitting the intake right," as Ike
+put it. And the motor-boat ought to be able to handle the job without
+help. He had been working hard ever since we started on a gigantic
+stern-sweep, but that was for Hell Gate and Box Canyon. Here, with her
+nose once in right, she should do it on her own.
+
+Mooring the raft against the right bank in the quiet water a couple of
+hundred yards above the "intake," Earl ran us down to the mouth of the
+Spokane River in the launch. We were purchasing gasoline and provisions
+in the little village of Lincoln, just below the Spokane, and Ike
+thought that the lower end of the rapid would be the best place for Roos
+to set up to command the raft coming through. It was indeed terrifically
+fast water, but--because the launch had the power to pick the very best
+of the channel--the run down just missed the thrill that would have
+accompanied it had it been up to one's oars to keep his boat out of
+trouble. Earl shut off almost completely as he slipped into the "V,"
+keeping a bare steerage-way over the current. Twenty miles an hour was
+quite fast enough to be going in the event she _did_ swerve from the
+channel and hit a rock; there was no point in adding to the potential
+force of the impact with the engine. As there was a heavy wash from the
+rapids in even the quietest eddy he could find opposite the town, Earl
+stayed with the launch, keeping her off the rocks with a pole while Ike,
+Roos and myself went foraging. Ike spilled gasoline over his back in
+packing a leaking can down over the boulders, causing burns from which
+he suffered considerable pain and annoyance when he came to man the
+sweep the following day.
+
+After dropping Roos on the right bank to set up for the picture, Earl
+drove the launch back up the rapid to the raft. I hardly know which was
+the more impressive, the power of the wildly racing rapid or the power
+of the engine of the launch. It was a ding-dong fight all the way.
+Although he nosed at times to within a few inches of the overhanging
+rocks of the bank in seeking the quietest water, the launch was brought
+repeatedly to a standstill. There she would hang quivering, until the
+accelerating engine would impart just the few added revolutions to the
+propellers that would give her the upper hand again. The final struggle
+at the "intake" was the bitterest of all, and Earl only won out there by
+sheering to the right across the "V"--at imminent risk of being swung
+round, it seemed to me--and reaching less impetuous water.
+
+Throwing off her mooring lines, Earl towed the raft out into the
+sluggish current. There was plenty of time and plenty of room to
+manoeuvre her into the proper position. All he had to do was to bring
+her into the "intake" well clear of the rocks and rollers to the left,
+and then keep towing hard enough to hold her head down-stream. It was a
+simple operation--compared, for instance, with what he would have on the
+morrow at Hell Gate--but still one that had to be carried out just so if
+an awful mess-up was to be avoided. Novice as I was with that sort of a
+raft, I could readily see what would happen if she once got to swinging
+and turned broadside to the rapid.
+
+That was about the first major rapid I ever recall running when I didn't
+have something to do, and it was rather a relief to be able to watch the
+wheels go round and feel that there was nothing to stand-by for. Even
+Ike, with no sweep to swing, was foot-loose, or rather hand-free.
+Knowing Earl's complete capability, he prepared to cast aside
+navigational worries for the nonce. He had picked up his axe and was
+about to turn to hewing at the blade of his big steering-oar, when I
+reminded him that he was still an actor and that he had been ordered to
+run up and down the raft and register "great anxiety" while within range
+of the camera.
+
+Perhaps the outstanding sensation of that wild run was the feeling of
+surprise that swept over me at the almost uncanny speed with which that
+huge unwieldy mass of half submerged wood gathered way. In still water
+it would have taken a powerful tug many minutes to start it moving; here
+it picked up and leapt ahead like a motor-boat. One moment it was
+drifting along at three miles an hour; five seconds later, having slid
+over the "intake," it was doing more than twenty. The actual slope of
+that first short pitch must have been all of one-in-ten, so that I found
+myself bracing against the incline of the raft, as when standing in a
+wagon that starts over the brow of a hill. Then the pitch eased and she
+hit the rollers, grinding right through them like a floating Juggernaut.
+The very worst of them--haughty-headed combers that would have sent the
+skiff sky-rocketing--simply dissolved against the logs and died in
+hissing anguish in the tangle of cordwood. The motion had nothing of the
+jerkiness of even so large a craft as the launch, and one noticed it
+less under his feet than when he looked back and saw the wallowing
+undulations of the "deck."
+
+But best of all was the contemptuous might with which the raft stamped
+out, obliterated, abolished the accursed whirlpools. Spokane was not
+deep and steep-sided enough to be a dangerous whirlpool rapid, like the
+Dalles or Hell Gate, but there were still a lot of mighty mean-mouthed
+"suckers" lying in ambush where the rollers began to flatten. There was
+no question of their arrogance and courage. The raft might have been the
+dainty _Imshallah_, with her annoying feminine weakness for clinging
+embraces, for all the hesitancy they displayed in attacking it. But, oh,
+what a difference! Where the susceptible _Imshallah_ had edged off in
+coy dalliance and ended by all but surrendering, the raft simply
+thundered ahead. The siren "whouf!" of the lurking brigand was forced
+back down its black throat as it was literally effaced, smeared from
+the face of the water. Gad, how I loved to see them die, after all
+_Imshallah_ and I had had to endure at their foul hands! _Imshallah_,
+perched safely aloft on a stack of cordwood, took it all with the rather
+languid interest one would expect from a lady of her quality; but
+I--well, I fear very much that I was leaning out over the "bows," at an
+angle not wholly safe under the circumstances, and registering "ghoulish
+glee" at the exact point where Roos had told me three times that I must
+be running up and down in the wake of Ike and registering "great
+anxiety."
+
+As there was no stopping the raft within a mile or two of the foot of
+the rapid, it had been arranged that we should launch the skiff as soon
+as we were through the worst water, and pull in to the first favourable
+eddy to await Roos and his camera. It was Ike bellowing to me to come
+and lend him a hand with the skiff that compelled me to relinquish my
+position at the "bow," where, "thumbs down" at every clash, I had been
+egging on the raft to slaughter whirlpools. The current was still very
+swift, so that Ike was carried down a considerable distance before
+making a landing. As it was slow going for Roos, laden with camera and
+tripod, over the boulders, ten or fifteen minutes elapsed before they
+pushed off in pursuit of the raft. The latter, in the meantime, had run
+a couple of miles farther down river before Earl found a stretch
+sufficiently quiet to swing her round and check her way by towing up
+against the current.
+
+In running down to this point the raft had splashed through a slashing
+bit of riffle, which I afterwards learned was called Middle Rapid
+locally. There was a short stretch of good rough white water. Offhand,
+it looked to me rather sloppier than anything we had put the skiff into
+so far; but, as it appeared there would be no difficulty in steering a
+course in fairly smooth water to the left of the rollers, I was not
+greatly concerned over it. Presently Ike came pulling round the bend at
+a great rate, and the next thing I knew _Imshallah_ was floundering
+right down the middle of the frosty-headed combers. Twice or thrice I
+saw the "V" of her bow shoot skyward, silhouetting like a black wedge
+against a fan of sun-shot spray. Then she began riding more evenly, and
+shortly was in smoother water. It was distinctly the kind of thing she
+did best, and she had come through with flying colours. Roos was
+grinning when he climbed aboard, but still showed a tinge of green about
+the gills. "Why didn't you head her into that smooth stretch on the
+left?" I asked. "_You_ had the steering paddle." "I tried to hard
+enough," he replied, still grinning, "but Ike wouldn't have it. Said he
+kinda suspected she'd go through that white stuff all right, and wanted
+to see if his suspicions were correct." And that was old Ike Emerson to
+a "T."
+
+We wallowed on through French Rapids and Hawk Creek Rapids in the next
+hour, and past the little village of Peach, nestling on a broad bench in
+the autumnal red and gold of its clustering orchards. Ike, pacing the
+"bridge" with me, said that they used to make prime peach brandy at
+Peach, and reckoned that p'raps.... "No," I cut in decisively; "_I_
+have no desire to return to Kettle Falls." I had jumped at the chance
+to draw Ike on that remarkable up-river journey of his after the
+disaster in Hell Gate, but he sheered off at once. I have grave doubts
+as to whether that strange phenomenon ever will be explained.
+
+We were now threading a great canyon, the rocky walls of which reared
+higher and higher in fantastic pinnacles, spires and weird castellations
+the deeper we penetrated its glooming depths. There had been painters at
+work, too, and with colourings brighter and more varied than any I had
+believed to exist outside of the canyons of the Colorado and the
+Yellowstone. Saffron melting to fawn and dun was there, and vivid
+streaks that were almost scarlet where fractures were fresh, but had
+changed to maroon and terra cotta under the action of the weather. A
+fluted cliff-face, touched by the air-brush of the declining sun,
+flushed a pink so delicate that one seemed to be looking at it through a
+rosy mist. There were intenser blocks and masses of colours showing in
+vivid lumps on a buttressed cliff ahead, but they were quenched before
+we reached them in a flood of indigo and mauve shadows that drenched the
+chasm as the sun dropped out of sight. From the heights it must have
+been a brilliant sunset, flaming with intense reds and yellows as desert
+sunsets always are; but looking out through the purple mists of the
+great gorge there was only a flutter of bright pennons--crimson, gold,
+polished bronze and dusky olive green--streaming across an ever widening
+and narrowing notch of jagged rock, black and opaque like splintered
+ebony. For a quarter of an hour we seemed to be steering for those
+shimmering pennons as for a harbor beacon; then a sudden up-thrust of
+black wall cut them off like a sliding door. By the time we were headed
+west again the dark pall of fallen night had smothered all life out of
+the flame-drenched sky, leaving it a pure transparent black, pricked
+with the twinkle of kindling stars. Only by the absence of stars below
+could one trace the blank opacity of the blacker black of the towering
+cliffs.
+
+No one had said anything to me about an all-day-and-all-night schedule
+for the raft, and, as a matter of fact, running in the night had not
+entered into the original itinerary at all. The reason we were bumping
+along in the dark now was that Ike, who had no more idea of time than an
+Oriental, had pushed off from Gerome an hour late, wasted another
+unnecessary hour in Lincoln yarning across the sugar barrel at the
+general store, and, as a consequence, had been overtaken by night ten
+miles above the point he wanted to make. As there was no fast water
+intervening, and as Earl had shown no signs of dissent, Ike had simply
+gone right on ahead regardless. When I asked him if it wasn't a bit
+risky, he said he thought not very; adding comfortingly that he had
+floated down on rafts a lot of times before, and hadn't "allus bumped."
+If he could see to tighten up stringer pegs, he reckoned Earl ought to
+be able to see rocks, "'cose rocks was a sight bigger'n pegs."
+
+It was not long after Ike had nullified the effect of his reassuring
+philosophy by smearing the end of his thumb with a mallet that Earl's
+night-owl eyes played him false to the extent of overlooking a rock. It
+may well have been a very small rock, and it was doubtless submerged a
+foot or more; so there was no use expecting a man to see the ripple
+above it when there wasn't light enough to indicate the passage of his
+hand before his eyes. It was no fault of Earl's at all, and even the
+optimistic Ike had claimed no more than that he hadn't "allus bumped."
+Nor was it a very serious matter at the worst. The raft merely hesitated
+a few seconds, swung part way round, slipped free again and, her head
+brought back at the pull of the launch, resumed her way. The jar of
+striking was not enough to throw a well-braced man off his feet. (The
+only reason Roos fell and pulped his ear was because he had failed to
+set himself at the right angle when the shock came.) The worst thing
+that happened was the loss of a dozen or so cords of wood which, being
+unsecurely stacked, toppled over when she struck. Luckily, the boat was
+parked on the opposite side, as was also Roos. It would have been hard
+to pick up either before morning, and Roos would hardly have lasted. The
+wood was a total loss to Ike, of course; but he was less concerned about
+that than he was over the fact that it reduced her "freeboard" on that
+quarter by three feet, so that she wouldn't make so much of a "showin'
+in the picters." He _did_ raise a howl the next morning, though. That
+was when he found that his old denim jacket had gone over with the
+cordwood. It wasn't the "wamus" itself he minded so much, he said, but
+the fact that in one of that garment's pockets had been stored the milk
+chocolate which he was using to alienate the affections of the
+Dutchman's collie. "It's all in gettin' a jump on a pup's feelin's at
+the fust offsta't," he philosophied bitterly; "an' naow I'll be losin'
+mah jump." Rather keen on the psychology of alienation, that observation
+of old Ike, it struck me.
+
+It was along toward nine o'clock, and shortly after the abrupt walls of
+the canyon began to fall away somewhat, that a light appeared on the
+left bank. Making a wide circle just above what had now become a glowing
+window-square, Earl brought the raft's head up-stream and swung her in
+against the bank. The place was marked Creston on the maps, but appeared
+to be spoken of locally as Halberson's Ferry. We spent the night with
+the hospitable Halbersons, who ran the ferry across to the Colville
+Reservation side and operated a small sawmill when logs were available.
+Earl slept at his ranch, a few miles away on the _mesa_.
+
+The night was intensely cold, and I was not surprised to find icicles
+over a foot long on the flume behind the house in the morning. The
+frozen ground returned a metallic clank to the tread of my hob-nailed
+boots as I stepped outside the door. Then I gave a gasp of amazement,
+for what did I see but Ike running--with a light, springing step--right
+along the surface of the river? At my exclamation one of the Halbersons
+left off toweling and came over to join me. "What's wrong?" he asked,
+swinging his arms to keep warm. "Wrong!" I ejaculated; "look at that! I
+know this isn't Galilee; but you don't mean to tell me the Columbia has
+frozen over during the night!" "Hardly that," was the laughing answer.
+"Ike's not running on either the ice or the water; he's just riding a
+water-soaked log to save walking. It's an old trick of his. Not many can
+do it like he can." And that was all there was to it. Ike had spotted a
+drift-log stranded a short distance up-river, and was simply bringing it
+down the easiest way so as to lash it to the raft and take it to market.
+But I should have hated to have seen a thing like that "water-walking"
+effect in those long ago days on the Canadian Big Bend, when we used to
+prime our breakfast coffee with a couple of fingers of "thirty per
+over-proof."
+
+We cast off at nine-thirty, after Ike had laid in some more "component
+parts" of his mighty sweep at the little sawmill. Although less deeply
+encanyoned than through the stretch down which we passed the previous
+night, there were still enormously high cliffs on both sides of the
+river. Trees and brush were scarcer and scrubbier than above, and the
+general aspect was becoming more and more like the semi-arid parts of
+the Colorado Desert. The colouring was somewhat less vivid than the riot
+in the canyon above, but was almost equally varied. The colour-effect
+was diversified along this part of the river by the appearance of great
+patches of rock-growing lichen, shading through half a dozen reds and
+browns to the most delicate amethyst and sage-green. At places it was
+impossible to tell from the river where the mineral pigments left off
+and the vegetable coating began.
+
+The river was broad and widening, with a comparatively slow current and
+only occasional stretches of white water. I took the occasion to launch
+the skiff and paddle about for an hour, trying to get some line on the
+speed at which the raft was towing. In smooth water I found I had the
+legs of her about three-to-one, and in rapids of about two-to-one. From
+this I figured that she did not derive more than from a mile and a half
+to two miles an hour of her speed from the launch. I only raced her
+through one bit of rapid, and she was such a poor sport about the course
+that I refused to repeat the stunt. Just as I began to spurt past her
+down through the jumping white caps she did a sort of a side-slip and
+crowded me out of the channel and into a rather messy souse-hole. The
+outraged _Imshallah_ gulped a big mouthful, but floundered through
+right-side up, as she always seemed able to do in that sort of stuff.
+But I pulled into an eddy and let the hulking old wood-pile have the
+right-of-way, declining Earl's tooted challenge for a brush in the
+riffle immediately following. A monster that could eat whirlpools alive
+wasn't anything for a skiff to monkey with the business end of. I
+boarded her respectfully by the stern and pulled _Imshallah_ up after
+me.
+
+The great bald dome of White Rock, towering a thousand feet above the
+left bank of the river, signalled our approach to Hell Gate. Towing
+across a broad reach of quiet water, Earl laid the raft against the left
+bank about half a mile above where a pair of black rock jaws,
+froth-flecked and savage, seemed closing together in an attempt to bite
+the river in two. That was as close as it was safe to stop the raft,
+Earl explained as we made fast the mooring lines, for the current began
+to accelerate rapidly almost immediately below. There were some shacks
+and an ancient apple orchard on the bench above, and Ike came over to
+whisper that they used to make some mighty kicky cider there once upon a
+time, and perhaps.... I did not need the prompting of Earl's admonitory
+head-shake. "Get a jump on you with the sweep," I said, "while Earl and
+I go down and help Roos set up. There'll be time enough to talk about
+cider below Hell Gate." I saw a somewhat (to judge from a distance)
+Bacchantic ciderette picking her way down the bench bank to the raft as
+the launch sped off down stream, but if Ike realized dividends from the
+visit there was never anything to indicate it.
+
+Although Hell Gate is a long ways from being the worst rapid on the
+Columbia, it comes pretty near to qualifying as the _worst looking_
+rapid. A long black reef, jutting out from the left bank, chokes the
+river into a narrow channel and forces it over against the rocky wall on
+the right. It shoots between these obstructions with great velocity,
+only to split itself in two against a big rock island a hundred yards
+farther down. The more direct channel is to the right, but it is too
+narrow to be of use. The main river, writhing like a wounded snake after
+being bounced off the sheer wall of the island, zigzags on through the
+black basaltic barrier in a course shaped a good deal like an elongated
+letter "Z." Hell Gate is very much like either the Great or Little
+Dalles would be if a jog were put into it by an earthquake--a rapid
+shaped like a flash of lightning, and with just as much kick in it.
+
+After much climbing and scrambling over rocks, Roos found a place about
+half way down the left side of the jagged gorge from which he could
+command the raft rounding the first leg of the "Z" and running part of
+the second leg. It would have taken a half dozen machines to cover the
+whole run through, but the place he had chosen was the one which would
+show the most one camera could be expected to get. It would miss
+entirely the main thing--the fight to keep the raft from bumping the
+rock island and splitting in two like the river did. That could not be
+helped, however. A set up in a place to catch that would have caught
+very little else, and we desired to show something of the general
+character of the gorge and rapid. Roos, solacing himself with the remark
+to the effect that, if the raft _did_ break up, probably the biggest
+part of the wreck would come down his side, was cutting himself a
+"sylvan frame" through the branches of a gnarled old screw pine as we
+left him to go to the launch.
+
+[Illustration: IKE RIDING A LOG]
+
+[Illustration: IKE ON THE MOORING LINE OF THE RAFT]
+
+[Illustration: RAFT IN TOW OF LAUNCH NEAR MOUTH OF SAN POIL (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: IKE AT THE SWEEP BELOW HELL GATE (_below_)]
+
+Ike was sitting on the bank talking with a couple of men from the
+farm-house when we got back to the raft. He had completed the sweep, he
+said, but as he had forgotten to provide any "pin" to hang it on he
+didn't quite know what to do. Perhaps we had better go up to the
+farm-house and have dinner first, and then maybe he would think of
+something. The thought of keeping Roos--whom I had seen on the verge of
+apoplexy over a half minute delay once he was ready for
+action--standing with crooked elbow at his crank, waiting an hour or
+more for the raft to shoot round the bend the next second, struck me as
+so ludicrous that I had to sit down myself to laugh without risk of
+rolling into the river. When I finally got my breath and sight back, I
+found Earl's ready mind had hit upon the idea of using the hickory
+adze-handle as a pivot for the sweep and that he and Ike were already
+rigging it. Ten minutes later the launch had swung the raft out into the
+current and we were headed for Hell Gate.
+
+The sweep, clumsy as it looked, was most ingeniously constructed. Its
+handle was a four-inch-in-diameter fir trunk, about twenty feet in
+length. One end of it had been hewn down to give hand-grip on it, and
+the other split to receive the blade. The latter was a twelve-foot
+plank, a foot and a half in width and three inches in thickness, roughly
+rounded and hewn to the shape of the flat of an oar. It was set at a
+slight upward tilt from the fir-trunk handle. Ike had contrived to
+centre the weight of the whole sweep so nicely that you could swing it
+on its adze-handle pivot with one hand. Swing it in the air, I mean;
+submerged, five or six men would have been none too few to force that
+colossal blade through the water. Ike admitted that himself, but
+reckoned that the two of us ought to be 'better'n nothin' 'tall.'
+
+As we swung out into the quickening current, I mentioned to Ike that, as
+I had never even seen a sweep of that kind in operation, much less
+worked at it myself, it might now be in order for him to give me some
+idea of what he hoped to do with it, and how. "Ye're right," he
+assented, after ejecting the inevitable squirt of tobacco and parking
+the residuary quid out of the way of his tongue as a squirrel stows a
+nut; "ye're right; five minutes fer eloosidashun an' r'h'rsal." As
+usual, Ike overestimated the time at his disposal; nevertheless, his
+intensive method of training was so much to the point that I picked up a
+"right smart bit o' sweep dope" before we began to cram into the crooked
+craw of Hell Gate.
+
+This was the biggest raft he had ever tried to take through, Ike
+explained, but he'd never had so powerful a motor launch; and Earl was
+the best man in his line on the Columbia. He reckoned that the launch
+would be able to swing the head of the raft clear of the rock island
+where the river split "agin" it; but swinging _out_ the head would have
+the effect of swinging in the stern. We were to man the sweep for the
+purpose of keeping the raft from striking amidships. We would only have
+to stroke one way, but we'd sure have to "jump into it billy hell!"
+"That being so," I suggested, "perhaps we better try a practice stroke
+or two to perfect our team-work." That struck Ike as reasonable, and so
+we went at it, he on the extreme end of the handle, I one "grip" farther
+along.
+
+Pressing the handle almost to our feet in order to elevate the blade, we
+dipped the latter with a swinging upward lift and jumped into the
+stroke. In order to keep the blade well submerged, it was necessary to
+exert almost as much force upward as forward. The compression on the
+spine was rather awful--especially as I was two or three inches taller
+than Ike, and on top of that, had the "inside" berth, where the handle
+was somewhat nearer the deck. But the blade moved through the water when
+we both straightened into it; slowly at first, and more rapidly toward
+the end of the stroke. Then we lifted the blade out of the water, and
+Ike swung it back through the air alone. I had only to "crab-step" back
+along the runway--a couple of planks laid over the cordwood--and be
+ready for the next stroke. Twice we went through that operation,
+without--so far as I could see--having any effect whatever upon the
+raft; but that was only because I was expecting "skiff-action" from a
+hundred tons of logs. We really must have altered the course
+considerably, for presently a howl came back from Earl to "do it t'other
+way," as we were throwing her out of the channel. By the time we had
+"corrected" with a couple of strokes in the opposite direction the
+launch was dipping over the crest of the "intake." Straightening up but
+not relinquishing the handle, Ike said to "let 'er ride fer a minnit,"
+but to stand-by ready.
+
+That swift opening run through the outer portal of Hell Gate offered
+about the only chance I had for a "look-see." My recollections of the
+interval that followed at the sweep are a good deal blurred. I noted
+that the water of the black-walled chasm down which we were racing was
+swift and deep, but not--right there at least--too rough for the skiff
+to ride. I noted how the sharp point of the rock island ahead threw off
+two unequal back-curving waves, as a battleship will do when turning at
+full speed. I remember thinking that, if I were in the skiff, I would
+try to avoid the island by sheering over to the right-hand channel. It
+looked too hard a pull to make the main one to the left; and the latter
+would have the worst whirlpools, too. I noted how confoundedly in the
+way of the river that sharp-nosed island was; and not only of the river,
+but of anything coming down the river. With that up-stabbing point out
+of the stream, how easy it would be! But since....
+
+"Stan'-by!" came in a growl from Ike. "'Memba naow--'billy hell' when I
+says 'jump!'" By the fact that he spat forth the whole of his
+freshly-bitten quid I had a feeling that the emergency was considerably
+beyond the ordinary. My last clear recollection was of Earl's sharply
+altering his course just before he nosed into the roaring back-curving
+wave thrown off by the island and beginning to tow to the left with his
+line at half of a right-angle to the raft. The staccato of his
+accelerating engine cut like the rattle of a machine-gun through the
+heavy rumble of the rapid, and I knew that he had thrown it wide open
+even before the foam-geyser kicked up by the propellers began to tumble
+over onto the stern of the launch. On a reduced scale, it was the same
+sort of in-tumbling jet that a destroyer throws up when, at the
+appearance of an ominous blur in the fog, she goes from
+quarter-speed-ahead to full-speed-astern. A jet like that means that the
+spinning screws are meeting almost solid resistance in the water.
+
+Ike's shoulder cut off my view ahead now, and I knew that the bow was
+swinging out only from the way the stern was swinging in. At his grunted
+"Now!" we did our curtsey-and-bow to the sweep-handle, just as we had
+practised it, then dipped the blade and drove it hard to the right.
+Four or five times we repeated that stroke, and right smartly, too, it
+seemed to me. The stern stopped swinging just at the right time,
+shooting by the foam-whitened fang of the black point by a good ten
+feet. The back-curving wave crashed down in solid green on the starboard
+quarter--but harmlessly. There was water enough to have swamped a
+_batteau_, but against a raft the comber had knocked its head off for
+nothing.
+
+Under Ike's assurance that the battle would all be over but the shouting
+in half a minute, I had put about everything I had into those half dozen
+mighty pushes with the sweep. I started to back off leisurely and resume
+my survey of the scenery as we cleared the point, but Ike's mumbled
+"Nother one!" brought me back to the sweep again. Evidently there had
+been some kind of a slip-up. "Wha' 'smatter?" I gurgled, as we swayed
+onto the kicking handle, and "Engin's on blink," rumbled the chesty
+reply. "Gotta keep'er off wi' sweep."
+
+It had been the motor-boat's rôle, after keeping the head of the raft
+clear of the point of the island by a strong side pull, to tow out
+straight ahead again as soon as the menace of collision was past. Earl
+was trying to do this now (I glimpsed as I crab-stepped back), but with
+two or three cylinders missing was not able to do much more than
+straighten out the tow-line. As the raft was already angling to the
+channel, the fact the current was swifter against the side of the island
+had the tendency to throw her stern in that direction. It was up to the
+sweep to keep her from striking, just as it had been at the point. What
+made it worse now was that the possible points of impact were scattered
+all the way along for two or three hundred yards, while the launch was
+giving very little help.
+
+A man ought to be able to lean onto a sweep all day long without getting
+more than a good comfortable weariness, and so I _could_ have done had I
+been properly broken in. But I was in the wrong place on the sweep, and,
+on top of that, had allowed my infantile enthusiasm to lead me into
+trying to scoop half the Columbia out of its channel at every stroke.
+And so it was that when we came to a real showdown, I found myself
+pretty hard put to come through with what was needed. Ike's relentless
+"'Nother one!" at the end of each soul-and-body wracking stroke was all
+that was said, but the 'tween-teethed grimness of its utterance was more
+potent as a verbal scourge than a steady stream of sulphurous curses.
+Ike was saving his breath, and I didn't have any left to pour out my
+feelings with.
+
+We were close to the ragged black wall all the way, and I have an idea
+that the back-waves thrown off by the projecting points had about as
+much to do with keeping us from striking as had the sweep. Such waves
+will often buffer off a canoe or _batteau_, and they must have helped
+some with the raft. There is no doubt, however, that, if the raft had
+once been allowed to swing broadside, either she or the rock island
+would have had to change shape or else hold up the million or so
+horse-power driving the Columbia. That could have only resulted in a
+one-two-three climax, with the island, Columbia and raft finishing in
+the order named. Or, to express it in more accurate race-track
+vernacular; "Island," first; "Columbia," second; "Raft," nowhere!
+
+My spine was a bar of red-hot iron rasping up and down along the exposed
+ends of all its connecting nerves, when a throaty "Aw right!" from Ike
+signalled that the worst was past. Hanging over the end of the trailing
+sweep-handle, I saw that the raft had swung into a big eddy at the foot
+of the island, and that the launch, with its engine still spraying
+scattered pops, was trying to help the back-current carry her in to the
+right bank. Middle and Lower Rapids of Hell Gate were still below us,
+but Earl had evidently determined not to run them until his engine was
+hitting on all fours again. It was characteristic of him that he didn't
+offer any explanation as to what had gone wrong, or why; but the trouble
+must have been a consequence of the terrific strain put on the engine in
+towing the head of the raft clear of the upper point of the island. At
+the end of a quarter hour's tinkering Earl reckoned that the engine
+would go "purty good" now; leastways, he hoped so, for there was nothing
+more he could do outside of a machine-shop. To save tying up again
+below, he ran across and picked up Roos and the camera before casting
+off.
+
+Middle and Lower Rapids were just straight, fast, white water, and we
+ran them without trouble. Roos set up on the raft and shot a panorama of
+the reeling rollers and the flying black curtains of the rocky walls as
+they slid past. Then he made a close-up of the weird, undulating
+Chinese-Dragon-wiggle of the "deck" of the raft, and finally, when we
+had recovered a bit of breath, of Ike and me toiling at the sweep. To
+save time, we had lunch on the raft, taking Earl's portion up to him in
+the skiff.
+
+Ike, announcing that he would need a crew of four or five men to handle
+the raft in Box Canyon, was scouting for hands all afternoon. Whenever a
+farm or a ferry appeared in the distance, we would pull ahead in the
+skiff and he would dash ashore and pursue intensive recruiting until the
+raft had come up and gone on down river. Then we would push off and
+chase it, repeating the performance as soon as another apple orchard or
+ferry tower crept out beyond a bend. For all our zeal, there was not a
+man to show when we finally pulled the skiff aboard as darkness was
+falling on the river. Most of the men Ike talked to took one look at the
+nearing raft and cut him off with a "Good-night" gesture, the
+significance of which was not lost on me even in the distant skiff. The
+nearest we came to landing any one was at Plum, where the half-breed
+ferry-man said he would have gone if it hadn't been for the fact that
+his wife was about to become a mother. It wasn't that he was worried on
+the woman's account (she did that sort of thing quite regularly without
+trouble), but he had bet a horse with the blacksmith that it was going
+to be a boy, and he kind of wanted to be on hand to be sure they didn't
+put anything over on him.
+
+At Clark's Ferry an old pal of Ike's, whom he had confidently counted on
+getting, not only refused to go when he saw the raft, but even took the
+old river rat aside and talked to him long and earnestly, after the
+manner of a brother. Ike was rather depressed after that, and spent the
+next hour slouching back and forth across the stern runway, nursing the
+handle of the gently-swung sweep against his cheek like a pet kitten. He
+was deeply introspective, and seemed to be brooding over something. It
+was not until the next morning that he admitted that the raft had not
+proved quite as handy as he had calculated.
+
+Again we ran well into the dark, but this time in a somewhat opener
+canyon than the black gorge we had threaded the night before. It was
+Spring Canyon we were making for, where Ike had left his last raft. No
+one was living there, he said, but it was a convenient place for the
+ranchers from up on the plateau to come and get the wood. Earl found the
+place and made the landing with not even a window-light to guide. We
+moored to the lower logs of the cedar raft, most of which was now lying
+high and dry on the rocks, left by the falling river. We cooked supper
+on the bank and--after Roos had deftly picked the lock with a bent
+wire--slept on the floor of an abandoned farm-house on the bench above.
+
+Ike had complained a good deal of his gasoline-burned back during the
+day, and was evidently suffering not a little discomfort from the
+chafing of his woollen undershirt. He was restless during the night, and
+when he got up at daybreak I saw him pick up and shake out an old white
+table-cloth that had been thrown in one corner. When I went down to the
+raft a little later, I found the old rat stripped to the waist and Earl
+engaged in swathing the burned back in the folds of the white
+table-cloth. As the resultant bundle was rather too bulky to allow a
+shirt to be drawn over it, Ike went around for a couple of hours just as
+he was, for all the world like "the noblest Roman of them all"--from
+neck to the waist, that is. The long, drooping, tobacco-stained
+moustaches, no less than the sagging overalls, would have had rather a
+"foreign" look on the _Forum Romanum_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+BY LAUNCH THROUGH BOX CANYON
+
+
+There was plainly something on Ike's mind all through breakfast, but
+what it was didn't transpire until I asked him what time he would be
+ready to push off. Then, like a man who blurts out an unpalatable truth,
+he gave the free end of his "toga" a fling back over his shoulder and
+announced that he had come to the conclusion that the raft was too big
+and too loosely constructed to run Box Canyon; in fact, we could count
+ourselves lucky that we got through Hell Gate without smashing up. What
+he proposed to do was to take the biggest and straightest logs from both
+the rafts and make a small, solid one that would stand any amount of
+banging from the rocks. He never gave a thought to his life when working
+on the river, he declared, but it would be a shame to run an almost
+certain risk of losing so big a lot of logs and cordwood. The wreckage
+would be sure to be salvaged by farmers who would otherwise have to buy
+wood from him, so he would be a double loser in case the raft went to
+pieces. I told him that I quite appreciated his feelings (about the wood
+and logs, I mean), and asked how long he figured it would take to get
+the logs out of the old rafts and build a new one. He reckoned it could
+be done in two or three days, if we hustled. As I had already learned
+that any of Ike's estimates of time had to be multiplied by at least
+two to approximate accuracy, I realized at once that our rafting voyage
+was at an end. We already had some very good raft pictures, and as a few
+hundred yards of the run through Box Canyon would be all that could be
+added to these, it did not seem worth anything like the delay building
+the new raft would impose. As far as the sale of the wood and logs was
+concerned, Ike said he would rather have the stuff where it was than in
+Bridgeport.
+
+So, quite unexpectedly but in all good feeling, we prepared to abandon
+the raft and have the motor-boat take the skiff in tow as far as Chelan.
+This would make up a part of the time we had lost in waiting for the
+raft in the first place, and also save the portage round Box Canyon. It
+was quite out of the question venturing into that gorge in our small
+boat, Earl said, but he had made it before with his launch, and reckoned
+he could do it again. We settled with Ike on a basis of twenty dollars a
+day for his time, out of which he would pay for the launch. As his big
+raft of logs and firewood was brought to its destination for nothing by
+this arrangement, he was that much ahead. For the further use of the
+launch, we were to pay Earl ten dollars a day and buy the gasoline.
+
+We helped Ike get the raft securely moored, had an early lunch on the
+rocks, and pushed off at a little after noon, the skiff in tow of the
+launch on a short painter. A few miles along Ike pointed out a
+depression, high above the river on the left side, which he said was the
+mouth of the Grand Coulee, the ancient bed of the Columbia. I have
+already mentioned a project which contemplates bringing water from the
+Pend d'Oreille to irrigate nearly two million acres of semi-arid land of
+the Columbia basin. A project that some engineers consider will bring
+water to the same land more directly and at a much less cost per acre is
+to build a dam all the way across the Columbia below the mouth of the
+Grand Coulee, and use the power thus available to pump sixteen thousand
+second-feet into the old channel of that river. Mr. James O'Sullivan, a
+contractor of Port Huron, Michigan, who has made an exhaustive study of
+this latter project, writes me as follows:
+
+     "A dam at this point could be built 300 feet high above low
+     water, and it would form a lake 150 miles long all the way to the
+     Canadian boundary. It is estimated that one million dollars would
+     pay all the flooding damages. A dam 300 feet high would be 4,300
+     feet long on the crest, and would require about 5,000,000 cubic
+     yards of concrete. It would cost, assuming bedrock not to exceed
+     100 feet below water, about forty million dollars. It is
+     estimated that the power-house, direct connected pumps, turbines
+     and discharge pipes would cost fifteen million dollars.... From
+     the Columbia River to the arid lands, a distance of less than
+     forty miles, there is a natural channel less than one mile wide,
+     flanked by rock walls on both sides, so that the cost of getting
+     water to the land would be primarily confined to the dam and
+     power. Such a dam would require about five years to build, and it
+     would create out of a worthless desert a national estate of four
+     hundred and fifty million dollars, and the land would produce
+     annually in crops two hundred and seventy-five million.... An
+     irrigation district is now being formed in Central Washington,
+     and it is proposed to proceed at once with the core drilling of
+     the dam-site, to determine the nature and depth of bedrock,
+     which seems to be the only question left unsettled which affects
+     the feasibility of the project. The Northwestern states are all
+     in a league for securing the reclamation of this vast area, and
+     there is no doubt that, if bedrock conditions prove to be
+     favourable, that in the near future the money will be raised to
+     construct this great project, which will reclaim an area equal to
+     the combined irrigation projects undertaken by the U. S.
+     Government to-day.... It is considered now that where power is
+     free, a pumping lift as high as 300 feet is perfectly feasible."
+
+Which of these two great projects for the reclamation of the desert of
+the Columbia Basin has the most to recommend is not a question upon
+which a mere river _voyageur_, who is not an engineer, can offer an
+intelligent opinion. That the possibilities of such reclamation, if it
+can be economically effected, are incalculably immense, however, has
+been amply demonstrated. From source to mouth, the Columbia to-day is
+almost useless for power, irrigation and even transportation. The
+experience of those who, lured on by abnormal rainfalls of a decade or
+more ago, tried dry farming in this region border closely on the tragic.
+And the tragedy has been all the more poignant from the fact that the
+disaster of drought has overtaken them year after year with the Columbia
+running half a million second-feet of water to waste right before their
+eyes. I subsequently met a rancher in Wenatchee who said the only good
+the Columbia ever was to a man who tried to farm along it in the dry
+belt was as a place to drown himself in when he went broke.
+
+[Illustration: THE SUSPENSION BRIDGE AT CHELAN FALLS (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: OLD RIVER VETERANS ON THE LANDING AT POTARIS. (CAPT.
+McDERMID ON LEFT, IKE EMERSON ON RIGHT) (_below_)]
+
+[Illustration: NIGHT WAS FALLING AS WE HEADED INTO BOX CANYON (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: THE COLUMBIA ABOVE BOX CANYON (_below_)]
+
+The rock-littered channel of Moneghan's or Buckley's Rapids was easily
+threaded by the launch, and Equilibrium or "Jumbo" Rapids, three miles
+lower down, did not prove a serious obstruction. The official name is
+the former, and was given the riffle by Symons on account of a
+round-topped rock which rolled back and forth in the current because of
+its unstable equilibrium. The local name of "Jumbo" derives from the
+fact that this same rolling rock has something of the appearance of an
+elephant, when viewed from a certain angle. Ten miles more of deep,
+evenly-flowing water brought us to Mah-kin Rapids and the head of
+Nespilem Canyon. The next twenty-four miles, terminating at the foot of
+what is officially called Kalichen Falls and Whirlpool (Box Canyon in
+local nomenclature), is the fastest stretch of equal length on the
+Columbia except on the Big Bend in Canada. It is one continuous
+succession of rapids, eddies and whirlpools all the way, and the much
+feared Box Canyon is a fitting finale. I was distinctly glad to be
+running through in a motor-boat rather than the skiff. As to the raft, I
+never have been able to make up my mind as to just how she would have
+fared.
+
+The roar of the savage half-mile tumble of Mah-kin Rapids was a fitting
+overture to the main performance. The river narrows down sharply between
+precipitous banks, and most of the rocks from the surrounding hills seem
+to have rolled into the middle of the channel. There was an awful mess
+of churned water even where the river was deepest, and I wouldn't have
+been quite comfortable heading into it even in the launch. Earl seemed
+rather of the same mind, too, for he kept edging out to the right every
+time one of the big combers lurched over at him. With the engine running
+like a top, he kept her in comparatively good water all the way through.
+It was a striking lesson in the value of power in running a rapid--as
+long as the power doesn't fail you.
+
+Rock-peppered rapids followed each other every mile or two from the foot
+of Mah-kin, but--thanks to Earl's nose for the best channel--we were not
+taking more than an occasional shower of spray over the bows where the
+water was whitest. It was not too rough for reading, and, anxious to
+prepare Roos for what he was about to experience at Kalichen Falls and
+Collision Rock, I dug out Symons' report and ran rapidly through the
+dramatic description of how his party fared in running the sinister
+gorge ahead. It seems to me rather a classic of its kind, and I am
+setting it down in full, just as I read it to Roos and Ike that
+afternoon in the cockpit of the launch. I only wish I could complete the
+effect with the diorama of the flying canyon walls, the swirling waters
+of the river, and the obligato in duet by the roaring rapids and the
+sharply hitting engine.
+
+     "The shores of Nespilem Canyon are strewn with huge masses of
+     black basaltic rock of all sizes and shapes, and this continues
+     for several miles, forming a characteristic picture of Columbia
+     River scenery. The complete ... lifelessness of the scene makes
+     it seem exceedingly wild, almost unearthly. And so we plunge
+     along swiftly through the rolling water, with huge rocks looming
+     up, now on one side and now on the other. Every stroke of the oar
+     is bearing us onward, nearer and nearer, to that portion of our
+     voyage most dreaded, the terrible Kalichen Falls and Whirlpool
+     Rapids. We hear the low rumbling of the water, and see the tops
+     of the huge half-sunken rocks and the white foam of the tumbling
+     waters. For a few moments the rowing ceases, while brave old
+     Pierre gives his orders to the Indians in their own tongue. He
+     knows that everything depends upon his steering and their rowing
+     or backing at the right moment, with all the strength they
+     possess. Years ago he was in a Hudson Bay Company _batteau_ which
+     capsized in these very rapids, and out of a crew of sixteen men
+     eight perished in the water or on the rocks.
+
+     "The Indians make their preparations for the struggle by
+     stripping off all their superfluous clothing, removing their
+     gloves, and each ties a bright-coloured handkerchief tightly
+     about his head; poles and extra oars are laid ready in convenient
+     places to reach should they become necessary, and then with a
+     shout the Indians seize their oars and commence laying to them
+     with all their strength. We are rushing forward at a fearful
+     rate, owing to the combined exertions of the Indians and the
+     racing current, and we shudder at the thought of striking any of
+     the huge black rocks near which we glide. Now we are fairly in
+     the rapids, and our boat is rushing madly through the foam and
+     billows; the Indians are shouting at every stroke in their wild,
+     savage glee; it is infectious; we shout too, and feel the wild
+     exultation which comes to men in moments of great excitement and
+     danger. Ugly masses of rocks show their heads above the troubled
+     waters on every side, and sunken rocks are discernible by the
+     action of the surf. Great billows strike us fore and aft, some
+     falling squarely over the bows and drenching us to the waist.
+     This is bad enough, but the worst is yet to come as we draw near
+     with great velocity to a huge rock which appears dead ahead.
+
+     "Has old Pierre seen it? The water looks terribly cold as we
+     think of his failing eyesight. Then an order, a shout, backing on
+     one side and pulling on the other, and a quick stroke of the
+     steering oar, and the rock appears on our right hand. Another
+     command, and answering shout, and the oars bend like willows as
+     the Indians struggle to get the boat out of the strong eddy into
+     which Pierre had thrown her. Finally she shoots ahead and passes
+     the rock like a flash, within less than an oar's length of it,
+     and we shout for joy and breathe freely again....
+
+     "For half a mile the river is comparatively good, and our staunch
+     crew rest on their oars preparatory to the next struggle, which
+     soon comes, as some more rocky, foamy rapids are reached. Here
+     the swells are very high and grand, and our boat at one time
+     seems to stand almost perpendicularly." ("Them's Eagle Rapids,"
+     Ike interrupted; "sloppier 'n 'ell, but straight.")
+
+     "For about nine miles further the river continues studded with
+     rocks and swift, with ripples every mile or so, until we reach
+     Foster Creek Rapids. Here the rocks become thicker ... and the
+     water fierce and wild. For a mile more we plunge and toss through
+     the foaming, roaring water, amid wild yells from our Indian
+     friends, and we emerge from Foster Creek Rapids, which appear to
+     be as rough and dangerous a place as any we have yet encountered.
+     We are now out of Nespilem Canyon and through all the Nespilem
+     Rapids, and we certainly feel greatly relieved...."
+
+Ike, renewing his quid, observed that they didn't call it Nespilem
+Canyon any more, for the reason that that sounded too much like "Let's
+spill 'em!" and there was enough chance of that without asking for it.
+Roos, in bravado, asked Ike if he was going to strip down like Symons'
+Indians did. The old Roman replied by pulling on a heavy mackinaw over
+his "toga," saying that he'd rather have warmth than action once he was
+out in the "Columby." That led me to ask him--with a touch of bravado on
+my own account--how long it would take him to "submarine" from Box
+Canyon to Kettle Falls. He grinned a bit sourly at that, and started
+slacking the lashings on the sweeps and pike-poles. Roos was just tying
+a red handkerchief round his head when Earl beckoned him forward to take
+the wheel while he gave the engine a final hurried tuning. Ike, saying
+that we would be hitting "White Cap" just round the next bend, gave me
+brief but pointed instructions in the use of sweep and pike-pole in case
+the engine went wrong. He had spat forth his quid again, just as at Hell
+Gate, and his unmuffled voice had a strange and penetrating _timbre_.
+
+White Cap Rapids are well named. Two rocky points converge at the head
+and force all the conflicting currents of the river into a straight,
+steep channel, heavily littered with boulders and fanged with
+outcropping bedrock. In that currents from opposite sides of the river
+are thrown together in one mad tumble of wallowing waters, it is much
+like Gordon Rapids, on the Big Bend. If anything, it is the rougher of
+the two, making up in volume what it lacks in drop. It is a rapid that
+would be particularly mean for a small boat, from the fact that there
+would be no way of keeping out of the middle of it, and that is a wet
+place--very. The launch had the power to hold a course just on the outer
+right edge of the rough water, and so made a fairly comfortable passage
+of it.
+
+With the "intake" above Kalichen Falls full in view a half mile distant,
+Earl went back to his engine as we shot out at the foot of "White Cap"
+and gave it a few little "jiggering" caresses--much as a rider pats the
+neck of his hunter as he comes to a jump--before the final test. Then he
+covered it carefully with a double canvas and went back to the wheel.
+Roos he kept forward, standing-by to take the wheel or tinker the engine
+in case of emergency. The lad, though quite without "river sense," was a
+first-class mechanic and fairly dependable at the steering wheel
+providing he was told what to do.
+
+The sounding board of the rocky walls gave a deep pulsating resonance to
+the heavy roar ahead, but it was not until we dipped over the "intake"
+that the full volume of it assailed us. Then it came with a rush, a
+palpable avalanche of sound that impacted on the ear-drums with the raw,
+grinding roar of a passing freight train. It was not from the huge
+rollers the launch was skirting so smartly that this tearing, rending
+roar came, but from an enormous black rock almost dead ahead. It was
+trying to do the same thing that big island in the middle of Hell Gate
+had tried to do, and was succeeding rather better. The latter had been
+able to do no more than split the river down the middle; this one was
+forcing the whole stream to do a side-step, and pretty nearly a
+somersault--hence Kalichen Falls and Whirlpool. Collision Rock was
+distinctly impressive, even from a launch.
+
+The sun was just dipping behind the southern wall of Box Canyon (how
+funky I became later, when I was alone, about going into a rapid in that
+slanting, deceptive evening light!) as the launch hit the rough water.
+There was dancing iridescence in the flung foam-spurts above the
+combers, and at the right of Collision Bock the beginning of a rainbow
+which I knew would grow almost to a full circle when we looked back from
+below the fall. I snapped once with my kodak into the reeling tops of
+the waves that raced beside us, and then started to wind up to have a
+fresh film for the rock and the crowning rainbow. That highly artistic
+exposure was never made.
+
+Earl, instead of shutting off his engine as he did in running Spokane
+Rapids, opened up all the wider as he neared the barrier and its
+refluent wave. This was because the danger of striking submerged rocks
+was less than that of butting into that one outcrop of ragged reef that
+was coming so near to throwing the river over on its back. If the launch
+was to avoid telescoping on Collision Rock as the Columbia was doing, it
+must get enough way on to shoot across the current into the eddy on the
+left. That was what Earl was preparing for when he opened up the engine.
+With both boat and current doing well over twenty miles an hour, we were
+literally rushing down at the rocky barrier with the speed of an express
+train when Earl spun the wheel hard over and drove her sharply to the
+left. That was when I stopped kodaking.
+
+In spite of the rough water, the launch had been remarkably dry until
+her course was altered. Then she made up for lost time. The next ten or
+fifteen seconds was an unbroken deluge. With a great up-toss of wake,
+she heeled all of forty-five degrees to starboard at the turn, seeing
+which, the river forthwith began piling over her port or up-stream side
+and making an astonishingly single-minded attempt to push her on the
+rest of the way under. Failing in that (for her draught was too great
+and her engine set too low to make her easily capsizable), the river
+tried to accomplish the same end by swamping her. Fore and aft the water
+came pouring over in a solid green flood, and kept right on pouring
+until Earl, having driven through to the point he wanted, turned her
+head down stream again and let her right herself.
+
+The water was swishing about my knees for a few moments in the cockpit,
+and it must have been worse than that forward. Then it drained down into
+the bilge without, apparently, greatly affecting her buoyancy. The
+higher-keyed staccato of the engine cut sharply through the heavier roar
+of the falls. It was still popping like a machine-gun, without a break.
+Reassured by that welcome sound, Earl orientated quickly as he shook the
+water from his eyes, and then put her full at the head of the falls.
+Just how much of a pitch there was at this stage of water I couldn't
+quite make out. Nothing in comparison with the cataract there at high
+water (when the river rushes right over the top of Collision Rock)
+certainly; and yet it was a dizzy bit of a drop, with rather too
+deliberate a recovery to leave one quite comfortable. For a few seconds
+the launch's head was deeply buried in the soft stuff of the souse-hole
+into which she took her header; the next her bows were high in the air
+as the up-boil caught her. Then her propellers began striking into
+something solider than air-charged suds, and she shot jerkily away in a
+current so torn with swirls that it looked like a great length of
+twisted green-and-white rope. We had missed Collision Rock by thirty
+feet, and given the dreaded whirlpool behind it an even wider berth.
+
+The next thirteen miles we did at a rate that Ike figured must have been
+about the fastest travelling ever done on the Columbia. The current runs
+at from ten to twenty miles an hour all the way from the head of Box
+Canyon to Bridgeport, and Earl, racing to reach Foster Creek Rapids
+before it was dark, ran just about wide open nearly the whole distance.
+It was real train speed at which we sped down the darkening
+gorge--possibly over forty miles an hour at times. Earl knew the channel
+like a book, and said there was nothing to bother about in the way of
+rocks as long as he could see. We were out of the closely-walled part of
+the canyon at Eagle Rapids, and the sunset glow was bright upon the
+water ahead. There is a series of short, steep riffles here, extending
+for a mile and a half, and Earl slammed right down the lot of them on
+the high. Ike was right about their being sloppy, but the beacon of the
+afterglow gave the bearing straight through. Two miles further on the
+river appeared suddenly to be filled with swimming hippos--round-topped
+black rocks just showing above the water; but each one was silhouetted
+against a surface that glinted rose and gold, and so was as easy to miss
+as in broad daylight.
+
+It was all but full night as the roar of Foster Creek Rapids began to
+drown the rattle of the engine, with only a luminous lilac mist
+floating above the south-western mountains to mark where the sun had
+set; but it was enough--just enough--to throw a glow of pale amethyst on
+the frothy tops of the white-caps, leaving the untorn water to roll on
+in fluid anthracite. Earl barely eased her at the head, and then plunged
+her down a path of polished ebony, with the blank blur of rocks looming
+close on the right and an apparitional line of half-guessed rollers
+booming boisterously to the left. For three-quarters of a mile we raced
+that ghostly Ku-Klux-Klan procession, and Roos, who was timing with his
+radium-faced watch, announced that we had made the distance in something
+like seventy seconds. Then there was quieter water, and presently the
+lights of Bridgeport. Earl put us off opposite the town, and ran down a
+quarter of a mile farther to get out of the still swiftly-running
+current and berth the launch in a quiet eddy below the sawmill.
+
+Bridgeport, for a town a score of miles from the railway, proved
+unexpectedly metropolitan, with electric lights, banks, movie theatres,
+and a sign at the main crossing prohibiting "Left Hand Turns." The
+people, for a country town, showed very diverting evidences of
+sophistication. At the movies that night (where we went to get the
+election returns), they continually laughed at the villain and snickered
+at the heroine's platitudinous sub-titles; and finally, when word came
+that it was Harding beyond all doubt, they forgot the picture completely
+and gave their undivided attention to joshing the town's only avowed
+Democrat. The victim bore up fairly well as long as his baiters stuck
+to "straight politics," but when they accused him of wearing an
+imitation leather coat made of brown oil-cloth, the shaft got under his
+armour. With a ruddy blush that was the plainest kind of a confession of
+guilt, he pushed out to the aisle and beat a disorderly retreat.
+
+A prosperous apple farmer sitting next me (he had been telling me what
+his crop would bring the while the naturally vamp-faced heroine was
+trying to register pup-innocence and "gold-cannot-buy-me" as the villain
+was choking her) sniffed contemptuously as the discomfited Democrat
+disappeared through the swinging doors. "Seems to feel worse about being
+caught with an imitation coat than about being an imitation politician.
+Better send him to Congress!" Now _wasn't_ that good for a small town
+that didn't even have a railroad? I've known men of cities of all of a
+hundred thousand, with street cars, municipal baths, Carnegie libraries
+and women's clubs, who hadn't the measure of Congress as accurately as
+that. I wish there had been time to see more of Bridgeport.
+
+It was down to twelve above when we turned out in the morning, with the
+clear air tingling with frost particles and incipient ice-fringes around
+the eddies. Fortunately, Earl had bailed both boats the night before and
+drained his engine. Just below Bridgeport the river, which had been
+running almost due west from the mouth of the Spokane River, turned off
+to the north. In a slackening current we approached the small patch of
+open country at the mouth of the Okinagan. The latter, which heads above
+the lake of the same name in British Columbia, appears an insignificant
+stream as viewed from the Columbia, and one would never suspect that it
+is navigable for good-sized stern-wheelers for a considerable distance
+above its mouth. On the right bank of the Columbia, just above the mouth
+of the Okinagan, is the site of what was perhaps the most important of
+the original Astor posts of the interior. As a sequel to the war of 1812
+it was turned over to the Northwest Company, and ultimately passed under
+the control of Hudson Bay. I could see nothing but a barren flat at this
+point where so much history was made, but a splendid apple orchard
+occupies most of the fertile bench in the loop of the bend on the
+opposite bank.
+
+The mouth of the Okinagan marks the most northerly point of the
+Washington Big Bend of the Columbia. From there it flows southwesterly
+for a few miles to the mouth of the Methow, before turning almost
+directly south. We passed Brewster without landing, but pulled up
+alongside a big stern-wheeler moored against the bank at Potaris, just
+above the swift-running Methow Rapids. It was the _Bridgeport_, and Ike
+had spoken of her skipper, whom he called "Old Cap," many times and with
+the greatest affection. "Old Cap" proved to be the Captain McDermid, who
+had run the _Shoshone_ down through Grand Rapids, and who was rated as
+the nerviest steamer skipper left on the Columbia.
+
+Captain McDermid was waiting on the bow of his steamer to give us a hand
+aboard. He had read of our voyage in the Spokane papers, he said, and
+had been on the lookout for several days. At first he had watched for a
+skiff, but later, when he had heard that we had pushed off with Ike on
+a raft, it was logs he had been keeping a weather eye lifting for. When
+Ike described the raft to him, he wagged his head significantly, and
+said he reckoned it was just as well we had changed to the launch for
+Box Canyon. "It isn't everybody that can navigate under water like this
+old rat here," he added, giving Ike a playful prod in the ribs.
+
+As we were planning to go on through to the mouth of the Chelan River,
+in the hope of getting up to the lake that afternoon, an hour was the
+most I could stop over on the _Bridgeport_ for a yarn with Captain
+McDermid, where I would have been glad of a week. He told me, very
+simply but graphically, of the run down Grand Rapids, and a little of
+his work with stern or side-wheelers in other parts of the world, which
+included a year on the upper Amazon and about the same time as skipper
+of a ferry running from the Battery to Staten Island. Then he spoke,
+with a shade of sadness, of the _Bridgeport_ and his plans for the
+future. In all the thousand miles of the Columbia between the Dalles and
+its source, she had been the last steamer to maintain a regular service.
+(This was not reckoning the Arrow Lakes, of course). But the close of
+the present apple season had marked the end. Between the increasing
+competition of railways and trucks, the game was no longer worth the
+candle. He, and his partners in the _Bridgeport_, had decided to try to
+take her to Portland and offer her for sale. She was very powerfully
+engined and would undoubtedly bring a good price--once they got her
+there. But getting her to Portland was the rub. There were locks at the
+Cascades and the Dalles, but Rock Island, Cabinet, Priest and Umatilla,
+to say nothing of a number of lesser rapids would have to be run. It was
+a big gamble, insurance, of course, being out of the question on any
+terms. The _Douglas_, half the size of the _Bridgeport_, had tried it a
+couple of months ago, and--well, we would see the consequences on the
+rocks below Cabinet Rapids. Got through Rock Island all right, and then
+went wrong in Cabinet, which wasn't half as bad. Overconfidence,
+probably, "Old Cap" thought. But he felt sure that _he_ would have
+better luck, especially if he went down first and made a good study of
+Rock Island and Priest; and that was one of the things that he had
+wanted to see me about. If there was room for him in the skiff, he would
+like to run through with us as far as Pasco, and brush up on the channel
+as we went along. If things were so he could get away, he would join us
+at Wenatchee on our return from Chelan. I jumped at the chance without
+hesitation, for it would give us the benefit of the experience and help
+of the very best man on that part of the Columbia in getting through the
+worst of the rapids that remained to be run. I had been a good deal
+concerned about how the sinister cascade of Rock Island was to be
+negotiated, to say nothing of the long series of riffles called Priest
+Rapids, which had even a worse record. I parted with Captain McDermid
+with the understanding that we would get in touch by phone a day or two
+later, when I knew definitely when we would return to the river from
+Chelan, and make the final arrangements.
+
+Leaving Ike on the _Bridgeport_ for a yarn with his old friend, we
+pushed off in the launch for Chelan. Methow Rapids, just below the river
+of that name, was the only fast water encountered, and that was a good,
+straight run in a fairly clear channel. We landed half a mile below the
+mouth of the Chelan River, where the remains of a road led down through
+the boulders to the tower of an abandoned ferry. Earl put about at once
+and headed back up-stream, expecting to pick up Ike at Potaris and push
+on through to Bridgeport that evening.
+
+We parted from both Earl and Ike in all good feeling and with much
+regret. Each in his line was one of the best men I have ever had to do
+with. Ike--in spite of the extent to which his movements were dominated
+by the maxim that "time is made for slaves," or, more likely, for that
+very reason--was a most priceless character. I only hope I shall be able
+to recruit him for another river voyage in the not-too-distant future.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+CHELAN TO PASCO
+
+
+For two reasons I am writing but briefly of our visit to Lake Chelan:
+first, because it was entirely incidental to the Columbia voyage, and,
+second, because one who has only made the run up and down this loveliest
+of mountain lakes has no call to write of it. Chelan is well named
+"Beautiful Water." Sixty miles long and from one to four miles wide,
+cliff-walled and backed by snowy mountains and glaciers, it has much in
+common with the Arrow Lakes of the upper Columbia, and, by the same
+tokens, Kootenay Lake. Among the large mountain lakes of the world it
+has few peers.
+
+The Chelan River falls three hundred and eighty-five feet in the four
+miles from the outlet of the lake to where it tumbles into the Columbia.
+It is a foam-white torrent all the way, with a wonderful "Horse-shoe"
+gorge near the lower end which has few rivals for savage grandeur. One
+may reach the lake from the Columbia by roads starting either north or
+south of the draining river. We went by the latter, as it was the more
+conveniently reached from the ferry-man's house where we had left our
+outfit after landing. The town of Chelan, at the lower end of the lake,
+is a lovely little village, with clean streets, bright shops, and a very
+comfortable hotel. I have forgotten the name of the hotel, but not the
+fact that it serves a big pitcher of thick, yellow cream with every
+breakfast. So far as my own experience goes, it is the only hotel in
+America or Europe which has perpetuated that now all but extinct
+ante-bellum custom. In case there may be any interested to know--even
+actually to enjoy--what our forefathers had with their coffee and mush,
+I will state that three transcontinental railways pass within a hundred
+miles to the southward of Chelan. It will prove well worth the
+stop-over; and there is the lake besides.
+
+The lower end of Lake Chelan is surrounded by rolling hills, whose
+fertile soil is admirably adapted to apples, now an important industry
+in that region; the upper end is closely walled with mountains and high
+cliffs--really an extremely deep gorge half filled with water. Indeed,
+the distinction of being the "deepest furrow Time has wrought on the
+face of the Western Hemisphere" is claimed for upper Chelan Lake--this
+because there are cliffs which rise almost vertically for six thousand
+feet from the water's edge, and at a point where the sounding lead has
+needed nearly a third of that length of line to bring it back from a
+rocky bottom which is indented far below the level of the sea.
+
+The head of Chelan is far back in the heart of the Cascades, in the
+glaciers of which its feeding streams take their rise. The main
+tributaries are Railroad Creek, which flows in from the south about
+two-thirds of the way up, and Stehekin River, which comes in at the
+head. These two streams are credited with some of the finest waterfalls,
+gorges and cliff and glacier-begirt mountain valleys to be found in
+North America, and it is possible to see the best of both in the course
+of a single "circular" trip by packtrain. To my great regret, it was not
+practicable to get an outfit together in the limited time at our
+disposal. The best we could do so late in the season was a hurried run
+up to Rainbow Falls, a most striking cataract, three hundred and fifty
+feet in height, descending over the cliffs of the Stehekin River four
+miles above the head of the lake. Roos made a number of scenic shots
+here, but on a roll which--whether in the camera or the laboratory it
+was impossible to determine--was badly light-struck. Similar misfortune
+attended a number of other shots he made (through the courtesy of the
+Captain of the mail launch in running near the cliffs) of waterfalls
+tumbling directly into the lake. There are many slips between the cup
+and the lip--the camera and the screen, I should say--in scenic movie
+work.
+
+[Illustration: A ROCKY CLIFF NEAR HEAD OF LAKE CHELAN]
+
+[Illustration: RAINBOW FALLS, 350 FEET HIGH, ABOVE HEAD OF LAKE CHELAN]
+
+[Illustration: WENATCHEE UNDER THE DUST CLOUD OF ITS SPEEDING AUTOS
+(_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: HEAD OF ROCK ISLAND RAPIDS (_below_)]
+
+We arrived back at the town of Chelan in time for lunch on the sixth of
+November, and a couple of hours later were down at the Columbia ready to
+push off again. I had been unable to get in touch with Captain McDermid
+by phone, but was confident that he would turn up in good time at
+Wenatchee. As there was nothing between that point and the mouth of the
+Chelan in the way of really bad water, I had no hesitation in making the
+run without a "pilot." Launching _Imshallah_ below the old ferry-tower
+at two o'clock, we reached the little town of Entiat, just above the
+river and rapids of that name, at five. The skiff rode higher with
+Captain Armstrong and his luggage out, her increased buoyancy
+compensating in a measure for the less intelligent handling she had.
+Roos took the steering paddle in the stern, and I continued rowing from
+the forward thwart. All of the luggage was shifted well aft. The current
+was fairly swift all the way, but the two or three rapids encountered
+were not difficult to pass. Ribbon Cliff, two thousand feet high and
+streaked with strata of yellow, grey and black clays, was the most
+striking physical feature seen in the course of this easy afternoon's
+run.
+
+Entiat is a prosperous little apple-growing centre, and, with the
+packing season at its height, was jammed to the roof with workers. Rooms
+at the hotel were out of the question. Roos slept on a couch in the
+parlour, which room was also occupied by three drummers and two truck
+drivers. I had a shakedown on a canvased-in porch, on which were six
+beds and four cots. My room-mates kept me awake a good part of the night
+growling because their wages had just been cut to seven dollars a day,
+now that the rush was over. I would have been the more surprised that
+any one should complain about a wage like that had not a trio of
+farmettes--or rather packettes--at the big family dinner table been
+comparing notes of their takings. One twinkling-fingered blonde
+confessed to having averaged thirteen dollars a day for the last week
+packing apples, while a brown-bloomered brunette had done a bit better
+than twelve. The third one--attenuated, stoop-shouldered and
+spectacled--was in the dumps because sore fingers had scaled her average
+down to ten-fifty--"hardly worth coming out from Spokane for," she
+sniffed. Roos tried to engage them in conversation, and started out
+auspiciously with a description of running Box Canyon. But the
+gimlet-eyed thin one asked him what he got for doing a thing like that,
+and promptly their interest faded. And why _should_ they have cared to
+waste time over a mere seventy-five-dollar-a-week cameraman? But it was
+something even to have eaten pumpkin pie with the plutocracy.
+
+The swift-flowing Entiat River has dumped a good many thousand tons of
+boulders into the Columbia, and most of these have lodged to form a
+broad, shallow bar a short distance below the mouth of the former. The
+Columbia hasn't been able quite to make up its mind the best way to go
+here, and so has hit on a sort of a compromise by using three or four
+channels. Roos found himself in a good deal the same sort of dilemma
+when we came rolling along there on the morning of the seventh, but as a
+boat--if it is going to preserve its entity as such--cannot run down
+more than one channel at a time, _Imshallah_ found the attempt at a
+compromise to which she was committed only ended in butting her head
+against a low gravel island. It was impossible to make the main middle
+channel from there, but we poled off without much difficulty and went
+bumping off down a shallow channel to the extreme right. She kissed off
+a boulder once or twice before winning through to deeper water, but not
+hard enough to do her much harm. It was a distinctly messy piece of
+work, though, and I was glad that Ike or Captain Armstrong was not there
+to see their teachings put into practice.
+
+The river cliffs became lower as we ran south, and after passing a
+commanding point on the right bank we came suddenly upon the open
+valley of the Wenatchee, the nearest thing to a plain we had seen in all
+the hundreds of miles from the source of the Columbia. There are not
+over twenty to thirty square miles of land that is even comparatively
+level here, but to eyes which had been wont for two months to seek
+sky-line with a forty-five degree upward slant of gaze it was like
+coming out of an Andean pass upon the boundless Pampas of Argentina.
+Wenatchee was in sight for several miles before we reached it, an
+impressive water-front of mills, warehouses and tall buildings. Over all
+floated a dark pall, such as one sees above Pittsburgh, Birmingham,
+Essen or any other great factory city, but we looked in vain for the
+forest of chimneys it would have taken to produce that bituminous
+blanket. As we drew nearer we discovered that what we had taken to be
+smoke was a mighty dust-cloud. It was a Sunday at the height of the
+apple-packing season, and all the plutocratic packettes were joy-riding.
+There were, it is true, more Fords than Rolls-Royces in the solid double
+procession of cars that jammed the main street for a mile, but that was
+doubtless because the supply of the former had held out better. I can't
+believe that the consideration of price had anything to do with it.
+
+The hotel, of course, was full, even with the dining-room set thick with
+cots, but by admiring a haberdashery drummer's line of neck-ties for an
+hour, I managed to get him to "will" me his room and bath when he
+departed that afternoon. Roos employed similar strategy with a jazz
+movie orchestra fiddler, but his train didn't pull out until four-thirty
+in the morning. A young reporter from the local paper called for an
+interview in the afternoon, and told us the story of the _Douglas_, the
+steamer which Captain McDermid had mentioned as having been lost in
+trying to take her to Portland. Selig had gone along to write the story
+of the run through Rock Island Rapids, the first to be reached and the
+place which was reckoned as the most dangerous she would have to pass.
+When she had come out of that sinister gorge without mishap, he had them
+land him at the first convenient place in the quiet water below, from
+where he made his way to the railway and hurried back to Wenatchee with
+his story. That he had seen all the best of the excitement, he had no
+doubt. A quarter of an hour after Selig left her, the _Douglas_ was a
+total wreck on the rocks below Cabinet Rapids. He didn't know just how
+it had happened, but said we would find what was left of her still where
+she had struck.
+
+Wenatchee is the liveliest kind of a town, and claims to be the largest
+apple-shipping point in the United States. It also has a daily paper
+which claims to be the largest in the world in a city of under ten
+thousand population. I can easily believe this is true. I have seen many
+papers in cities of fifty or a hundred thousand that were not to be
+compared with it for both telegraphic and local news. Banks are on
+almost every corner for a half dozen blocks of the main street of
+Wenatchee, and every one seems to have a bank account. I saw stacks of
+check-books by the cashiers' desks in restaurants and shops, and in one
+of the ice cream parlours I saw a young packette paying for her nut
+sundae with a check.
+
+No word came from Captain McDermid during the day, and after
+endeavouring to reach him by phone all of the following forenoon, I
+reluctantly decided to push on without him. This was a good deal of a
+disappointment, not only because I felt that I was going to need his
+help mighty badly, but also because I was anxious to see more of him
+personally. A man who will take a steamer containing his wife and
+children down Rickey's Rapids of the Columbia isn't to be met with every
+day. Roos was anxious to get a picture of the "Farmer Who Would See the
+Sea" working his way down Rock Island Rapids, and as his machine was
+about the most valuable thing there was to lose in getting down there,
+it seemed up to me to do what I could. But for the first time since we
+pushed off to run the Big Bend, I unpacked and kept out my inflatable
+"Gieve" life-preserver waistcoat, which I had worn in the North Sea
+during the war, and which I had brought along on the "off chance." Selig
+came down with his Graflex to get a photo of our departure for the
+_World_, but declined an invitation for another run through Rock Island
+Rapids.
+
+There is a long and lofty highway bridge spanning the Columbia half a
+mile below Wenatchee, which fine structure also appears to be used on
+occasion as a city dump. That it was functioning in this capacity at the
+very moment we were about to pass under it between the two mid-stream
+piers did not become apparent until the swift current had carried us so
+close that it was not safe to try to alter course either to left or
+right. There was nothing to do but run the gauntlet of the swervily
+swooping dust-tailed comets whose heads appeared to run the whole gamut
+of discard of a rather extravagant town of eight thousand people, all
+disdainful of "used" things. It would have been a rare chance to renew
+our outfit, only most of the contributions were speeding too rapidly at
+the end of their hundred-foot drop to make them entirely acceptable.
+"Low bridge!" I shouted to Roos, and swung hard onto my oars, yelling a
+lung-full at every stroke in the hope that the busy dumpers might stay
+their murderous hands at the last moment. Vain hope! My final frightened
+upward glance told me that the nauseous cataclysm was augmenting rather
+than lessening.
+
+I put _Imshallah_ into some mighty nasty looking rapids with a lot less
+apprehension than I drove her into that reeking second-hand barrage, that
+Niagara of things that people didn't want. Doubtless it was the fact
+that _I_ wanted the stuff still less than they did that lent power to my
+arms and gave me a strength far transcending that of ordinary endeavour.
+Roos swore afterward that I lifted her right out of the water, just as a
+speeding hydroplane lifts at the top of its jump. This may have been so;
+but if it was, Roos sensed it rather than saw it, for his humped
+shoulders were folded tightly over his ducked head, like the wings of a
+newly hatched chicken. Anyhow, the little lady drove through safely,
+just as she always had. But where she had always emerged dewy-fresh and
+dancing jauntily on the tips of her toes from the roughest of rapids,
+here she oozed out upon an oil-slicked stream with the "Mark of the
+Beast" on her fore and aft. I mean that literally. That accursed little
+"White Wings" that sat up aloft to take toll of the life of poor Jack,
+must have had some kind of a slaughter-house dumping contract--and
+_Imshallah_ got a smothering smear of the proceeds. Also a trailing
+length of burlap and a bag of cinders. As the latter burst when it
+kissed off my shoulder, Roos' joke about my wearing sack-cloth-and-ashes
+was not entirely without point. The only article of value accruing was
+the shaving-brush which fell in Roos' lap. He felt sure it must have
+been thrown away by mistake, for it had real camel's-hair bristles, and
+he liked it better than his own--after the ashes had worked out of it.
+And yet it might have been a lot worse. I only _heard_ the splash of the
+wash-boiler that must have hit just ahead of her, but the sewing machine
+that grazed her stern jazzed right across my line of vision.
+
+Up to that time Surprise Rapids of the Big Bend of Canada had stood as
+the superlative in the way of a really nasty hole to go through; from
+then on "Surprise Rapids of Wenatchee Bridge" claimed pride of place in
+this respect.
+
+Swabbing down decks as best we could without landing, we pushed ahead. I
+was anxious to get down to Rock Island Rapids in time to look over the
+channels, if not to start through, before dark. We should have known
+better than to treat a dainty lady like _Imshallah_ in that way. It was
+bad enough to have subjected her to the indignity of running the garbage
+barrage; not to give her a proper bath after it was unpardonable. At
+least that was the way she seemed to look at it, and so I never felt
+inclined to blame her for taking matters into her own hands. Wallowing
+through a sharp bit of rapid a mile below the bridge washed the outside
+of her bright and clean as ever, but it was the stain of that
+slaughter-house stuff on the inside that rankled. She was restive and
+cranky in the swirls and eddies all down a long stretch of slack water
+running between black basalt islands, and as the river narrowed and
+began to tumble over a boisterous rapid above the Great Northern Railway
+bridge, she began jumping about nervously, like a spirited horse
+watching his chance for a bolt.
+
+It was Roos' business, of course, to watch where she was going, but he
+made no claim of being a qualified steersman; so that there was really
+no excuse for my failing to watch our capricious lady's symptoms and
+keep a steadying hand on her. Probably I _should_ have done so had not a
+freight train run out on the bridge just as we neared the head of the
+rapid, throwing out so striking a smoke-smudge against a background of
+sun-silvered clouds that I needs must try for a hurried snapshot. That
+done, we were close to the "V" of the drop-off, and I had just time to
+see that there were three or four rather terrifying rollers tumbling
+right in the heart of the riffle, evidently thrown up by a jagged
+outcrop of bedrock very close to the surface. I would never have
+chanced putting even a big _batteau_ directly into so wild a welter,
+but, with fairly good water to the left, there was no need of our
+passing within ten feet of the centre of disturbance. The course was so
+plain that I do not recall even calling any warning to Roos as I sat
+down and resumed my oars. Each of us claimed the other was responsible
+for what followed, but I think the real truth of it was that _Imshallah_
+had made up her mind to have a bath without further delay, and couldn't
+have been stopped anyhow.
+
+I never did see just what hit us, nor how we were hit; for it all came
+with the suddenness of a sand-bagging. Roos was stroking away
+confidently, and appeared to be singing, from the movement of his lips.
+The words, if any, were drowned in the roar. All at once his eyes became
+wild and he lashed out with a frenzied paddle-pull that was evidently
+intended to throw her head to the left. The next instant the crash
+came--sudden, shattering, savage. I remember distinctly wondering why
+Roos' eyes were shifted apprehensively upward, like those of a man who
+fancies he is backing away from a bombing airplane. And I think I recall
+spray dashing two or three lengths astern of us, before the solid
+battering ram of the water hit me on the back, and Roos in the face. And
+all _Imshallah_ did was to stand straight up on her hind legs and let
+little demi-semi-quivers run up and down her back like a real lady
+exulting in the tickle of a shower-bath. Then she lay down and let the
+river run over her; then reared up on her hind legs again. Twice or
+thrice she repeated that routine, when, apparently satisfied that her
+ablutions were complete, she settled down and ran the rest of the rapid
+sedately and soberly, and, I am afraid, without much help from either
+oars or paddle. I have always thought Roos was particularly happy in
+his description of how it looked for'ard just after that first big wave
+hit us. "The top of that comber was ten feet above your head," he said,
+"and it came curving over you just like the 'canopy' of a
+'Jack-in-the-Pulpit.'"
+
+With _Imshallah_ rather more than half full of water, and consequently
+not a lot more freeboard for the moment than a good thick plank, it was
+just as well that no more rapids appeared before we found a patch of
+bank flat enough to allow us to land and dump her. Fresh as a daisy
+inside and out, she was as sweet and reasonable when we launched her
+again as any other lady of quality after she has had her own way. Not
+far below the bridge we tied up near the supply-pipe of a railway
+pumping station on the left bank. With the black gorge of Rock Island
+Rapids three-quarters of a mile below sending up an ominous growl, this
+appeared to be the proper place to stop and ask the way.
+
+The engineer of the pumping-station said that he knew very little about
+the big rapid, as he had only been on his present job for a week. He had
+only seen the left-hand channel, and, as an old sailor, he was dead
+certain no open boat ever launched could live to run the lower end of
+it. He said he thought the safest way would be to put the skiff on his
+push-car, run it down the tracks a couple of miles, and launch it below
+the worst of the rapids. I told him we might be very glad to do this as
+a last resort, but, as it would involve a lot of time and labour, I
+would like to look at the rapid first. He told us to make free of his
+bunk-house in case we spent the night there, and suggested we call in
+at a farm house a couple of hundred yards down the track and talk with
+an old man there, who would probably know all about the rapid.
+
+That proved to be a good tip. The farmer turned out to be an old-time
+stern-wheeler captain, who had navigated the upper Columbia for many
+years in the early days. He was greatly interested in our trip, and said
+that we ought to have no great trouble with the rapids ahead, that is,
+as long as we didn't try to take undue liberties with them. The safest
+way to get through would be to land at the head of the big island that
+divided the channels and line right down the left side of it. It would
+be pretty hard work, but we ought not to get in wrong if we took our
+time. He was sorry he couldn't go down and look the place over with us,
+but it happened that his youngest daughter was being married that
+evening, and things were sort of crowding for the rest of the day.
+_That_ explained why the yard was full of flivvers, and the numerous
+dressed-up men lounging around the porches. We decided that the groom
+was the lad, with an aggressively fresh-shaven gill, who was being made
+the butt of a joke every time he sauntered up to a new group, and that
+the bride was the buxom miss having her chestnut hair combed at a
+window, with at least half a dozen other girls looking on.
+
+Roos was very keen to have the wedding postponed to the following morning,
+and changed to an _al fresco_ affair which he could shoot with good light.
+With a little study, he said, he was sure he could work it into his
+"continuity." Perhaps, for instance, the "Farmer-Who-Would-See-the-Sea"
+might start them off on their honeymoon by taking them a few miles down
+river in his boat. That would lend "heart interest and...." I throttled
+that scheme in the bud before my impetuous companion could broach it to
+the principals. I wasn't going to tempt the providence that had saved me
+whole from the wrath of Jock o' Windermere by taking a chance with any
+more "bride stuff."
+
+The black-walled gorge of Rock Island is one of the grimmest-looking
+holes on the Columbia, and of all hours of the day sunset, when the deep
+shadows are banking thick above the roaring waters, is the least cheery
+time to pay it a visit. Somewhat as at Hell Gate, the river splits upon
+a long, rocky island, the broader, shallower channel being to the right,
+and the narrower, deeper one to the left. The upper end of the
+right-hand channel was quiet and straight; indeed, it was the one I
+would have been prompted to take had not the old river captain at the
+farm-house inclined to the opinion that the lining on the other would be
+easier. The former had been the course Symons had taken, and he
+mentioned that the lower end was very crooked and rocky. I decided,
+therefore, to brave the difficulties that I could see something of in
+advance rather than to blunder into those I knew not of. Although the
+left channel began to speed up right from the head, I saw enough of it
+to be sure that we could run at least the upper two-thirds of it without
+much risk, and that there was then a good eddy from which to land on the
+side next to the railroad. This was the head of the main fall--an
+extremely rough cascade having a drop of ten feet in four hundred yards.
+Down that we would have to line. I was quite in agreement with the
+pump-station man that no open boat would live in those wildly rolling
+waters. Fearful of complications, I restrained Roos from accepting an
+invitation to the wedding, and we turned in early for a good night's
+sleep at the pump-station bunk-house.
+
+The game old octogenarian had asked me especially to hail him from the
+river in the morning, so that he could go down and help us through the
+rapids. I should have been glad indeed of his advice in what I knew
+would be a mighty awkward operation, but had not the heart to disturb
+him when I saw there was no curl of smoke from the kitchen chimney when
+we drifted by at eight o'clock. The roar of fast and furious revelry had
+vied with the roar of the rapids pretty well all night, culminating with
+a crescendo leading up to the old shoe barrage at about daybreak. It
+didn't seem quite human to keep the old boy lining down river all
+morning after lining up against that big barrel of "sweet cider" all
+night.... (No, I hadn't missed that little detail; that was one of the
+reasons I had kept Roos away). So we drifted on down toward the big
+noise alone. The pump-man promised he would come down to help as soon as
+his tank was filled, but that wouldn't be for an hour or more.
+
+Rock Island Rapids are in a gorge within a gorge. The black
+water-scoured canyon with the foam-white river at the bottom of it is
+not over fifty feet deep in the sheer. Back of high-water mark there is
+a narrow strip of bench on either side, above which rises a thousand
+feet or more of brown bluff. The eastern wall still cast its shadow on
+the river, but the reflection of the straw-yellow band of broadening
+light creeping down the western bluff filled the gorge with a diffused
+golden glow that threw every rock and riffle into sharp relief. It was a
+dozen times better to see by than the blinding brilliance of direct
+light, and, knowing just what to expect for the next quarter-mile, I ran
+confidently into the head of the rapid. Early morning is the hour of
+confidence and optimism on the flowing road; evening the hour of doubt,
+indecision and apprehension.
+
+A submerged rock at the entrance to the left channel, which I had marked
+mentally from the high bank the night before as an obstacle to be
+avoided, proved rather harder to locate from water level; but Roos
+spotted it in time to give it a comfortable berth in shooting by. Then
+the abrupt black walls closed in, and we ran for three hundred yards in
+fast but not dangerous water. The current took us straight into the eddy
+I had picked for a landing place, and the skiff slid quietly into a
+gentle swirling loop of back-water, with nothing but a huge jutting rock
+intervening between that secure haven and the brink of the fall. So far
+all had gone exactly as planned. Now we were to see how it looked for
+lining.
+
+Roos set up on a shelf and cranked while I lined round the projecting
+rock, an operation which proved unexpectedly simple once it was started
+right. At my first attempt I failed to swing the boat out of the eddy,
+and as a consequence she was brought back against the rock and given
+rather a stiff bump. The next time I launched her higher up, and paying
+out plenty of scope, let her go right out into the main current and
+over the "intake" of the fall. It took brisk following up to keep the
+line from fouling, and after that was cleared I didn't have quite as
+much time as I needed to take in slack and brace myself for the coming
+jerk. The result was _Imshallah_ got such a way on in her hundred feet
+of run that, like a _locoed_ broncho pulling up and galloping off with
+its picket-pin, she took me right along over and off the big rock and
+into the water below. To my great surprise, where I was expecting to go
+straight into the whirlpool one usually finds behind a projecting rock,
+I landed in water that was both slack and comparatively shallow.
+Recovering quickly from my stumble, I braced against the easy current
+and checked the runaway with little trouble. Roos, who had missed the
+last part of the action, wanted me to do that jump and stumble over
+again, but the ten foot flop down onto the not very deeply submerged
+boulders was a bit too much a shake-up to sustain for art's sake.
+
+Now that it was too late to line back, I saw why it was the old captain
+had advised working down the side of the island. The left bank of the
+cascade (which latter was tumbling close beside me now), was all but
+sheer. Only here and there were there footings close to the water, so
+that the man with the line would have to make his way for the most part
+along the top of the rocky wall. _He_ could get along all right, but
+there was no place where a man could follow the boat and keep it off
+with a pole. It might have been managed with a man poling-off from the
+boat itself, but I hardly felt like urging Roos to take the chance. It
+was out of the question trying to line back up the "intake" of the
+fall, but there _was_ one loop-hole which looked worth exploring before
+risking an almost certain mess-up in trying to work down the side of the
+cascade.
+
+I have mentioned that I had expected to find a whirlpool under the big
+jutting rock. The only reason there wasn't one was because what at high
+water must have been a very considerable back channel took out at this
+point and acted as a sort of safety-valve. There was still a stream a
+few inches deep flowing out here, running off to the left into a dark
+cavernous-looking crack in the bedrock. That water had to come back to
+the river somewhere below, and there was just a chance that the boat
+could be squeezed through the same way. At any rate, there was not
+enough of a weight of water to do any harm, and it ought not to be hard
+to "back up" in the event it proved impossible to push on through.
+Leaving Roos to set up and shoot a particularly villainous whirlpool he
+had discovered, I dragged the skiff through the shallow opening and
+launched it into a deep black pool beyond.
+
+Poling from pool to pool, I entered a miniature gorge where I was
+presently so walled in by the rock that the raw roar of the cascade was
+muffled to a heavy, earth-shaking rumble. This tiny canyonette opened up
+at the end of a hundred yards to a sheer-walled rock-bound pool,
+evidently scoured out by the action of a high-water whirlpool. This
+turned out to be an enormous "pot-hole," for I had to avoid the
+water-spun boulder, which had been the tool of the sculpturing River
+God, in pushing into the outlet crack. The latter was so narrow and
+overhanging that I had to lie down and work the skiff along with my
+up-raised hands. Twenty yards of that brought me out to a winding little
+lake, less steeply walled than the gorge above, but apparently closed
+all the way round, even at the lower end. I was in a complete _cul de
+sac_. A gurgling whirlpool showed where the water escaped by a
+subterranean passage, but that was plainly no place to take a lady,
+especially a lady of quality like _Imshallah_.
+
+Tying _Imshallah_ up to a boulder to prevent her amiable weakness for
+rushing to the embraces of whirlpools getting the better of her, I
+climbed up a steeply-sloping pitch of bedrock and looked down to the
+head of a long narrow arm of quiet water. The gay little waterfall
+breaking forth from the rock beneath my feet was leaping directly into
+the main stream of the Columbia--and below the cascade. A stiff thirty
+or forty-foot portage, and we were through. We might have to wait for
+the pump-man to help us lift the boat up that first pitch, but he ought
+to be along almost any time now.
+
+Taking a short-cut back across the water-washed rock, I found Roos just
+completing his shots of the cascade. The sun was on the latter now, and
+its dazzling whiteness threw it into striking relief against the
+sinister walls between which it tumbled. Save the first two falls of
+Surprise Rapids, there is not a savager rush of water on the upper
+Columbia than this final three hundred yards of the left-hand channel of
+Rock Island. Roos was delighted with the way it showed up in his finder,
+and even more pleased when he learned that we were not going to have to
+line the boat down it. Then he had one of his confounded inspirations.
+That portage over the reef of bedrock, with the little waterfall in the
+background, would photograph like a million dollars, he declared; but to
+get the full effect of it, and to preserve "continuity," the "farmer"
+ought to do it alone. It wouldn't do to include the pump-man in the
+picture, now that the "farmer" was supposed to be travelling alone. If I
+_had_ to have his help, all right; only it wouldn't do to shoot while
+the other man was in the picture. But it _would_ really be the "Cat's
+ears" if the "farmer" could make it on his own. He wouldn't have to make
+that big pull-up without stopping; he could jerk the boat along a foot
+or two at a time, and then get his breath like the pursued villain did
+in the processional finales of knockabout comedies. Then he showed me
+how, by resuming the same grip on the boat and the same facial
+expression at each renewed attack, the action could be made to appear
+practically continuous.
+
+Well, I fell for it. Tom Sawyer was not more adroit in getting out of
+white-washing his fence than was Roos in getting out of that portage
+job. He wanted to preserve "continuity" by starting back at the head of
+the cascade, but we compromised by making it the "pot-hole." Emerging to
+the lakelet, I registered "extreme dejection" at finding my progress
+blocked, and "dull gloom" as I landed and climbed up for a look-see. But
+when I reached the top of the reef and discovered the quiet water below,
+like sunlight breaking through a cloud, I assumed as nearly as I knew
+how an exact imitation of an expression I had seen on the face of Balboa
+in a picture called "First Sight of the Pacific." "That's the 'Cat's
+ears,'" encouraged Roos; "now snake the boat over--and make it snappy!"
+
+I made it snappy, all right; but it was my spine that did most of the
+snapping. And it wasn't a foot at a time that I snaked the boat over.
+(Roos had been too optimistic on that score); it was by inches. Roos
+took infinite pains in coaching me as to "resuming grip and expression;"
+but even so, I am afraid the finished film will display considerable
+jerkiness in its "continuous action." I gained some solace by calling
+Roos names all the time, and so must again beg "lip-readers" who see the
+picture to consider the provocation and not judge too harshly. Once
+tilted over the crest of the reef, the boat took more holding than
+hauling. Being pretty well gone in the back and knees, she got away from
+me and slid the last ten feet, giving her bottom a bumping that it never
+did entirely recover from. I was caulking incipient leaks all the way to
+Portland as a consequence of that confounded "one man" portage.
+
+Just as we had loaded up and were ready to push off, the pump-man
+breezed along and asked us to give him a passage as far as Columbia
+River station, two or three miles below. He wanted to take an oar, but
+as the distance was short and the current swift, I told him it was not
+worth bothering with. So he laid the oar he had taken out along the
+starboard gunwale, and knelt just aft the after thwart, facing forward.
+Roos always claimed that it was the loom of the pump-man's back cutting
+off his view ahead that was responsible for the little diversion that
+followed. A good part of the blame was doubtless my own for not keeping
+a sharper watch over my shoulder, as I certainly should have done had I
+been alone. In any event, _Imshallah's alibi_ was complete. She behaved
+through it all like a real thoroughbred.
+
+There was a sinuous tangle of swirls where the right-hand and left-hand
+cascades flew at each other's throats at the lower end of the rock
+island, and then a gay stretch of sun-dazzled froth where the teeth of a
+long reef menaced all the way across the channel; then a stretch of
+lazily-coiling green-black water, flowing between lofty brown cliffs and
+broken here and there with the loom of house-like rocks of shattered
+basalt. The roar of Rock Island died down in muffled _diminuendo_, and
+it seemed mighty good to have that diapason muttering in bafflement
+astern rather than growling in anticipation ahead. There was only one
+little rapid between here and the siding, the pump-man said, and it
+wouldn't bother us much as there was plenty of room to get by. He was
+right--for the most part.
+
+I took a good look at the riffle as we headed down to it. It was a short
+stretch of rough, noisy water, but nothing that would have had to be
+avoided except for a single big roller in the middle of it. As this was
+throwing a great dash of spray high in the air every now and then, I
+felt sure the rock responsible for it was very slightly
+submerged--perhaps not more than a few inches. As this was so obviously
+an obstacle to steer well clear of, it never occurred to me to give
+Roos any especial warning about it, especially as he continued standing
+and sizing up the situation for half a minute after I had resumed my
+oars. The main current ran straight across the riffle, but with fifty
+feet of clear water to the left there was no need of getting into any of
+the worst of it, let alone trying to hurdle that foam-throwing rock.
+
+Leaning hard on my oars, I had good steerage-way on the skiff by the
+time she dipped over into the fast-running water. Roos was cuffing
+jauntily at the wave crests, and singing. Because of the sequel, I
+remember particularly it was "Dardanella" that was claiming his
+attention. Two or three times he had maintained that he was a "lucky
+fella" before I saw what seemed to me to be mingled dissent and
+perturbation gathering in the pump-man's steel-grey eyes. Then, all of a
+sudden, he gave vocal expression to his doubts. "You won't think you're
+a 'lucky fella' if you put her onta that rock," he yelled over his
+shoulder. Turning at the finish of my stroke, I saw that big
+spray-flipping comber about two lengths away, and _dead ahead_, looking
+savager than ever. Trailing my right oar, I pulled every ounce I could
+bring to bear upon my left, trying to throw her head toward the better
+water. The next instant I was all but falling over backwards as the oar
+snapped cleanly off in the oar-lock. I recall perfectly the gleam of the
+long copper nails which had weakened it, and the fresh fracture of the
+broken spruce.
+
+The weight I put onto my right oar in saving myself from tumbling
+backward had the effect of throwing her head in just the opposite
+direction I had intended. Since she could hardly have avoided hitting
+the big roller anyhow, once she was so near, it is probably better that
+she hit it squarely than sidling. The crash was solid, almost shattering
+in its intensity, and yet I am not sure that she hit the rock at all. If
+she did, it was a glancing blow, for she could not possibly have
+survived anything heavier.
+
+The pump-man, true to his sailor instincts, kept his head perfectly in
+the face of the deluge that had engulfed him. The spare oar was lying
+ready to hand, and he had it waiting for me in the oar-lock by the time
+I was on an even keel again. The second wave, which she rode on her own,
+threw _Imshallah's_ head off a bit, but by the time she was rising to
+the third I was helping her again with the oars. Seeing how well she was
+taking it, I did not try to pull out of the riffle now, but let her run
+right down through it to the end. Only the first wave put much green
+water into her, but even that had not filled her anywhere nearly so deep
+as she had been the evening before. When we beached her below Columbia
+River station we found her starboard bow heavily dented, but even that
+did not convince me that we had hit the big rock. I am rather inclined
+to think that denting was done when I did my lone-hand portage at Rock
+Island. I was dead sorry I couldn't persuade that pump-man to throw up
+his job and come along with us. He had the real stuff in him.
+
+[Illustration: THE PICTURE THAT COST ME A WETTING (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: THE WRECK OF THE "DOUGLAS" (_below_)]
+
+[Illustration: WE COOKED OUR BREAKFAST IN THE GALLEY OF THE WRECK OF THE
+"DOUGLAS"]
+
+[Illustration: A ROCKY CLIFF ABOVE BEVERLY]
+
+After having lunch in the railway men's eating house at Columbia River,
+we went down to push off again. Finding the local ferry-man examining
+the skiff, I asked him if he thought she would do to run Cabinet
+Rapids, which we could hear rumbling a mile below. "Not if you try to
+push them out of the river the way you did that riffle above here a
+while ago," he replied with a grin. He said he had been watching us
+through his glass, and that the boat had disappeared from sight for
+three or four seconds when she hit the big roller. He offered to bet his
+ferry-boat against the skiff that we couldn't do it again and come
+through right-side-up. No takers. Speaking seriously, he said that, by
+keeping well to the left, we could run Cabinet all right--if nothing
+went wrong. "But better not make a practice of breaking an oar just
+where you're going to need it most," he added with another grin;
+"there's nothing on the river that would live through the big riffle
+over against the right bank. You'll see what she did to the _Douglas_."
+
+Landing from the slack water above a rocky point which juts out into the
+river at the head of Cabinet Rapids, we climbed a couple of hundred
+yards over water-scoured boulders to the brink of the gorge. It was a
+decidedly rough-looking rapid, but by no means so hopeless for running
+with a small boat as Rock Island. In that the main riffle was thrown
+against a sheer bank of the river, it reminded me a good deal of Death
+Rapids on the Big Bend. But this riffle, while appearing fully as rough
+as that of the dreaded _Dalles des Morts_, was not, like the latter,
+unavoidable. The chance of passing it in only fairly broken water to the
+left looked quite good enough to try. The wreck of the _Douglas_,
+standing out white and stark against the black boulders a mile below,
+was a good warning against taking any unnecessary chances. I looked
+well to the oars and the trim of the boat before shoving off.
+
+Once out into the river, I could see that the rapid was white from bank
+to bank, but still nothing that ought to trouble us seriously. I stood
+for a minute or two looking ahead from the vantage of one of the
+thwarts, and it was just as I was taking up my oars again in the
+quickening current that the corner of my eye glimpsed the narrow opening
+of a deep back-channel winding off between splintered walls of columnar
+basalt to the left. I wasn't looking for any more one-man portages, but
+this opening looked good enough to explore. It might lead through by an
+easy way, and there was hardly enough water to do much harm if it
+didn't. It took hard pulling to sheer off from the "intake" now we had
+drifted so close, but we finally made it and entered the dark
+back-channel. Narrowing and broadening, just as the other had done, it
+led on for a couple of hundred yards, finally to discharge over a
+six-foot fall into a deeply indented pool that opened out to the river
+about half way down the rapid. The wedge-shaped crack at the head of the
+little fall was narrower than the skiff at water-line, but by dint of a
+little lifting and tugging we worked her through and lowered her into
+the pool below. Pulling out through the opening, we headed her
+confidently into the current. There was a quarter-mile of white water
+yet, but we were far enough down now so that the loss of an oar or any
+other mishap wouldn't leave the skiff to run into those wallowing
+rollers over against the further cliff. A sharp, slashing run carried us
+through to the foot of Cabinet Rapids, and a few minutes later we had
+hauled up into an eddy under the left bank opposite the wreck of the
+_Douglas_.
+
+The little stern-wheeler had come to grief at high-water, so that we had
+to clamber all of three hundred yards over big, smooth, round boulders
+to reach the point where the wreck was lying. The latter was by no means
+in so bad a shape as I had expected to find it. The principal damage
+appeared to have been done to the wheel, which was clamped down tight
+over a huge boulder, and to the starboard bow, which was stove in. The
+rest of her hull and her upper works were intact; also the engines,
+though terribly rusty. There was not much from which one could
+reconstruct the story of the disaster; in fact, I have not learned to
+this day any authentic details. The chances are, however, that the wheel
+struck a rock somewhere in Cabinet Rapids, and, after that, drifting out
+of control, she had come in for the rest of the mauling. If her captain
+is like the rest of the Columbia River skippers I met, I have no doubt
+that she will be patched up again before next high-water and started off
+for Portland.
+
+With towering cliffs on both sides and the great black boulders
+scattered all around, Roos felt that both subject and setting were
+highly favourable for an effective movie, and started to think out a way
+to work the wreck of the _Douglas_ into his "continuity." After some
+minutes of brown study, he declared that the best way to work it would
+be for the "farmer" to land, come clambering across the boulders
+registering "puzzled wonderment," and then to stand in silent
+contemplation of the wreck, registering "thankfulness." "Thankfulness
+for what?" I demanded; "it doesn't strike me as Christian to gloat over
+the wreck of a ship." "You don't get me at all," he expostulated. "I
+don't mean for him to show thankfulness because of the wreck of the
+steamer, but because his own boat has so far escaped a similar fate. He
+just stands here with his arms folded, casts his eyes upward, moves his
+lips as if...."
+
+"Nothing doing," I cut in decisively. "If you'd been raising beans and
+hay and apricots as long as I have, you'd know that a farmer never
+registers thankfulness about anything but a rise in the market, and
+there ain't no such thing any more." While we were arguing that moot
+point, the sun dipped behind the loftily looming wall of brown-black
+cliff across the river and the trouble settled itself automatically.
+Because there was no longer light, Roos thought it would be a good stunt
+to camp where we were until morning, and as a camp was always
+"continuity"--there we were!
+
+There was plenty of cordwood left, and the galley stove was in good
+condition. As we had no candles, dinner was cooked by the mingled red
+and green gleams of the port and starboard lights, transferred to the
+galley for that purpose. I slept in the cook's cabin and Roos--with his
+bed made up on the wire springs from the Captain's cabin--on the deck of
+the galley. With water freezing half an inch thick in the coffee-pot on
+the galley stove, we had an insufferably cold night of it--one of the
+worst we spent on the river. In the morning Roos made his "camp shots,"
+which consisted principally of the farmer chopping cordwood on the main
+deck, building a fire in the galley stove and cooking breakfast. Out of
+deference to my esoteric knowledge of the way farmers feel about things,
+he consented to omit the "thankfulness stuff."
+
+Shoving off into a steady six-mile current at nine-thirty, a few minutes
+brought us in sight of a striking basaltic island, which Symons had
+characterized as "one of the most perfect profile rocks in existence."
+"Approaching it from the north," he wrote, "it presents a striking
+likeness to the profile of Queen Victoria.... Coming nearer to it and
+passing it on the west, the profile changes and merges into a more
+Grecian and Sphinx-like face, whose placid immobility takes one's mind
+involuntarily to far-off Egypt. It rises from the surface of the water
+about a hundred feet, and a pair of eagles have selected it as their
+home, and upon its extreme top have built a nest, giving, as it were, a
+crown to this goddess of the Columbia."
+
+Roos declared himself strong for that "Sphinx stuff," and had his camera
+set up in the bow ready for a close-up of every change of expression. He
+was doomed to disappointment. The first thing we discovered missing was
+the crowning eagles' nest, and then Victoria's nose, mouth and chin. Her
+brow and hair were there, but both considerably eroded and inroad-ed by
+the weather. The "Grecian-and-Sphinx-like face" we never did locate,
+although I pulled around the island twice in search of them. Roos
+declared her an "oil can," and packed up his camera in supreme disgust.
+That was, I believe, the last time he had it set up on the Columbia.
+
+As Lieutenant Symons had proved so invariably accurate in all of his
+topographical descriptions, I am strongly inclined to the belief that
+floods and the elements had conspired to wreak much havoc with
+"Victoria's" features in the forty years that had elapsed since he
+limned them so strikingly with pen and pencil. I have known fairly
+stonily-featured ladies to change almost as much in a good deal less
+than forty years.
+
+Cabinet Rapids is the beginning of a somewhat irregular series of
+columnar basaltic cliffs which wall in the Columbia closely for the next
+thirty miles. They range in height from fifteen hundred to three
+thousand feet, and in colour from a rich blend of saffron-cinnamon,
+through all the shades of brown, to a dull black. The prevailing
+formation is that of upended cordwood, but there are endless weird
+stratifications and lamiations, with here and there queer nuclei that
+suggest sulphur crystallizations. Imbedded in the face of one of these
+cliffs not far from the tumultuous run of Gualquil Rapids, is a landmark
+that has been famous among Columbia _voyageurs_ for over a hundred
+years. This is huge log, barkless and weather-whitened, standing on end
+in the native basalt. Over a thousand feet above the river and almost an
+equal distance from the brink of the sheer wall of rock, there is no
+possible question of its having been set there by man. The descriptions
+written of it a hundred years ago might have been written to-day.
+Whether it is petrified or not, there is no way of knowing. The only
+possible explanation of its presence is that it was lodged where it is
+at a time when the Columbia flowed a thousand feet higher than it does
+to-day, probably before it tore its great gorge through the Cascades and
+much of what is now eastern Washington was a vast lake.
+
+On the suggestion of the ferry-man at Trinidad, we avoided the upper
+half of Gualquil Rapids by taking a straight, narrow channel to the
+right, which would probably have been dry in another week. There is a
+half mile of fast, white water here, ending with some heavy swirls
+against a sheer cliff, but nothing seriously to menace any well-handled
+open boat. The water was slack for a number of miles from the foot of
+Gualquil, but began quickening where the river spread out between long
+gravel bars below Vantage Ferry. They were shunting sheep across at the
+latter point, and the Portuguese herders crowded eagerly round our boat,
+making strange "high signs" and voicing cryptic utterances, evidently
+having something to do with a local bootleggers' code. At our failure to
+respond in kind, they became suspicious (doubtless the fact that Roos
+was wearing a second-hand Canadian officer's uniform he had bought in
+Revelstoke had something to do with it) that we were prohibition
+enforcement officials, and they were muttering darkly to each other and
+shaking their heads as we pushed off again.
+
+The cliffs ran out not long after we left Vantage Ferry, and as we
+neared the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Bridge at Beverly rough
+patches of sandy desert began opening up on either side. Deprived of the
+shelter of the high river walls, we were at once exposed to a heavy
+easterly wind that had evidently been blowing all day on the desert. The
+sun dulled to a luminous blur behind the pall of the sand-filled air,
+and the wind, which headed us every now and then, about neutralized the
+impulse of the accelerating current. There was a forty-miles-an-hour
+sand-storm blowing when we beached the boat under the railway bridge at
+four-thirty. The brilliantly golden-yellow cars of the C. M. & St. P.
+Limited rumbling across above behind their electric locomotive seemed
+strangely out-of-place in the desolate landscape.
+
+The one sidewalk of the town's fragment of street was ankle-deep in sand
+as we buffetted our way to the hotel. "Have you ever been in Beverly
+before?" asked the sandy-haired (literally) girl who responded to the
+jangle of the cowbell on the counter. "But I should know better than
+that," she apologized with a blush as she blew off the grit on the
+register; "'cause if you had been here once, you'd sure never be here
+again. What's the game, anyhow? You haven't...?" A knowing twitch of a
+dusty eyelash finished the question.
+
+"No, we haven't," growled Roos irritably. Somehow he was never able to
+extract half the amusement that I did over being taken for a
+boot-legger.
+
+It was the sand-storm that broke Roos' heart, I think. He was
+non-committal at supper that night when I started to talk about Priest
+Rapids, and the next morning, after describing his shave as like rubbing
+his face with a brick, he announced that he was through with the
+Columbia for good. As there was a good deal to be said for his
+contention that, between the shortening days and the high cliffs walling
+in the river, there were only two or three hours of good shooting light
+even when the sun was out, I did not feel justified in urging him to go
+on unless he wanted to. In any event, light for filming the running and
+lining of Priest Rapids, now that the sand-storm was at its height, was
+out of the question for a day or two at least. And below Priest Rapids
+there would be nothing worth filming until the mouth of the Snake was
+passed. I suggested, therefore, that he should go on to Pasco by train
+and await me there, finding out in the meantime by wire whether Chester
+cared to have him continue the "farmer" picture in the face of the
+adverse light conditions.
+
+By this time I had fairly complete data on Priest Rapids. These,
+beginning at the end of a stretch of slack water several miles below
+Beverly, continue for eleven miles. In this distance there are seven
+major riffles, with considerable intervals of fairly quiet water
+between. It seemed probable that all of these, with the exception of the
+second and seventh, and possibly the sixth, could be run. The lining of
+the others, while not difficult, would require the help of another man.
+All that morning I inhaled sand as I went over Beverly with a
+fine-toothed comb in a very earnest effort to find some one willing to
+give me a hand through Priest Rapids. The nearest I came to success was
+an ex-brakeman, who said he would go with me after the storm was over,
+provided a job hadn't turned up in the meantime. The only real river-man
+I found was an old chap who opined that the middle of November was too
+late in the year to be getting his feet--if nothing else--wet in the
+"Columby." He offered to haul the boat to the foot of the rapids by the
+road for twenty dollars, but as the down-river branch of the Milwaukee
+presented an opportunity to accomplish the same end in less time and
+discomfort, I decided to portage by the latter. As there was an
+auto-stage service from Hanford to Pasco, Roos accompanied me to the
+former point by train, and helped get the boat down to the river and
+into the water in the morning. Hanford was not the point on the line
+closest to the foot of Priest Rapids, but I took the boat through to
+there because the station was nearer the river than at White Bluffs, and
+launching, therefore, a simpler matter.
+
+The stretch of seventy miles between the foot of Priest Rapids and the
+mouth of the Snake has the slowest current of any part of the Columbia
+above the Dalles. Mindful of the time we had been losing by stops for
+lunch, I now began putting into practice a plan which I followed right
+on to the end of my voyage. Taking a package of biscuit and a couple of
+bars of milk chocolate in my pocket, I kept the river right straight on
+through to my destination. Munching and resting for an hour at noon, I
+at least had the benefit of the current for this period. Eating a much
+lighter lunch, I also gained the advantage of no longer being troubled
+with that comfortable _siesta_-time drowsiness that inevitably follows a
+hearty meal and disinclines one strongly to heavy exertion for an hour
+or more.
+
+For a dozen miles or more below Hanford the river, flanked on either
+side by rolling desert sand-dunes, winds in broad shallow reaches
+through a region desolate in the extreme. The only signs of life I saw
+for many miles were coyotes slinking through the hungry sage-brush and
+occasional flocks of geese, the latter forerunners of the countless
+myriads that were to keep me company below the Snake. At Richfield the
+results of irrigation became evident in young apple orchards and green
+fields of alfalfa, and these multiplied all the way down to Pasco. The
+country seemed very flat and monotonous after so many weeks among cliffs
+and mountains, but there was no question of its richness and
+productivity once water was brought to it. The low overflow flats about
+the mouth of the Yakima, which flows into the Columbia from the west a
+few miles above Pasco, gave little indication of the beauty of the
+famous apple country which owes so much to the waters diverted from that
+little river.
+
+After pulling for an hour with the long Northern Pacific bridge in view,
+I landed just below the Pasco-Kennewick ferry at three o'clock. As I was
+beaching the boat and getting out the luggage to leave in the
+ferry-man's house-boat, a hail from the river attracted my attention. It
+was from Roos, in the front seat of an auto, on the approaching
+ferry-boat. His stage had been behind time in leaving Hanford, and as a
+consequence I had beaten him to the Pasco landing by ten minutes. After
+the speed with which we had moved on the upper river, however, mine had
+been rather a slow run. In spite of my steady pulling, it had taken me
+just under six hours to do the thirty-five miles.
+
+After the exchange of a wire or two, Roos obtained permission from
+Chester to suspend the "farmer" picture, and was ordered on to New York
+to report. We were both a good deal disappointed not to have a pictorial
+record of the "farmer" actually seeing the sea; in fact, we did some
+hours of "location" scouting in the hope of finding a substitute Pacific
+in the vicinity of Pasco. If that Beverly sand-storm had only made
+itself felt seventy-five miles farther down river I honestly believe we
+would have accomplished our worthy end. There was a pretty bit of white
+beach below the N. P. bridge. _If_ the sand had been blowing thick
+enough to obscure the farther shore, and _if_ the wind had blown in the
+right direction to throw up a line or two of surf, I could have stood
+with one foot on that beach, the other on _Imshallah's_ bow, elbow on
+knee, chin in hand, and registered "fulfilment," and none could have
+told it from the real Pacific. Indeed, that bit of backwash from Pasco's
+outfall sewer, with the sand-barrage and surf I have postulated, would
+have "shot" _more_ like the Pacific than many spots I can think of
+looking off to the Columbia bar.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+PASCO TO THE DALLES
+
+
+The only lone-hand river voyage I had ever taken previous to the one on
+which I was about to embark was down the lower Colorado River, from
+Needles to the head of the Gulf of California. This had been in
+comparatively quiet water all the way, with nothing much to look out for
+save the tidal bore at the lower end. As I had never been above the
+Dalles on the lower Columbia, I had very little idea of what I would
+encounter in the way of rapids. I knew that there were locks by which
+the Dalles and Cascades could be passed, but as the combined fall at
+these points accounted for only about a quarter of that between the
+Snake and tide-water, it was certain there must still be some very swift
+rapids to run. That there had at times been a steamer service maintained
+from the Snake down meant that there must be some sort of a rock-free
+channel through all of the riffles; but it did not necessarily mean that
+these were runnable in a small boat. A properly handled stern-wheeler
+can be drifted down and (by means of line and capstan) hauled up rapids
+where not even a high-powered launch can live. I had a list of about a
+score of the principal rapids between the Snake and Celilo Falls, with
+their distances from the Canadian Boundary by river. This would enable
+me to know approximately _where_ I was going to find them. That was
+all. Information on fall, channel and the best means of running them I
+would have to pick up as I went along.
+
+I shoved off from Pasco Ferry at nine o'clock in the morning of Sunday,
+November fourteenth. With Roos and his blanket-roll, camera and tripod
+out of the stern, I found that the skiff trimmed better when I rowed
+from the after thwart. She pulled easier and handled a lot more smartly
+now. It was evident, however, that her increased freeboard was going to
+make her harder to hold to her course with head winds, but these I hoped
+to have little trouble with until I reached the gorge of the Cascades.
+The ferry-man assured me that I would encounter no really bad water
+until I came to the last pitch of Umatilla Rapids, about thirty-five
+miles below. He advised me to take a good look at that before putting
+into it, as an unbroken reef ran almost directly across the current and
+the channel was not easy to locate. It was the most troublesome bar to
+navigation on the lower Columbia, and steamers were repeatedly getting
+in trouble there. I would see the latest wreck a couple of miles below
+the foot of the rapids.
+
+I passed the mouth of the Snake about three miles below the ferry. Here
+was no such spectacular meeting of waters as occurs when the Pend
+d'Oreille and Columbia spring together, for the country is low and
+level, and the mouth of the Snake broad and shallow. The discharge was
+through two channels, and the water greenish-grey in colour; but where
+that blend in the swift tributaries of the upper river suggests the
+intense coldness of glacial origin, here the picture conjured up was of
+desert and alkali plains. Its mouth is the least interesting part of
+the Snake. It has some magnificent canyons in its upper and middle
+waters--as have also its two fine tributaries, the Salmon and
+Clearwater,--and its Shoshone Falls are second only to Niagara on the
+North American continent.
+
+Lieutenant Symons, who concluded his exploration of the upper Columbia
+at the Snake, characterizes the region as a "bleak, dreary waste, in
+which for many miles around sage-brush and sand predominate ... one of
+the most abominable places in the country to live in." Alexander Ross,
+on the other hand, writing seventy years earlier, describes it as one of
+the loveliest lands imaginable. The fact that the one reached the Snake
+in the fall and the other in the spring may have had something to do
+with these diametrically opposed impressions. Irrigation and cultivation
+have gone far to redeem this land from the desert Symons found it, but
+it is still far from being quite the Paradise Ross seemed to think it
+was. As the only considerable plain touching the Columbia at any point
+in its course, this region of the Snake can never make the scenic appeal
+of the hundreds of miles of cliff-walled gorges above and below; but it
+is a land of great potential richness. With water and power available
+from the two greatest rivers of the West, there can be no question of
+its future, both agriculturally and industrially. Pasco will yet more
+than fulfil the promises made for that mushroom town in its early boom
+days. "KEEP YOUR EYE ON PASCO!" was a byword from one end of the country
+to the other in the nineties, and this hustling rail and agricultural
+centre at the junction of the Columbia and the Snake should not be lost
+sight of even to-day.
+
+The lighter-hued water of the Snake was pretty well churned into the
+flood of the Columbia at the end of a mile, leaving a faint suggestion
+of cloudiness in the transparent green that the latter had preserved all
+the way from the Arrow Lakes. The long bridge of the Spokane, Portland
+and Seattle Railway spanned the Columbia just below the Snake, and from
+there on paralleled the river closely right down to the Willamette.
+After the Oregon-Washington Railway and Navigation Company tracks
+appeared on the south bank below the Walla Walla, it was only at rare
+intervals that I was out of sight of a grade, or out of sound of a
+train, for the remainder of my voyage. In a day or two the trainmen,
+running back and forth between divisional points, came to recognize the
+bright green skiff plugging on down the dark green river (mighty small
+she must have looked to them from the banks) and never failed to give
+her a hail or a wave in passing. On a certain memorable occasion one of
+them (doubtless in direct defiance of rules) ventured even further in
+the way of a warning ... but I will tell of that in its place.
+
+Homley Rapids, seven miles below Pasco ferry, are formed by a rough reef
+of bedrock running half way across the river from the right bank.
+Approached from the right side of the long gravel island that divides
+the river just above them, one might get badly tangled up before he got
+through; by the left-hand channel the going is easy if one keeps an eye
+on the shallowing water at the bars. A sky-line of brown mountains,
+with a double-turreted butte as their most conspicuous feature, marks
+the point where the Columbia finally turns west for its assault on the
+Cascades and its plunge to the Pacific. That bend is the boundary of the
+fertile plains extending from the Yakima to the Walla Walla, and the
+beginning of a new series of gorges, in some respects the grandest of
+all. The matchless panorama of the Cascade gorges is a fitting finale to
+the stupendous scenic pageant that has been staged all the way from the
+glacial sources of the Columbia.
+
+A low sandy beach just above the mouth of the rather insignificant Walla
+Walla comes pretty near to being the most historically important point
+on the Columbia. Here Lewis and Clark first came to the waters of the
+long-struggled-toward Oregon; here came Frémont, the "Pathfinder;" here
+Thompson planted his pious proclamation claiming all of the valley of
+the Columbia for the Northwest Company; and by here, sooner or later,
+passed and repassed practically every one of the trappers, missionaries,
+settlers and other pioneers who were finally to bring Oregon permanently
+under the Stars and Stripes.
+
+The double-topped butte, an outstanding landmark for _voyageurs_ for a
+hundred years, has long been called "The Two Virgins." The story is told
+locally of a Catholic priest who saved his life by taking refuge in a
+cave between the castellated turrets during an Indian massacre, but who
+got in rather serious trouble with the Church afterwards as a
+consequence of sending words of his deliverance by a French-Canadian
+half-breed _voyageur_. The latter got the salient details of the story
+straight, but neglected to explain that the two virgins were mountains.
+The result was that the unlucky priest narrowly missed excommunication
+for saving his life at the expense of breaking his vows. I got no
+affidavit with the story; but local "stock" yarns are always worth
+preserving on account of their colour.
+
+There were a number of big black rocks where the river began its bend to
+the west, but the channel to the right was not hard to follow. Neither
+did Bull Run Rapids, a few miles farther down, offer any difficulties. I
+followed the steamer channel as having the swiftest current, but could
+have passed without trouble on either side of it in much quieter water.
+Brown and terra-cotta-tinged cliffs reared higher and higher to left and
+right, encroaching closely on the river. There was little room for
+cultivation at any point, and often the railways had had to resort to
+heavy cutting and tunnelling to find a way through some jutting rock
+buttress. There were no trees, and the general aspect of the country was
+desolate in the extreme.
+
+It was toward the end of a grey afternoon that I headed _Imshallah_ into
+the first pitch of Umatilla Rapids. The sun had dissolved into a slowly
+thickening mist about three o'clock, and from then on the whole
+landscape had been gradually neutralizing itself by taking on shade
+after shade of dull, inconspicuous grey. From the grey-white mistiness
+of the sky to the grey-green murkiness of the river there was nothing
+that contrasted with anything else; every object was blended, dissolved,
+all but quenched. The foam-ruffles above even the sharpest of the
+riffles blurred like the streaking of clouded marble at a hundred feet,
+and it took the livest kind of a lookout to avoid the ones with teeth in
+them. Neither the first nor the second riffle had any very bad water,
+but my neck was stiff from watching over my shoulder even as they were.
+I had rather intended avoiding this trouble by drifting down anything
+that looked very threatening stern first, but that would have involved
+retrimming the boat and greatly reducing her speed. If I was going to
+make Umatilla by dark, there was no time to lose.
+
+From the head of the first riffle of Umatilla Rapids to the head of the
+third or main one is a mile and a half. There was a slight up-river
+breeze blowing in the mist, and the heavy rumble of the big fall came to
+my ears some distance above the opening riffle. The distant roar
+augmented steadily after that, and the sharper grind of the more
+imminent riffles was never loud enough to drown it out entirely. The
+fact that it had a certain "all pervasive" quality, seeming to fill the
+whole of the gorge with its heavy beat, told me that it was an unusually
+long rapid, as well as an unusually rough one. That, it seemed, was
+about all I was going to be able to find out. No one was in sight on the
+left bank, which I was skirting, and the right bank was masked with
+mist. With none to seek information from, and with not enough light to
+see for myself, the alternatives were very simple: I could either land,
+line as far as I could while light lasted and then seek Umatilla on foot
+for the night, or I could take my chance at running through. It was the
+delay and uncertainty sure to be attendant upon lining that was the
+principal factor in deciding me to try the latter course. Also, I knew
+that there was an open channel all the way through, and that the rapid
+was a comparatively broad and shallow one, rather than constricted and
+deep. This meant that it would be straight white water--a succession of
+broken waves--I was going into, rather than heavy swirls and whirlpools;
+just the water in which the skiff had already proved she was at her
+best. These points seemed to minimize the risk of going wrong to a point
+where the chance of running was worth taking for the time and trouble it
+would save. If I had not known these things in advance, I should never,
+of course, have risked going into so strong a rapid under such
+conditions of light.
+
+I shall always have a very grateful feeling toward that Pasco ferry-man
+for those few words he dropped about the run of the reef and the set of
+the current at Umatilla Rapid. This is one of the few great rapids I
+have ever known on any river where the main drift of the current will
+not carry a boat to the deepest channel. This is due to the fact that
+the great reef of native rock which causes the rapid is sufficiently
+submerged even at middle water to permit a considerable flow directly
+across it. The consequence of this is that a boat, large or small, which
+follows the current and does not start soon enough working over toward
+the point where a channel has been blasted through the reef, is almost
+certain to be carried directly upon the latter. This has happened to a
+good many steamers, the latest having been wrecked not long before my
+voyage.
+
+With a rough idea of the lay of things in my mind, I had edged a good
+deal farther out across the current than would have been the case had I
+been trusting to my own judgment of the way the rapid _ought_ to develop
+in the light of my past experience. The smooth but swiftly-flowing water
+to the left looked almost empty of threat, and it was not until I was
+within a hundred feet of the barrier that I saw it was flowing directly
+over the latter and went tumbling down the farther side in an almost
+straight fall. At the same instant I saw that I was still heading forty
+or fifty feet to the left of where the "intake" dipped through the break
+in the reef. Realizing that I could never make it by heading straight, I
+swung the skiff round and pulled quartering to the current with her head
+up-stream. Even then it was a nearer squeak than I like to think of. I
+missed the middle of the "V" by ten feet as I swung her head down-stream
+again, and as the racing current carried her up against the back-wave
+thrown off the end of the break in the reef she heeled heavily to
+starboard, like an auto turning on a steeply-banked track. Then she shot
+out into the big white combers in mid-channel and started slap-banging
+down through them. It looked beastly rough ahead, but in any event it
+was better than hanging up on the reef at the outset. We were going to
+have a run for our money whatever happened.
+
+The only precautions there had been time to take were slipping into my
+"Gieve" and throwing all my luggage aft. Half-inflated, the
+rubber-lined jacket was no handicap in rowing, and the tube hung ready
+to receive more air if necessity arose. As for the trim, it had been my
+snap judgment at the last moment that it would be better to give the
+skiff her head in the rollers that I _knew_ were coming, and let her
+take her chance in being down by the stern in whirlpools that might
+never materialize. I still think that was the best thing to have done
+under the circumstances.
+
+Not until I was right down into that wild wallow of rock-churned foam
+was there a chance to get an idea of the rather remarkable bedrock
+formation which is responsible for making Umatilla Rapids the worrisome
+problem they have always been for river skippers. After piercing the
+black basaltic barrier of the reef, the channel shoots to the left and
+runs for a quarter of a mile or more (I was too busy to judge distances
+accurately) right along the foot of it. With a considerable stream of
+water cascading over the reef at almost right angles to the channel, a
+queer sort of side-kick is thrown into the waves of the latter which
+make it one of the most "unrhythmic" rapids I ever ran. _Imshallah_
+pounded horribly, but gave not the savagest of the twisting combers a
+chance to put anything solid over her high held head. My erratic pecking
+strokes did not find green water often enough to give her much way over
+the current, but she responded instantly every time I dug deep to throw
+her head back after she had been buffeted sideways by an arrogant
+ruffian of a roller.
+
+As soon as I saw the way she was riding the roughest of the water, I
+realized that the only chance of a bad mess-up would come through my
+failure to keep her head to the enemy. Knowing this wasn't likely to
+happen unless I broke an oar, I eased a bit on my pulling and gave just
+a quick short-arm jerk now and then to hold her steady. She was never
+near to broaching-to, and I'm mighty glad she wasn't. Umatilla is the
+sort of a rapid that hasn't quite the teeth to get the best of a
+carefully handled boat that is running in good luck, but which has the
+power, with a mile to spare, to grind to match-wood any craft that gets
+into trouble on its own account. It was an eerie run that--with the
+snarling cascade of the reef on one side, the ghostly dance of the
+rollers on the other, and the impenetrable grey curtain of the mist
+blanking everything beyond a radius of a hundred feet; but _Imshallah_
+went through it with her head in the air and came waltzing out into the
+swirls below as cocky as a partridge. Indeed, that was just the trouble.
+The pair of us were just a bit _too_ cocky over the way we had gone it
+blind and come through so smartly. It remained for a couple of lesser
+rapids to reduce both of us to a proper humility of spirit.
+
+I had been prepared to make a quick shift to the forward thwart in case
+there was a bad run of whirlpools following the rapid, and so bring her
+up by the stern. This did not prove necessary, however, as the rapidly
+broadening river was too shallow for dangerous under-currents. A short
+run in slackening water brought me to the town of Umatilla just as the
+lights were beginning to twinkle in the windows. Landing in the quiet
+water below a short stone jetty, I left my stuff in a nearby shack and
+sought the hotel. The pool-room "stove-decorators" refused to believe I
+had come through the rapid until I described it to them. Then they said
+it was better to be a lucky darnfool on the Columbia than an unlucky
+school-teacher. "School-teacher," it appeared, was the local apotheosis
+of Wisdom, and stood at the opposite pole from "darnfool." It seems that
+there had been two male school-teachers drowned in Umatilla that summer
+and only one darnfool, and they were rather put out at me for having
+failed to even up the score. Then they tried to spoil my evening by
+telling me all the things that had happened to people in Devil's Run
+Rapids, which I would go into just below the mouth of the river the
+first thing in the morning. They had me rather fussed for a while,
+too--until they told one about a farmer who, after having had his launch
+upset on his way home from his wedding, swam out with his bride in his
+arms. I told them I'd try to get that lusty swimmer to tow me through
+Devil's Run in the morning, and turned in for a good sleep.
+
+Umatilla is a decrepit little old town that knew its best days away back
+in the last century, when it was the head of steamer navigation on the
+Columbia and the terminus of the freighting route to Idaho and eastern
+Washington. There are rich irrigated lands farther up the Umatilla
+River, but the development of these seems to have done little for the
+stagnating old settlement by the Columbia, which has little left but its
+historic memories. It was by the Umatilla that the rugged Hunt and the
+remnants of the Astor overland party came to the Columbia, after what
+was perhaps the most terrible journey ever made across the continent.
+And all through the time of the _voyageurs_, the trappers and the
+pioneers, Umatilla was only less important as a halting and portage
+point than the Cascades and the Dalles.
+
+I pulled away from the jetty of Umatilla at eight o'clock in the morning
+of November fifteenth. The sky was clear and there was no trace of the
+mist of the previous evening. There was brilliant, diamond-bright
+visibility on the river, with the usual early morning mirage effects,
+due to the chill stratum of air lying close to the water. This
+exaggerated considerably the height of distant riffles, lifting them up
+into eye-scope much sooner than they would have been picked up
+ordinarily. I put on my "Gieve" and blew it up in anticipation of a
+stiff fight at Devil's Run, only to find just enough rocks and riffles
+there to make me certain of locating them. I could see, however, that
+the formation was such that there might have been very troublesome water
+there at higher, and possibly lower, stages. Out of charity for the
+tellers of a good many awesome tales I had to listen to in respect of
+rapids I subsequently found to be comparatively innocuous, I am inclined
+to believe that a number of them were substantially straight accounts of
+disasters which had actually occurred in flood season, or at times when
+other water levels than those I encountered made the riffles in question
+much more troublesome.
+
+I had an easy day of it for rapids, but, as a consequence of the
+comparatively slow water, rather a hard one for pulling. Canoe
+Encampment Rapids, twenty miles below Devil's Run, gave me a good lift
+for a mile or more, but not enough to make much of a respite from the
+oars if I was going to make the fifty miles I had set for my day's run.
+I was still ten miles short of that at four o'clock when a drizzling
+rain setting in from the south-west decided me to land for shelter at
+Hepburn Junction, on the left bank. That was the first rain I had
+encountered since passing the Canadian Boundary, after a month of
+practically continuous storms. There was nothing but a railway station
+at the Junction, but a nearby road-camp offered the chance of food and
+shelter. The young contractor--he was doing the concrete work on a State
+Highway bridge at that point--eyed my bedraggled figure somewhat
+disapprovingly at first, at a loss, apparently, as to whether I was a
+straight hobo or merely a disguised boot-legger. An instant later we had
+recognized each other as football opponents of Los Angeles-Pasadena
+school-days. His name was Walter Rees, of a family prominent among early
+Southern California pioneers. With the rain pattering on the tent roof,
+we talked each other to sleep lamenting the good old days of the "flying
+wedge" and massed play in football.
+
+It was clear again the following morning, but with a mistiness to the
+west masking Mount Hood and the Cascades, to which I was now coming very
+near. The cliffs had been rearing up higher and higher at every mile,
+great walls of red-brown and black rock strongly suggestive, in their
+rugged barrenness, of the buttressed, turreted and columned formation
+through which the river runs below the mouth of the Spokane. Owyhee,
+Blalock and Four O'clock rapids were easy running, but the sustained
+roar which the slight up-river breeze brought to my ears as the black,
+right-angling gorge of Rock Creek came in sight was fair warning that
+there was really rough water ahead. Although I had been able to gather
+very little information along the way, the fact that I had so far
+descended but a small part of the two hundred feet of drop between
+Umatilla and Celilo Falls meant that the several rapids immediately
+ahead would have to make up for the loafing the Columbia had been guilty
+of for the last sixty miles.
+
+Taking advantage of the quiet stretch of water below Four O'clock
+Rapids, I went all over the skiff as she drifted in the easy current,
+tuning her up for the slap-banging she could not fail to receive in the
+long succession of sharp riffles which began at Rock Creek. In
+tightening up the brass screws along the gunwale, I removed and threw
+into the bottom of the boat both of my oar-locks. When I started to
+restore them to place as the roar of the nearing rapid grew louder, I
+found that one of them--the left--had been kicked out of reach under the
+bottom-boards. Rather than go to the trouble of tearing up the latter
+just then, I replaced the missing lock with one from my duffle-bag, a
+roughly-smithed piece of iron that I had carried away as a mascot from
+an old _batteau_ at Boat Encampment. It proved quite a bit too snug for
+its socket, besides being a deal wider than it should have been for the
+shaft of my light oar. There was a spoon oar, with a ring lock, under
+the thwarts, but I was somewhat chary of using it since its mate had
+snapped with me below Rock Island Rapids.
+
+The river narrowed sharply above Rock Creek, and, standing on a thwart
+as the skiff drifted down, I saw that the rapid dropped away in a solid
+stretch of white foam tumbling between black basaltic walls. There was a
+good, stiff fall, but it was reassuring that I could see right away to
+the end of the white water, which did not appear to continue around the
+ninety-degree bend at the foot. It was just the sort of water
+_Imshallah_ was at her best in running, so I decided it was simply a
+matter of choosing the clearest channel and letting her go. A white
+cross-barred post on the mountainside at the angle of the bend gave me
+the bearing for the channel a minute or two before I made out the dip of
+the "intake." Stowing everything well aft, as I had done at Umatilla, I
+took up my oars and put her straight over the jade-green tip of the "V."
+
+That was rough-and-rowdy water, and no mistake. Every roller meant a
+slam, and every slam meant a shower-bath; but withal, it was mostly
+spray that came over her bows--nothing really to bother about. And so
+_Imshallah_ would have run it right through--had not a sharp dig I gave
+with my left oar jerked the latter out of that "open-faced" Boat
+Encampment mascot lock and sent me keeling over backwards. The next
+moment she was wallowing, beam-on, into the troughs and over the crests
+of the combers, dipping green water at every roll.
+
+Recovering my seat as quickly as possible, I tried to bring her head up
+again by backing with the right oar. She swung obediently enough, but I
+could not hold her bow down-stream once she was headed right.
+
+Rather than chance that "mascot" oar-lock again, I tumbled aft and did
+what I could with the paddle. Down as she was by the stern, that brought
+her head right out of the water and made it rather hopeless getting any
+way on her. She tumbled on through to the foot of the rapid without
+putting a gunwale under again, however, a circumstance for which I was
+highly thankful. She already had five or six inches of water in her, as
+I found as soon as I began to bail. It is just as well the trouble
+didn't occur at the head of the rapid. We were half way down when I
+ceased to function, and _Imshallah_ had about all she wanted to navigate
+the remainder. I was also duly thankful that there was nothing more than
+a few bad swirls at the foot of the rapid. Standing on her tail as she
+was after I plumped down in the stern with the paddle, a good strong
+whirlpool, such as must form at that sharp bend at high-water, would
+have made not more than one comfortable mouthful of her.
+
+From the foot of Rock Creek Rapids to the head of Squally Hook Rapids is
+something less than four miles of not very swift water. It took me about
+all the time the boat was drifting that distance to get her bailed out
+enough to retrieve my lost oar-lock from under the bottom-boards.
+Squally Hook, I could see, was much the same sort of a short, sharp,
+savage rapid as Rock Creek. There was the same restricted "intake," and
+the same abrupt bend just beyond the foot; only below Squally Hook the
+river turned to the left, where at Rock Creek it had turned to the
+right.
+
+The sheer two-thousand-foot cliff on the inside of the bend that gives
+its name to the rapid is well called Squally Hook. What had been a
+gentle ten-miles-an-hour breeze on the river above began resolving
+itself into a succession of fitful gusts of twenty or thirty as I
+approached the rock-walled bend. Even a steady head-wind makes steering
+awkward in going into a rapid; a gusty one is a distinct nuisance. To
+avoid the necessity of any sharp change of course after I was once among
+the white-caps, I resolved to use every care in heading into the rapid
+at exactly the right place. That was why, when I became aware that two
+girls from a farm-house on a bench above the right bank were motioning
+me imperiously in that direction, I swerved sharply from the course I
+had decided upon in an endeavour to locate the channel into which I was
+sure they were trying to tell me to head. Just what those confounded
+half-breed Loreli were _really_ driving at I never did learn. Perhaps
+they had apples to sell, or some sweet cider; or perhaps they thought I
+had some cider that was not sweet. Perhaps it was pure sociability--the
+desire of a bit of a "talky-talk" with the green-boated _voyageur_. At
+any rate, they were certainly _not_ trying to pilot me into a clear
+channel. That fact walloped me right between the eyes the instant I
+discovered that I had pulled beyond the entrance of a perfectly straight
+channel and that there was a barely submerged barrier of rock blocking
+the river all the way on to the right bank.
+
+That, of course, left me no alternative but to pull back for all that
+was in me to wait the "intake." It was a very similar predicament to the
+one in which the mist had tricked me at the head of Umatilla; only
+there I had room to make the channel and here I didn't. The current,
+running now like a mill-race, carried me onto the reef sixty feet to the
+right of the smooth green chute of the "fairway."
+
+If it had taken half an hour instead of half a second to shoot out
+across the shoaling shelf of that froth-hidden reef there might have
+been time for a goodly bit of worrying anent the outcome. As it was,
+there was just the sudden thrill of seeing the bottom of the river
+leaping up to hit the bottom of the boat, the instant of suspense as she
+touched and dragged at the brink, and then the dizzy nose-dive of two or
+three feet down into deeper water. It was done so quickly that a stroke
+checked by the rock of the reef was finished in the up-boil below the
+little cascade. With an inch or two less of water she might have hung at
+the brink and swung beam-on to the current, which, of course, would have
+meant an instant capsize. The way it was, she made a straight clean jump
+of it, and only buried her nose in the souse-hole for the briefest part
+of a second when she struck. The rest was merely the matter of three
+hundred yards of rough running down a rock-clear channel.
+
+The authors of my near-mess-up came capering down the bank in pursuit as
+I swung out into the smoothening swirls, but I only shook my fist at
+them and resumed my oars. Darn women, anyway!--when a man's running
+rapids, I mean.
+
+Now one would have thought that those two performances were enough for
+one afternoon, especially as both were very largely due to my own
+carelessness; but I suppose the "trilogy of trouble" had to be rounded
+out complete. From the foot of Squally Hook Rapids to the head of Indian
+Rapids is about three miles. The water became ominously slack as I
+neared what appeared to be a number of great rock islands almost
+completely barring the river. It was not until I was almost even with
+the first of them that a channel, very narrow and very straight, opened
+up along the left bank. Various other channels led off among the
+islands, but with nothing to indicate how or where they emerged. That
+flume-like chute down the left bank was plainly the way the steamers
+went, and certainly the quickest and most direct course on down the
+river. Peering through the rocky vista, I could see a rain storm racing
+up the Columbia, with the grey face of it just blotting out a
+wedge-shaped gorge through the southern cliffs which I knew must be the
+mouth of the John Day. That storm was another reason why I should choose
+the shortest and swiftest channel. There ought to be some kind of
+shelter where this important southern tributary met the Columbia.
+
+Of course, I knew all about still water running deep (which was of no
+concern to me) and "twisty" (which was of considerable concern). I
+should certainly have given more thought to the matter of trimming for
+what was sure to be waiting to snap up _Imshallah_ at the foot of that
+speeding chute of green-black water had not an old friend of mine
+breezed along just then. He was the engineer of the way freight on the
+"South-bank" line. We had been exchanging signals in passing for three
+days now--twice on his down run and once on his up. This was the first
+opportunity I had had to show him how a rapid should be run, and I noted
+with gratification that he appeared to be slowing down so as to miss
+none of the fine points. On my part, dispensing with my wonted
+preliminary "look-see," I swung hard on the oars in an effort to get
+into the swiftest water before the spectators were out of sight.
+
+As the engine drew up even with me, I balanced my oars with my right
+hand for a moment and waved the engineer greetings with my left; he, in
+turn, ran the locomotive with his left hand and waved with his right.
+Then I saw that the fireman was also waving, and, farther back, the
+brakeman, from the top of a car, and the conductor from the "lookout" of
+the caboose. The occupants of the "dirigible grandstand" at the
+Poughkeepsie regattas had nothing on the crew of that way freight. And
+the latter, moreover, were treated to a burst of speed such as no
+man-propelled boat in still water ever came close to. I was not pulling
+over four or five miles an hour myself, but that smooth, steep,
+unobstructed chute must have been spilling through its current at close
+to twenty. In a couple of hundred yards I pulled up three or four
+car-lengths on the comparatively slow-moving train, and I was still
+gaining when a sudden "_toot-a-too-toot!_" made me stop rowing and look
+around. I had recognized instantly the familiar danger signal, and was
+rather expecting to see a cow grazing with true bovine nonchalance on
+the weeds between the ties. Instead, it was the engineer's wildly
+gesticulating arm that caught my back-cast eye. He was pointing just
+ahead of me, and down--evidently at something in the water.
+
+Then I saw it too--a big black funnel-shaped hole down which a wide
+ribbon of river seemed to be taking a sort of a spiral tumble. It was
+that entirely well-meant _toot-a-toot_, which was intended to prod me,
+not a cow, into activity, that was primarily responsible for what
+followed. Had I not ceased rowing on hearing it, it is probable that the
+skiff would have had enough way when she did strike that whirlpool to
+carry her right on through. As it was _Imshallah_ simply did an undulant
+glide into the watery tentacles of the lurking octopus, snuggled into
+his breast and prepared to spend the night reeling in a dervish dance
+with him. I must do the jade the justice of admitting that she had no
+intention of outraging the proprieties by going any further than a
+nocturnal terpsichorean revel. Going home for the night with him never
+entered her mind; so that when he tried to pull the "Cave-Man stuff" and
+drag her down to his under-water grottoes, she put up the most virtuous
+kind of resistance. The trouble was that I didn't want to go even as far
+as she did. Dancing was the last thing I cared for, with that rain-storm
+and night coming on. Yet--at least as far as my friends on the way
+freight ever knew--an all-night _Danse d'Apache_ looked very much like
+what we were up against; for I recall distinctly that when the train was
+disappearing round the next bend _Imshallah_, her head thrown
+ecstatically skyward, was still spinning in circles, while I continued
+to fan the air with my oars like an animated Dutch windmill.
+
+It was a mighty sizeable whirlpool, that black-mouthed maelstrom into
+which _Imshallah's_ susceptibility had betrayed both of us. I should say
+that it was twice the diameter of the one which had given us such a
+severe shaking just above the Canadian Boundary, and with a "suck" in
+proportion. What helped the situation now, however, was the fact that
+the skiff carried rather less than half the weight she did then. At the
+rate she was taking water over the stern during that first attack, she
+could not have survived for more than half a minute; now she was riding
+so much more buoyantly that she was only dipping half a bucket or so
+once in every two or three rounds. When I saw that she could probably go
+on dancing for an hour or two without taking in enough water to put her
+under, something of the ludicrousness of the situation began to dawn on
+me. Missing the water completely with half of my strokes, and only
+dealing it futile slaps with the rest, I was making no more linear
+progress than if I had been riding a merry-go-round. I didn't dare to
+put the stern any lower by sliding down there and trying to paddle where
+there was water to be reached. Crowding her head down by working my
+weight forward finally struck me as the only thing to do.
+
+With the forward thwart almost above my head this was not an easy
+consummation to effect, especially with an oar in either hand. Luckily,
+I was now using the "ring" oar-locks, so that they came along on the
+oars when I unshipped the latter. Standing up was, of course, out of
+the question. I simply slid off backwards on to the bottom and wriggled
+forward in a sitting position until I felt my spine against the thwart.
+That brought her nose out of the clouds, and she settled down still
+farther when, after getting my elbows over the seat behind me, I worked
+up into a rowing position.
+
+The whirlpool was spinning from right to left, and one quick stroke with
+my left oar--against the current of the "spin," that is--was enough to
+shoot her clear. Bad swirls and two or three smaller "twisters" made her
+course a devious one for the next hundred yards, but she never swung in
+a complete revolution again. I pulled into smooth water just as the
+first drops of the storm began to patter on the back of my neck.
+
+The first riffle of John Day Rapids sent its warning growl on the
+up-river wind before I was a quarter of a mile below the whirlpool, and
+ahead loomed a barrier of rock islands, rising out of the white foam
+churned up as the Columbia raced between them. I had to run the first
+riffle--an easy one--to make the mouth of the John Day, but that was as
+far as I went. I reckoned there had been quite enough excitement for one
+afternoon without poking into any more rough water against a rain and
+head wind. Dropping below the gravel bar off the mouth of the Day, I
+pulled fifty yards up-stream in a quiet current and moored _Imshallah_
+under the railway bridge. I camped for the night with a couple of motor
+tourists in a shack near the upper end of the bridge. My hosts were two
+genial souls, father and son, enjoying an indefinite spell of fishing,
+hunting and trapping on a stake the former had made in the sale of one
+of his "prospects" in southern Oregon. They were bluff, big-hearted,
+genuine chaps, both of them, and we had a highly delightful evening of
+yarning.
+
+It was clear again the next morning, but with the barometer of my
+confidence jolted down several notches by what had occurred the previous
+afternoon. I pulled across the river and sought a quieter way through
+the second riffle of John Day Rapids than that promised by the
+boisterous steamer channel. By devious ways and sinuous, I wound this
+way and that among the black rock islands, until a shallow channel along
+the right bank let me out of the maze at the lower end. This waste of
+time and effort was largely due to funkiness on my part, and there was
+no necessity for it. The steamer channel is white and rough, with
+something of a whirlpool on the left side at the lower end, but nothing
+that there is any real excuse for avoiding. The third riffle was nothing
+to bother about; nor did Schofield's Rapids, two miles below, offer any
+difficulties. As a matter of fact, Adventure, having had its innings,
+was taking a day off, leaving me to follow the Golden Trail of Romance.
+To-day was "Ladies' Day" on the Columbia.
+
+Romance first showed her bright eyes at a little farm on the right bank,
+three miles below Schofield's Rapids. Landing here to ask about the
+channel through a rather noisy rapid beginning to boom ahead, I found a
+delectable apple-cheeked miss of about twelve in charge, her father and
+mother having gone across to Biggs for the day. She was in sore trouble
+at the moment of my advent because her newly-born brindle bull calf--her
+really-truly very own--wouldn't take nourishment properly. Now as luck
+would have it, teaching a calf table-manners chanced to be one of the
+few things I knew about stock-farming. So I showed her how to start in
+by letting _Cultus_ (that was merely a temporary name, she said, because
+he was so bad) munch her own finger for a spell, from which, by slow
+degrees, the lacteal liaison with "Old Mooley" was established. It took
+us half an hour to get _Cultus_ functioning on all fours, and rather
+longer than that to teach her collie, tabby cat, and the latter's three
+kittens to sit in a row and have their mouths milked into. It didn't
+take us long to exhaust "Old Mooley's" milk supply at that game, and
+when I finally climbed over the barnyard fence on the way down to my
+boat, poor _Cultus_ was left butting captiously at an empty udder.
+"Apple Cheek" rather wanted me to stay until her father came back,
+saying that he had gone to Biggs to get a 'breed for a hired man, and
+that, if he didn't get the 'breed, maybe I would do. She almost burst
+into tears with shame when I told her I was a moving picture actor
+seeking rest and local colour on the Columbia. "You a actor, and I made
+you milk 'Old Mooley!'" she sobbed; and it took all my lunch ration of
+milk chocolate to bring back her smile. Then, like the Scotch bride at
+Windermere, she asked me if I was Bill Hart. Somehow, I wasn't quite
+base enough to tell her a concrete lie like that; so I compromised with
+a comparative abstraction. I was a rising star in the movie firmament, I
+said; an eclectic, taking the best of all the risen stars, of whom much
+would be heard later. She was still pondering "_eclectic_" when I pushed
+off into the current. Bless your heart, little "Apple Cheek," I hope you
+didn't get a spanking for wasting all of _Cultus'_ dinner on the dogs
+and cats and the side of the barn! You were about the first person I met
+on the Columbia who didn't accuse me of being a boot-legger, and the
+only one who believed me hot off the bat when I said I was a movie star.
+
+The rapid ahead became noisier as I drew nearer, and when I saw it came
+from a reef which reached four-fifths of the way across the river from
+the left bank, I pulled in and landed at Biggs to inquire about the
+channel. The first man I spoke to called a second, and the latter a
+third, and so on _ad infinitum_. Pretty near to half the town must have
+been gathered at the railway station giving me advice at the end of a
+quarter of an hour. Each of them had a different suggestion to make,
+ranging from dragging through a half-empty back channel just below the
+town to taking the boat out and running it down the track on a
+push-cart. As they all were agreed that the steamers used to go down the
+opposite side, I finally decided that would be the best way through. Not
+to run too much risk of being carried down onto the reef in pulling
+across, I lined and poled a half mile up-stream before pushing off. Once
+over near the right bank, I found a channel broad and deep enough to
+have run at night.
+
+A couple of miles below Biggs the Columbia is divided by a long narrow
+rocky island. The deep, direct channel is that to the right, and is
+called Hell Gate--the third gorge of that hackneyed name I had
+encountered since pushing off from Beavermouth. Possibly it was because
+I was fed-up with the name and all it connoted that I avoided this
+channel; more likely it was because Romance was at the tow-line. At any
+rate, I headed into the broad shallow channel that flows by the mouth of
+the River Des Chutes. It was up this tumultuous stream that Frémont,
+after camping at the Dalles and making a short boat voyage below,
+started south over the mountains in search of the mythical river that
+was supposed to drain from the Utah basin to the Pacific in the vicinity
+of San Francisco--one of the indomitable "Pathfinder's" hardest
+journeys.
+
+Just beyond where the River of the Falls, true to name to the last, came
+cascading into the Columbia, Romance again raised her golden head--this
+time out of the steam rising above an Indian "Turkish-bath." The first
+time I had found her in the guise of a twelve-year-old; this time it was
+more like a hundred and twelve. One can't make certain within a year or
+two about a lady in a Turkish-bath; it wouldn't be seemly even to _try_
+to do so. Pulling in close to the left bank to look at some queer
+mud-plastered Indian wickiups, a rush of steam suddenly burst from the
+side of the nearest one, and out of that spreading white cloud, rising
+like Aphrodite from the sea-foam, emerged the head and shoulders of an
+ancient squaw. She was horribly old--literally at the sans eyes, sans
+hair, sans teeth, sans everything (including clothes) stage. Cackling
+and gesticulating in the rolling steam, she was the _belle ideal_ of
+the witch of one's fancy, muttering incantations above her boiling
+cauldron.
+
+Frémont, in somewhat humorous vein, tells of visiting an Indian camp in
+this vicinity on the Columbia, and of how one of the squaws who had
+rushed forth in complete _déshabille_ on hearing the voices of
+strangers, "properized" herself at the last moment by using her
+papoose--as far as it would go--as a shield. But this old "Aphrodite" I
+had flushed from cover was so old that, if her youngest child had been
+ready to hand, and that latter had had one of her own children within
+reach, and this third one had had a child available, I am certain that
+still another generation or two would have had to be descended before a
+papoose sufficiently young enough to make "properization" proper would
+have been found. I trust I make that clear. And when you _have_
+visualized it, isn't it a funny pyramid?
+
+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 canal. 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 canal, 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 assured 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.
+
+[Illustration: LIFTED DRAWBRIDGE ON CELILO CANAL (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: TUMWATER GORGE OF THE GRAND DALLES (_below_)]
+
+[Illustration: "IMSHALLAH" IN THE LOCK AT FIVE-MILE]
+
+[Illustration: "IMSHALLAH" HALF WAY THROUGH THE CELILO CANAL]
+
+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 Canal 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 Canal, 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 canal, down which I
+pulled with the thunder of the falls on one side and on the other the
+roar of a passing 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 Canal 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 massive 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 passed 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 passing, 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 Canal, 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 canal 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 Canal rendered was the indirect one of forcing a very
+considerable reduction of railway freight rates. That alone is said to
+have saved the shippers of eastern Oregon and Washington many times the
+cost of this highly expensive undertaking.
+
+I pulled at a leisurely gait down the Canal, 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 shift 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 Canal 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,
+passing 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 passage
+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 fishing 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-shipping 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 passed that unavoidable portage. They were lying,
+thieving scoundrels for the most part, easily intimidated by a show of
+force and far less prone to stage a real fight than their more warlike
+brethren who disputed the passage 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 passing tourist until I made my
+Columbia voyage.
+
+I had intended, by making an early start from The Dalles, to endeavour
+to cover the forty odd miles to the head of the Cascades before dark of
+the same day. Two things conspired to defeat this ambitious plan: first,
+some unexpected mail which had to be answered, and, second, my equally
+unexpected booking of a passenger--a way passenger who had to be landed
+well short of the Cascades. Just as I was cleaning up the last of my
+letters, the hotel clerk introduced me to the "Society Editor" of The
+Dalles _Chronicle_, who wanted an interview. I told her that I was
+already two hours behind schedule, but that if she cared to ride the
+running road with me for a while, she could have the interview, with
+lunch thrown in, on the river. She accepted with alacrity, but begged
+for half an hour to clean up her desk at the _Chronicle_ office and
+change to out-door togs. Well within that limit, she was back again at
+the hotel, flushed, pant-ing and pant-ed, and announced that she was
+ready. Picking up a few odds and ends of food at the nearest grocery, we
+went down to the dock, where I launched and loaded up _Imshallah_ in
+time to push off at ten o'clock. I had, of course, given up all idea of
+making the Cascades that day, and reckoned that Hood River, about
+twenty-five miles, would be a comfortable and convenient halting place
+for the night. And so it would have been....
+
+[Illustration: PALISADE ROCK, LOWER COLUMBIA RIVER]
+
+[Illustration: MULTNOMAH FALLS COLUMBIA RIVER HIGHWAY, NEAR PORTLAND]
+
+I don't remember whether or not we ever got very far with the
+"interview," but I do recall that Miss S---- talked very interestingly
+of Johan Bojer and his work, and that she was in the midst of a keenly
+analytical review of "The Great Hunger" when a sudden darkening of what
+up to then had been only a slightly overcast sky reminded me that I had
+been extremely remiss in the matter of keeping an eye on the weather.
+Indeed, up to that moment the menace of storms on the river had been of
+such small moment as compared to that of rapids that I had come to rate
+it as no more than negligible. Now, however, heading into the heart of
+the Cascades, I was approaching a series of gorges long notorious among
+river _voyageurs_ as a veritable "wind factory"--a "storm-breeder" of
+the worst description. After all that I had read of the way in which the
+early pioneers had been held up for weeks by head winds between the
+Dalles and the Cascades, there was no excuse for my failure to keep a
+weather eye lifting at so treacherous a point. The only _alibi_ I can
+think of is Adam's: "The woman did it." Nor is there any ungallantry in
+that plea. Quite the contrary, in fact; for I am quite ready to
+confess that I should probably fail to watch the clouds again under
+similar circumstances.
+
+There were a few stray mavericks of sunshine shafts trying to struggle
+down to the inky pit of the river as I turned to give the weather a
+once-over, but they were quenched by the sinister cloud-pall even as I
+looked. The whole gorge of the river-riven Cascades was heaped full of
+wallowing nimbus which, driven by a fierce wind, was rolling up over the
+water like an advancing smoke-barrage. The forefront of the wind was
+marked by a wild welter of foam-white water, while a half mile behind a
+streaming curtain of gray-black indicated the position of the advancing
+wall of the rain. It would have been a vile-looking squall even in the
+open sea; here the sinister threat of it was considerably accentuated by
+the towering cliffs and the imminent outcrops of black rock studding the
+surface of the river. I had no serious doubt that _Imshallah_, after all
+the experience she had had in rough water, would find any great
+difficulty in riding out the blow where she was, but since it hardly
+seemed hospitable to subject my lady guest to any more of a wetting than
+could be avoided, I turned and headed for the lee shore. Miss S---- was
+only about half muffled in the rubber saddle _poncho_ and the light
+"shed" tent I tossed to her before resuming my oars when the wall of the
+wind--hard and solid as the side of a flying barn--struck us full on the
+starboard beam. It was rather careless of me, not heading up to meet
+that squall before it struck; but the fact was that I simply couldn't
+take seriously anything that it seemed possible _could_ happen on such a
+deep, quiet stretch of river. The consequence of taking that buffet on
+the beam was quite a merry bit of a mix-up. The shower-bath of blown
+spray and the dipping under of the lee rail were rather the least of my
+troubles. What did have me guessing for a minute, though, was the result
+of the fact that that confounded fifty-miles-an-hour zephyr got under
+the corners of the tent and, billowing it monstrously, carried about
+half of it overboard; also a somewhat lesser amount of Miss S----, who
+was just wrapping herself in it. I had to drop my oars to effect
+adequate salvage operations, and so leave the skiff with her port
+gunwale pretty nearly hove under. As soon as I got around to swing her
+head up into the teeth of the wind things eased off a bit.
+
+The river was about a mile wide at this point--ten miles below The
+Dalles and about opposite the station of Rowena--and, save for
+occasional outcroppings of black bedrock, fairly deep. The north shore
+was rocky all the way along, but that to the south (which was also the
+more protected on account of a jutting point ahead) was a broad sandy
+beach. That beach seemed to offer a comparatively good landing, and, as
+it extended up-stream for half a mile, it appeared that I ought to have
+no great difficulty in fetching it. The first intimation I had that this
+might not be as easy as I had reckoned came when, in spite of the fact
+that I was pulling down-stream in a three or four-mile current, the wind
+backed the skiff up-stream past a long rock island at a rate of five or
+six miles an hour. That was one of the queerest sensations I experienced
+on the whole voyage--having to avoid bumping the _lower_ end of a rock
+the while I could see the riffle where a strong current was flowing
+around the _upper_ end.
+
+I settled down to pulling in good earnest after that rather startling
+revelation, trying to hold the head of the skiff just enough to the left
+of the eye of the wind to give her a good shoot across the current.
+Luckily, I had been pretty well over toward the south bank when the wind
+struck. There was only about a quarter of a mile to go, but I was blown
+back just about the whole length of that half mile of sandy beach in
+making it. The last hundred yards I was rowing "all out," and it was
+touch-and-go as to whether the skiff was going to nose into soft sand or
+the lower end of a long stretch of half-submerged rocks. I was a good
+deal relieved when it proved to be the beach--by about twenty feet. We
+would have made some kind of a landing on the rocks without doubt, but
+hardly without giving the bottom of the boat an awful banging.
+
+The sand proved unexpectedly soft when I jumped out upon it, but I
+struck firm bottom before I had sunk more than an inch or two above my
+boot tops and managed to drag the skiff up far enough to escape the
+heaviest of the wash of the waves. It was rather a sodden bundle of wet
+canvas that I carried out and deposited under a pine tree beyond
+high-water mark, but the core of it displayed considerable life after it
+had been extracted and set up to dry before the fire of pitchy cones
+that I finally succeeded in teasing into a blaze. To show Miss S----
+that the storm hadn't affected my equanimity, I asked her to go on with
+her review of "The Great Hunger;" but she replied her own was more
+insistent, and reminded me that I hadn't served lunch yet. Well,
+rain-soaked biscuit and milk chocolate are rather difficult to take
+without a spoon; but a pound of California seedless raisins, if munched
+slowly, go quite a way with two people.
+
+The worst of the squall was over in half an hour, and, anxious to make
+hay while the sun shone, I pushed off again in an endeavor to get on as
+far as I could before the next broadside opened up. Miss S---- and I
+landed at the Rowena Ferry, to catch the afternoon train back to The
+Dalles. She was a good ship-mate, and I greatly regret she had the bad
+luck to be my passenger on the only day I encountered a really hard blow
+in all of my voyage.
+
+There was another threatening turret of black cloud beginning to train
+its guns as I pulled out into the stream beyond Rowena, and it opened
+with all the big stuff it had before I had gone a mile. While it lasted,
+the bombardment was as fierce as the first one. Fortunately, its
+ammunition ran out sooner. I kept the middle of the current this time,
+pulling as hard as I could against the wind. I got a thorough raking,
+fore-and-aft, for my temerity, but, except at the height of the wind, I
+managed to avoid the ignominy of being forced back against the stream.
+
+The third squall, which opened up about three-thirty, was a better
+organized assault, and gave me a pretty splashy session of it. When that
+blow got the range of me I was just pulling along to the left of a
+desolate tongue of black basalt called Memaloose Island. For many
+centuries this rocky isle was used by the Klickatats as a burial place,
+which fact induced a certain Indian-loving pioneer of The Dalles, Victor
+Trevett by name, to order his own grave dug there. A tall marble shaft
+near the lower end of the island marks the spot. Now I have no objection
+to marble shafts in general, nor even to this one in particular--as a
+shaft. I just got tired of seeing it, that was all. If any skipper on
+the Columbia ever passed Vic Trevett's monument as many times in a year
+as I did in an hour, I should like to know what run he was on.
+
+Swathed in oilskins, my potential speed was cut down both by the
+resistance my augmented bulk offered to the wind and the increased
+difficulty of pulling with so much on. Down past the monument I would go
+in the lulls, and up past the monument I would go before the gusts.
+There, relentless as the _Flying Dutchman_, that white shaft hung for
+the best part of an hour. I only hope what I said to the wind didn't
+disturb old Vic Trevett's sleep. Finally, a quarter of an hour's easing
+of the blow let me double the next point; and then it turned loose with
+all its guns again. Quite gone in the back and legs, I gave up the
+unequal fight and started to shoot off quartering toward the shore.
+Glancing over my shoulder in an endeavour to get some kind of an idea of
+where, and against what, I might count on striking, an astounding sight
+met my eyes, a picture so weird and infernal that I had to pause
+(mentally) and assure myself that those raisins I had for lunch had not
+been "processed."
+
+Of all the sinister landscapes I ever saw--including the lava fields of
+a good many volcanoes and a number of the world's most repulsive "bad
+lands"--that which opened up to me as I tried to head in beyond that
+hard-striven-for point stands alone in my memory for sheer awesomeness.
+The early winter twilight had already begun to settle upon the gloomy
+gorge, the duskiness greatly accentuating the all-pervading murk cast
+upon the river by the pall of the sooty clouds. All round loomed walls
+of black basalt, reflecting darkly in water whose green had been
+completely quenched by the brooding purple shadows. The very pines on
+the cliffs merged in the solid opacity behind their scraggly forms, and
+even the fringe of willows above high-water-mark looped round the
+crescent of beach below like a fragment of mourning band. And that
+stretch of silver sand--the one thing in the whole infernal landscape
+whose whiteness the gloom alone could not drown: how shall I describe
+the jolt it gave me when I discovered that six or seven black devils
+were engaged in systematically spraying it with an inky liquid that left
+it as dark and dead to the eye as a Stygian strand of anthracite? It was
+a lucky thing those raisins had _not_ been "processed;" else I might not
+have remembered readily what I had heard of the way the "South-Bank"
+railway had been keeping the sand from drifting over its tracks by
+spraying with crude oil the bars uncovered at low water.
+
+With that infernal mystery cleared up, my mind was free to note and take
+advantage of a rather remarkable incidental phenomenon. The effect of
+oil on troubled waters was no new thing to me, for on a number of
+occasions I had helped to rig a bag of kerosene-soaked oakum over the
+bows of a schooner hove-to in a gale; but to find a stretch of water
+already oiled for me at just the time and place I was in the sorest need
+of it--well, I couldn't see where those manna-fed Children of Israel
+wandering in the desert found their advance arrangements looked to any
+better than that. The savage wind-whipped white-caps that were buffeting
+me in mid-stream dissolved into foam-streaked ripples the moment they
+impinged upon the broadening oil-sleeked belt where the petroleum had
+seeped riverward from the sprayed beach. A solid jetty of stone could
+not have broken the rollers more effectually. On one side was a wild
+wallow of tossing water; on the other--as far as the surface of the
+river was concerned--an almost complete calm.
+
+It was a horrible indignity to heap upon _Imshallah_ (and, after the way
+she had displayed her resentment following her garbage shower under the
+Wenatchee bridge, I knew that spirited lady would make me pay dear for
+it if ever she had the chance); still--dead beat as I was--there was
+nothing else to do but to head into that oleaginous belt of calm and
+make the best of it. The wind still took a deal of bucking, but with the
+banging of the waves at an end my progress was greatly accelerated.
+Hailing the black devils on the bank, I asked where the nearest village
+was concealed, to learn that Moosier was a couple of miles below, but
+well back from the river. They rather doubted that I could find my way
+to the town across the mudflats, but thought it might be worth trying
+in preference to pushing on in the dark to Hood River.
+
+Those imps of darkness were right about the difficulty of reaching
+Moosier after nightfall. A small river coming in at that point seemed to
+have deposited a huge bar of quicksand all along the left bank, and I
+would never have been able to make a landing at all had not a belated
+duck-hunter given me a hand. After tying up to an oar, he very
+courteously undertook to pilot me to the town through the
+half-overflowed willow and alder flats. As a consequence of taking the
+lead, it was the native rather than the visitor who went off the caving
+path into the waist-deep little river. Coming out of the woods, a
+hundred-yards of slushing across a flooded potato-patch brought us to
+the railway embankment, and from there it was comparatively good going
+to the hotel. Luckily, the latter had a new porcelain tub and running
+hot water, luxuries one cannot always be sure of in the smaller Columbia
+River towns.
+
+[Illustration: CITY OF PORTLAND WITH MT. HOOD IN THE DISTANCE]
+
+It was just at the close of the local apple season, and I found the
+hotel brimming over with departing packers. Most of the latter were
+girls from Southern California orange-packing houses, imported for the
+season. Several of them came from Anaheim, and assured me that they had
+packed Valencias from a small grove of mine in that district. They were
+a good deal puzzled to account for the fact that a man with a Valencia
+grove should be "hobo-ing" round the country like I was, and seemed
+hardly to take me seriously when I assured them it was only a matter of
+a year or two before all farmers would be hobos. It's funny how
+apple-packing seems to bring out all the innate snobbery in a lady
+engaging in that lucrative calling; they didn't seem to think tramping
+was quite respectable. I slept on the parlour couch until three in the
+morning, when I "inherited" the room occupied by a couple of packettes
+departing by the Portland train. As they seem to have been addicted to
+"_attar of edelweiss_," or something of the kind, and there hadn't been
+time for fumigation, I rather regretted making the shift.
+
+[Illustration: BRIDGE ON COLUMBIA HIGHWAY NEAR PORTLAND, OREGON]
+
+When I had splashed back to the river in the morning, I found that
+_Imshallah_ anxious to hide the shame of that oil-bath, had spent the
+night trying to bury herself in the quicksand. Dumping her was out of
+the question, and I sank mid-thigh deep two or three times myself before
+I could persuade the sulking minx even to take the water. I knew she
+would take the first chance that offered to rid herself of the filth,
+just as she had before; but, with no swift water above the Cascades,
+there seemed small likelihood of her getting out-of-hand. Knowing that
+she was quite equal to making a bolt over the top of that terrible
+cataract if she hadn't managed to effect some sort of purification
+before reaching there, I made an honest attempt at conciliation by
+landing at the first solid beach I came to and giving her oily sides a
+good swabbing down with a piece of carpet. That seemed to mollify the
+temperamental lady a good deal, but just the same I knew her too well to
+take any chances.
+
+Of all the great rivers in the world, there are only two that have had
+the audacity to gouge a course straight through a major range of
+mountains. These are the Brahmaputra, which clove a way through the
+Himalaya in reaching the Bay of Bengal from Tibet, and the Columbia,
+which tore the Cascades asunder in making its way to the Pacific. But
+the slow process of the ages by which the great Asian river won its way
+to the sea broke its heart and left it a lifeless thing. It emerges from
+the mountains with barely strength enough to crawl across the most
+dismal of deltas to lose its identity in the brackish estuaries at its
+many insignificant mouths. The swift stroke by which the Cascades were
+parted for the Columbia left "The Achilles of Rivers" unimpaired in
+vigour. It rolls out of the mountains with a force which endless ćons
+have not weakened to a point where it was incapable of carrying the silt
+torn down by its erosive actions far out into the sea. It is the one
+great river that does not run for scores, perhaps hundreds, of miles
+through a flat, monotonous delta; the one great stream that meets the
+ocean strength for strength. The Nile, the Niger, the Amazon, the
+Yangtse, the Mississippi--all of the other great rivers--find their way
+to the sea through miasmic swamps; only the Columbia finishes in a
+setting worthy of that in which it takes its rise. Nay, more than that.
+Superlative to the last degree as is the scenery along the Columbia,
+from its highest glacial sources in the Rockies and Selkirks right down
+to the Cascades, there is not a gorge, a vista, a panorama, a cascade of
+which I cannot truthfully say: "That reminds me of something I have seen
+before." The list would include the names of most of the scenic wonders
+that the world has come to know as the ultimate expression of the grand
+and the sublime; but in time my record of comparisons would be complete.
+But for the distinctive grandeur of that fifty miles of cliff-walled
+gorge where the Columbia rolls through its Titan-torn rift in the
+Cascades, I fail completely to find a comparison. It is unique; without
+a near-rival of its kind.
+
+Because so many attempts--all of them more or less futile--have been
+made to describe the Cascade Gorge of the Columbia, I shall not rush in
+here with word pictures where even railway pamphleteers have failed. The
+fact that several of the points I attained in the high Selkirks are
+scarcely more than explored, and that many stretches I traversed of the
+upper river are very rarely visited, must be the excuse for such essays
+at descriptions as I have now and then been tempted into in the
+foregoing chapters. That excuse is not valid in connection with the
+Cascade Gorge, and, frankly, I am mighty glad of the chance to side-step
+the job. I must beg leave, however, to make brief record of an
+interesting "scenic coincidence" that was impressed on my mind the
+afternoon that I pulled through the great chasm of the Cascades.
+
+It was a day of sunshine and showers, with the clouds now revealing, now
+concealing the towering mountain walls on either hand. The almost
+continuous rains of the last four days had greatly augmented the flow of
+the streams, and there was one time, along toward evening, that I
+counted seven distinct waterfalls tumbling over a stretch of tapestried
+cliff on the Oregon side not over two miles in length. And while these
+shimmering ribbons of fluttering satin were still within eye-scope, a
+sudden shifting of the clouds uncovered in quick succession three
+wonderful old volcanic cones--Hood, to the south, Adams, to the north,
+and a peak which I think must have been St. Helens to the west.
+Instantly the lines of Tennyson's _Lotos Eaters_ came to my mind.
+
+    "A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke,
+    Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go;
+    And some thro' wavering lights and shadows broke,
+    Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.
+    They saw the gleaming river seaward flow
+    From the inner land: far off, three mountain-tops,
+    Three silent pinnacles of aged snow,
+    Stood sunset-flushed; and, dew'd with showery drops,
+    Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse."
+
+Tennyson, of course, was writing of some tropic land thirty or forty
+degrees south of Oregon, for in the next verse he speaks of palms and
+brings the "mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters" swimming about the keel;
+and yet there is his description, perfect to the last, least word, of
+what any one may see in a not-too-cloudy day from the right point on the
+lower Columbia.
+
+The Hood and the White Salmon flow into the Columbia almost opposite
+each other, the former from Mount Hood, to the south, and the latter
+from Mount Adams, to the north. White Salmon, perched on the mountains
+of the Washington side, is, so far as I can recall, the "Swiss-iest"
+looking village in America. At close range it would doubtless lose much
+of its picturesqueness, but from the river it is a perfect bit of the
+Tyrol or the Bernese-Oberland. The Hood River Valley is one of the very
+richest in all the West, running neck-and-neck with Yakima and Wenatchee
+for the Blue Ribbon honours of Northwestern apple production. It is
+also becoming a dairying centre of considerable importance. I was
+genuinely sorry that my "through" schedule made it impossible to visit a
+valley of which I had heard so much and so favourably.
+
+Nearing the Cascades, I headed over close to the Oregon bank for a
+glimpse of the famous "sunken forest." This is one of the strangest
+sights on the lower river. For a considerable distance I pulled along
+the stumps of what had once been large forest trees, the stubby boles
+showing plainly through the clear water to a very considerable depth.
+There is some division of opinion as to whether these trees were
+submerged following the damming up of the river by the slide which
+formed the Cascades, or whether they have slid in from the mountainside
+at a later date. As there is still enough of a riverward earth-movement
+to necessitate a realignment of the rails on the south bank of the
+Cascades, it is probable that the latter is the correct theory. The
+self-preservative character of Oregon pine is proverbial, but it hardly
+seems reasonable to believe that it would last through the very
+considerable geologic epoch that must have elapsed since the Cascades
+were formed.
+
+Hugging the Oregon shore closely, I pulled down toward the head of the
+Cascades canal. The water continued almost lake-like in its slackness
+even after the heavy rumble of the fall began to beat upon the air. I
+was taking no chances of a last-minute bolt from the still restive
+_Imshallah_, however, and skirted the sandy bank so closely that twice I
+found myself mixed up in the remains of the past season's salmon-traps.
+Passing a big sawmill, I entered the canal and kept rowing until I came
+plump up against the lofty red gates. An astonishingly pretty girl who
+peered down from above said she didn't know what a lock-master was
+(being only a passenger waiting for the steamer herself), but thought a
+man hammering on the other side of the gate looked like he might be
+something of that kind. She was right. The lock-master said he would
+gladly put me through, but would be greatly obliged if I would wait
+until he locked down the steamer, as he was pretty busy at the moment.
+That would give me half an hour to go down and size up the tail of the
+Cascades, which I would have to run immediately on coming out at the
+foot of the lock.
+
+There is a fall of twenty-five feet at the Cascades, most of it in the
+short, sharp pitch at the head. It is this latter stretch that is
+avoided by the canal and locks, the total length of which is about half
+a mile. The two lock chambers are identical in dimensions, each being
+ninety feet by four hundred and sixty-five in the clear. They were
+opened to navigation in 1896, and were much used during the early years
+of the present century. With the extension of the railways, (especially
+with the building of the "North-bank" line), and the improvement of the
+roads, with the incidental increase of truck-freighting, it became more
+and more difficult for the steamers to operate profitably even on the
+lower river. One after another they had been taken off their runs, until
+the _J. N. Teal_, for which I was now waiting, was the last steamer
+operating in a regular service on the Columbia above Portland.
+
+Opening the great curving gates a crack, the lock-master admitted
+_Imshallah_ to the chamber, from where--in the absence of a ladder--I
+climbed up fifty feet to the top on the beams of the steel-work. That
+was a pretty stiff job for a fat man, or rather one who had so recently
+been fat. I was down to a fairly compact two hundred and twenty by now,
+but even that required the expenditure of several foot-tons of energy to
+lift it out of that confounded hole. The main fall of the Cascades was
+roaring immediately on my right, just beyond the narrow island that had
+been formed when the locks and canal were constructed. It was indeed a
+viciously-running chute, suggesting to me the final pitch of the
+left-hand channel of Rock Island Rapids rather than Grand Rapids, to
+which it is often compared. I had heard that on rare occasions steamers
+had been run down here at high water; at the present stage it looked to
+me that neither a large nor a small boat would have one chance in a
+hundred of avoiding disaster.
+
+The canal and locks avoided that first heavy fall of the Cascades
+completely, but the swift tumble of waters below was quite rough enough
+to make a preliminary survey well worth while. The steamer channel was
+on the Washington side, so that it was necessary for a boat to head
+directly across the current immediately on emerging from the lower lock
+chamber. The Oregon side of the river was thick with rocks right away
+round the bend, with not enough clear water to permit the passage of
+even a skiff. My course, therefore, would have to be the same as that of
+the steamer--just as sharply across to the opposite side as oars would
+take me. I had put _Imshallah_ through worse water than that a score of
+times, and, while it wasn't the sort of a place where one would want to
+break an oar or even catch a "crab," there was no reason to believe that
+we should have the least trouble in pulling across the hard-running
+swirls. Of course, if _Imshallah_ really was still smarting under the
+indignity of that oil-bath.... But no--I honestly think there was nothing
+of distrust of my well-tried little skiff behind my sudden change of
+plans. Rather, I should say, it was due to the fact that a remark of the
+lock-master had brought me to a sudden realization that I now arrived at
+what I had always reckoned as my ultimate objective--tide-water.
+
+I had been planning to run on four miles farther to Bonneville that
+afternoon, in the hope of being able to pull through the forty miles of
+slackening water to Vancouver the following day. There I would get a tug
+to take the skiff up the Willamette to Portland, where I intended to
+leave her. As some of the finest scenery on the Columbia is passed in
+the twenty miles below the Cascades, this promised me another memorable
+day on the river--provided that there was only an occasional decent
+interval between showers. It was the lock-master's forecast of another
+rainy day, together with his assurance that the foot of the locks was
+generally rated as the head of tide-water, that prompted me to change
+my mind a few moments before I was due to pull out again to the river,
+and book through to Portland on the _Teal_.
+
+With the idea of avoiding the wash of the steamer, I pulled down to the
+extreme lower end of the locks before she entered, taking advantage of
+the interval of waiting to trim carefully and look to my oars for the
+pull across the foot of the Cascades. I was intending to let the _Teal_
+lock out ahead of me, and then pull as closely as possible in her wake,
+so as to have her below me to pick up the pieces in case anything went
+wrong. It was close to twilight now, with the sodden west darkening
+early under the blank grey cloud-mass of another storm blowing up-river
+from the sea. If that impetuous squall could have curbed its impatience
+and held off a couple of minutes longer, it might have had the
+satisfaction of treating me to a good soaking, if nothing more. As it
+was, I flung up my hands and _kamerad-ed_ at the opening pelt of the big
+rain-drops. Speaking as one Columbia River skipper to another, I hailed
+the Captain of the _J. N. Teal_ and asked him if he would take me and my
+boat aboard.
+
+"Where bound?" he bawled back.
+
+"Portland," I replied.
+
+"Aw right. Pull up sta'bo'd bow lively--'fore gate open!"
+
+A dozen husky roustabouts, urged on by an impatient Mate, scrambled to
+catch the painter and give us a hand-up. I swung over the side all
+right, but _Imshallah_, hanging back a bit, came in for some pretty
+rough pulling and hauling before they got her on deck. The two or three
+of her planks that were started in the melée constituted about the worst
+injury the little lady received on the whole voyage.
+
+And so _Imshallah_ and I came aboard the _J. N. Teal_ to make the last
+leg of our voyage as passengers. The gates were turning back before I
+had reached the upper deck, and a few minutes later the
+powerfully-engined old stern-wheeler went floundering across the
+foam-streaked tail of the Cascades and off down the river. Castle
+Rock--nine hundred feet high and sheer-walled all around--was no more
+than a ghostly blur in the darkness as we slipped by in the still
+rapidly moving current. Multnomah's majesty was blanked behind the
+curtain of night and a driving rain, and only a distant roar on the port
+beam told where one of the loveliest of American waterfalls took its
+six-hundred-foot leap from the brink of the southern wall of the river.
+Cape Horn and Rooster Rock were swathed to their foundations in
+streaming clouds.
+
+Once the _Teal_ was out on the comparatively open waters of the lower
+river, the Captain came down for a yarn with me--as one Columbia skipper
+to another. He had spent most of his life on the Snake and lower
+Columbia, but he seemed to know the rapids and canyons below the
+Canadian line almost reef by reef, and all of the old skippers I had met
+by reputation. He said that he had never heard of any one's ever having
+deliberately attempted to run the Cascades in anything smaller than a
+steamer, although an endless lot of craft had come to grief by getting
+in there by accident. The only time a man ever went through in a small
+boat and came out alive was about ten years ago. That lucky navigator,
+after drinking most of a Saturday night in the town, came down to the
+river in the dim grey dawn of a Sunday, got into his boat and pushed
+off. It was along toward church-time that a ferry-man, thirty miles or
+more down river, picked up a half filled skiff. Quietly sleeping in the
+stern-sheets, with nothing but his nose above water, was the only man
+that ever came through the Cascades in a small boat.
+
+The Captain looked at me with a queer smile after he told that story. "I
+don't suppose you were heeled to tackle the Cascades just like that?" he
+asked finally.
+
+And so, for the last time, I was taken for a boot-legger. But no--not
+quite the last. I believe it was the porter at Hotel Portland who asked
+me if--ahem!--if I had got away with anything from Canada. And for all
+of that incessant trail of smoke, no fire--or practically none.
+
+The day of my arrival in Portland I delivered _Imshallah_ up to the
+kindest-faced boat-house proprietor on the Willamette and told him to
+take his time about finding her a home with some sport-loving Oregonian
+who knew how to treat a lady right and wouldn't give her any kind of
+menial work to do. I told him I didn't want to have her work for a
+living under any conditions, as I felt she had earned a rest; and to
+impress upon whoever bought her that she was high-spirited and not to be
+taken liberties with, such as subjecting her to garbage shower-baths and
+similar indignities. He asked me if she had a name, and I told him that
+she hadn't--any more; that the one she had been carrying had ceased to
+be in point now her voyage was over. It had been a very appropriate name
+for a boat on the Columbia, though, I assured him, and I was going to
+keep it to use if I ever made the voyage again.
+
+Portland, although it is not directly upon the Columbia, has always made
+that river distinctively its own. I had realized that in a vague way for
+many years, but it came home to me again with renewed force now that I
+had arrived in Portland after having had some glimpse of every town and
+village from the Selkirks to the sea. (Astoria and the lower river I had
+known from many steamer voyages in the past.) Of all the thousands
+living on or near the Columbia, those of Portland still struck me as
+being the ones who held this most strikingly individual of all the
+world's rivers at most nearly its true value. With Portlanders, I should
+perhaps include all of those living on the river from Astoria to The
+Dalles. These, too, take a mighty pride in their great river, and regard
+it with little of that distrustful reproach one remarks so often on the
+upper Columbia, where the settlers see it bearing past their parched
+fields the water and the power that would mean the difference to them
+between success and disaster. When this stigma has been wiped out by
+reclamation (as it soon will be), without a doubt the plucky pioneers of
+the upper Columbia will see in their river many beauties that escape
+their troubled eyes to-day.
+
+The early Romans made some attempt to give expression to their love of
+the Tiber in monuments and bridges. It would be hard indeed to conceive
+of anything in marble or bronze, or yet in soaring spans of steel, that
+would give adequate expression to the pride of the people of the lower
+Columbia in their river; and so it is a matter of felicitation that they
+have sought to pay their tribute in another way. There was inspiration
+behind the conception of the idea of the Columbia Highway, just as there
+was genius and rare imagination in the carrying out of that idea. I have
+said that the Cascade Gorge of the Columbia is a scenic wonder apart
+from all others; that it stands without a rival of its kind. Perhaps the
+greatest compliment that I can pay to the Columbia Highway is to say
+that it is worthy of the river by which it runs.
+
+
+(THE END)
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+TRANSCRIBER NOTES:
+
+
+    Alternate spellings and archaic words have been retained.
+
+    page 82: "experienced" changed to "inexperienced" (Roos was young
+    and inexperienced).
+
+    page 96: added closing quotation mark which was missing in the
+    original ("... than some the old girl's had.").
+
+    page 147: "rifflles" changed to "riffles" (four or five riffles
+    below).
+
+    page 160: "Lientenant" changed to "Lieutenant" (Lieutenant Thomas
+    W. Symons).
+
+    page 163: "avenue" changed to "Avenue" (Fifth Avenue).
+
+    page 300: "spilts" changed to "splits" (the river splits upon).
+
+    page 315: "goddes" changed to "goddess" (this goddess of the
+    Columbia).
+
+    page 320: "staight" changed to "straight" (straight on through
+    to).
+
+    page 331: "a" added to sentence for continuity (We were going to
+    have a run for our money).
+
+    page 366: added "and" (Miss S---- and I).
+
+    page 380: "of" changed to "or" (The two or three of her planks).
+
+    page 380: "mélee" changed to "melée" (that were started in the
+    melée).
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Down the Columbia, by Lewis R. Freeman
+
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Down The Columbia, by Lewis R. Freeman.
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Down the Columbia, by Lewis R. Freeman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Down the Columbia
+
+Author: Lewis R. Freeman
+
+Release Date: December 9, 2011 [EBook #38249]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOWN THE COLUMBIA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Pat McCoy, Greg Bergquist and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
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+
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+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 394px;">
+<img src="images/i_frontcover.jpg" width="394" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg i]</span></p>
+
+<h1>DOWN THE COLUMBIA</h1>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg ii]</span></p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><a id="pageii" name="pageii"></a></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 373px;">
+<img src="images/illo_005.jpg" width="373" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="center">Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff<br />
+MT. SIR DONALD, WHICH DRAINS FROM ALL SIDES TO THE COLUMBIA</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg iii]</span></p>
+
+<h1>
+DOWN THE COLUMBIA<br />
+
+BY<br />
+
+LEWIS R. FREEMAN<br />
+</h1>
+
+<p class="title"><big>
+AUTHOR OF &#8220;IN THE TRACKS OF THE TRADES,&#8221;<br />
+&#8220;HELL&#8217;S HATCHES,&#8221; ETC.</big><br />
+</p>
+
+<p class="title"><big>
+WITH ILLUSTRATIONS<br />
+FROM PHOTOGRAPHS</big><br />
+</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 100px;">
+<img src="images/illo_006.png" width="100" height="94" alt="" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="title"><big>
+NEW YORK<br />
+DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY<br />
+1921</big></p>
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg iv]</span></p>
+
+<p class="center">
+<span class="smcap">Copyright 1921</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.</span></p>
+
+<p class="center">The Quinn &amp; Boden Company</p>
+
+<p class="center">BOOK MANUFACTURERS<br />
+RAHWAY&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; NEW JERSEY</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg v]</span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p class="title"><big>TO<br />
+C. L. CHESTER</big></p>
+
+<p class="center">Hoping he will find in these pages
+some compensation for the fun
+he missed in not being along.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg vi]<br />[Pg vii]</span></p>
+
+<h2><a id="pagevi" name="pagevi"></a>INTRODUCTION</h2>
+
+<p>The day on which I first conceived the idea of a
+boat trip down the Columbia hangs in a frame all its
+own in the corridors of my memory. It was a number
+of years ago&mdash;more than a dozen, I should say. Just
+previously I had contrived somehow to induce the Superintendent
+of the Yellowstone National Park to
+grant me permission to attempt a winter journey on
+ski around this most beautiful of America&#8217;s great
+playgrounds. He had even sent a Government scout
+along to keep, or help, me out of trouble. We were a
+week out from the post at Mammoth Hot Springs.</p>
+
+<p>Putting the rainbow revel of the incomparable Canyon
+behind, we had crossed Yellowstone Lake on the
+ice and fared onward and upward until we came at
+last to the long climb where the road under its ten
+feet of snow wound up to the crest of the Continental
+Divide. It was so dry and cold that the powdery
+snow overlying the crust rustled under our ski like
+autumn leaves. The air was diamond clear, so transparent
+that distant mountain peaks, juggled in the
+wizardry of the lens of the light, seemed fairly to
+float upon the eyeball.</p>
+
+<p>At the summit, where we paused for breath, an old
+Sergeant of the Game Patrol, letting down a tin can
+on a string, brought up drinks from an air-hole which
+he claimed was teetering giddily upon the very ridge-pole
+of North America.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If I dip to the left,&#8221; he said, suiting the action to<span class="pagenum">[Pg viii]</span>
+the word, &#8220;it&#8217;s the Pacific I&#8217;ll be robbing of a pint of
+Rocky Mountain dew; while if I dip to the right it&#8217;s
+the Atlantic that&#8217;ll have to settle back a notch. And
+if I had a string long enough, and a wing strong
+enough, to cast my can over there beyond Jackson&#8217;s
+Hole,&#8221; he went on, pointing southeasterly to the
+serrated peaks of the Wind River Mountains, &#8220;I
+could dip from the fount of the Green River and keep
+it from feeding the Colorado and the Gulf of California
+by so much.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>That led me to raise the question of boating by
+river from the Great Divide to the sea, and the Scout,
+who knew something of the Madison, Jefferson and
+Gallatin to the east, and of the Salmon, Clearwater
+and Snake to the west, said he reckoned the thing
+could be done in either direction provided a man had
+lots of time and no dependent family to think of and
+shake his nerve in the pinches.</p>
+
+<p>The old Sergeant agreed heartily. River boating
+was good, he said, because it was not opposed to Nature,
+like climbing mountains, for instance, where you
+were bucking the law of gravity from start to finish.
+With a river it was all easy and natural. You just
+got into your boat and let it go. Sooner or later,
+without any especial effort on your part, you reached
+your objective. You might not be in a condition to
+appreciate the fact, of course, but just the same you
+got there, and with a minimum of hard work. Some
+rivers were better for boating than others for the
+reason that you got there quicker. The Snake and
+the Missouri were all very well in their way, but for
+him, he&#8217;d take the Columbia. There was a river that<span class="pagenum">[Pg ix]</span>
+started in mountains and finished in mountains. It
+ran in mountains all the way to the sea. No slack
+water in all its course. It was going somewhere all
+the time. He had lived as a kid on the lower Columbia
+and had trapped as a man on the upper Columbia; so
+he ought to know. <i>There</i> was a &#8220;he&#8221; river if there
+ever was one. If a man really wanted to travel from
+snowflake to brine and not be troubled with &#8220;on-wee&#8221;
+on the way, there was no stream that ran one-two-three
+with the Columbia as a means of doing it.</p>
+
+<p>That night, where we steamed in the black depths of
+a snow-submerged Government &#8220;Emergency&#8221; cabin,
+the Sergeant&#8217;s old Columbia memories thawed with
+the hunk of frosted beef he was toasting over the
+sheet-iron stove. He told of climbing for sheep and
+goat in the high Kootenay, of trailing moose and caribou
+in the valleys of the Rockies, and finally of his
+years of trapping on the creeks and in the canyons that
+run down to the Big Bend of the Columbia; of how he
+used to go down to Kinbasket Lake in the Fall, portaging
+or lining the three miles of tumbling cascades at
+Surprise Rapids, trap all winter on Sullivan Creek
+or Middle River, and then come out in the Spring to
+Revelstoke, playing ducks-and-drakes with his life
+and his scarcely less valuable catch of marten, mink
+and beaver running the riffles at Rock Slide, Twelve
+Mile and the terrible <i>Dalles des Morts</i>. He declared
+that there were a hundred miles of the Big Bend of the
+Columbia that had buffaloed to a fare-ye-well any
+equal stretch on any of the great rivers of North
+America for fall, rocks and wild rip-rarin&#8217; water generally.
+But the dread Rapids of Death and the<span class="pagenum">[Pg x]</span>
+treacherous swirls and eddies of Revelstoke Canyon
+were not the last of swift water by a long shot. Just
+below the defile of the Arrow Lakes the white caps
+began to rear their heads again, and from there right
+on down through the seven hundred miles and more
+to tide-water below the Cascade Locks in Oregon
+there was hardly a stretch of ten miles without its
+tumble of rapids, and mostly they averaged not more
+than three or four miles apart.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;s sure some &#8216;he&#8217; river,&#8221; the old chap concluded
+as he began to unroll his blankets, &#8220;going somewhere
+all the time, tumbling over itself all the way
+trying to beat itself to the finish.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Confusing as the Sergeant was with his &#8220;he&#8221; and
+&#8220;she&#8221; and &#8220;it&#8221; as to the gender of the mighty Oregon,
+there was no question of the fascination of the pictures
+conjured up by his descriptions of that so-well-called
+&#8220;Achilles of Rivers.&#8221; Before I closed my eyes
+that night I had promised myself that I should take
+the first opportunity to boat the length of the Columbia,
+to follow its tumultuous course from its glacial
+founts to the salt sea brine, to share with it, to jostle
+it in its &#8220;tumble to get there first.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I held by that resolve for more than a dozen years,
+although, by a strange run of chance, I was destined to
+have some experience of almost every one of the great
+rivers of the world before I launched a boat upon the
+Columbia. My appetite for swift water boating had
+grown by what it fed on. I had come more and more
+to the way of thinking of my Yellowstone companion
+who held that boating down rivers was good because
+it was not opposed to Nature, &#8220;like mountain climb<span class="pagenum">[Pg xi]</span>ing,
+for instance, where you bucked the law of gravity
+all the way.&#8221; In odd craft and various, and of diverse
+degree of water worthiness, I had trusted to luck and
+the law of gravity to land me somewhere to seaward
+of numerous up-river points of vantage to which I had
+attained by means of travel that ranged all the way
+from foot and donkey-back to elephant and auto. The
+Ichang gorges of the Yangtze I had run in a <i>sampan</i>
+manned by a yelling crew of Szechuan coolies, and the
+Salween and Irawadi below the Yunnan boundary
+in weird Burmese canoes whose crews used their legs
+as well as their arms in plying their carved paddles.
+I had floated down the Tigris from Diarbekir to
+Mosul on a <i>kalek</i> of inflated sheepskins, and the Nile
+below the Nyanzas in a cranky craft of zebra hide,
+whose striped sides might have suggested the idea of
+modern marine camouflage. On the middle Niger I
+had used a condemned gunboat&#8217;s life-raft, and on the
+Zambesi a dugout of saffron-tinted wood so heavy
+that it sank like iron when capsized. And it had been
+in native dugouts of various crude types that I had
+boated greater or lesser lengths of the swifter upper
+stretches of the Orinoco, Amazon and Parana.</p>
+
+<p>But through it all&mdash;whether I was floating in a
+reed-wrapped <i>balsa</i> on Titacaca or floundering in a
+pitch-smeared <i>gufa</i> on the Euphrates&mdash;pictures conjured
+up by remembered phrases of the old ex-trapper
+keep rising at the back of my brain. &#8220;The big
+eddy at the bend of Surprise Rapids, where you go
+to look for busted boats and dead bodies;&#8221; &#8220;the
+twenty-one mile of white water rolling all the way
+from Kinbasket Lake to Canoe River;&#8221; &#8220;the double<span class="pagenum">[Pg xii]</span>
+googly intake at the head of Gordon Rapid;&#8221; &#8220;the
+black-mouthed whirlpool waiting like a wild cat at
+the foot of <i>Dalles des Morts</i>&#8221;&mdash;how many times had I
+seen all these in fancy! And at last the time came
+when those pictures were to be made real&mdash;galvanized
+into life.</p>
+
+<p>It was well along toward the end of last summer
+that my friend C. L. Chester, whose work in filming
+the scenic beauties of out-of-the-way parts of the
+world has made the name Chester-Outing Pictures a
+byword on both sides of the Atlantic, mentioned that
+he was sending one of his cameramen to photograph
+the sources of the Columbia in the Selkirks and
+Rockies of western Canada. Also that he was thinking
+of taking his own holiday in that incomparably
+beautiful region. He supposed I knew that there
+were considerable areas here that had barely been explored,
+to saying nothing of photographed. This was
+notably so of the Big Bend country, where the Columbia
+had torn its channel between the Rockies and
+Selkirks and found a way down to the Arrow Lakes.
+He was especially anxious to take some kind of a boat
+round the hundred and fifty miles of canyon between
+Beavermouth and Revelstoke and bring out the first
+movies of what he had been assured was the roughest
+stretch of swift water on any of the important rivers
+of the world. Was there, by any chance, a possibility
+that my plans and commitments were such that I
+would be free to join him in the event that he made the
+trip personally?</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact there were several things that
+should have prevented my breaking away for a trip to<span class="pagenum">[Pg xiii]</span>
+the upper Columbia in September, not the least among
+which was a somewhat similar trip I had already
+planned for the Grand Canyon of the Colorado that
+very month. But the mention of the Big Bend was
+decisive. &#8220;I&#8217;ll go,&#8221; I said promptly. &#8220;When do you
+start?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It was finally arranged that I should go on ahead
+and engage men and boats for the Big Bend part of
+the trip, while Chester would endeavour to disentangle
+himself from business in Los Angeles and New
+York in time to join his cameraman and myself for a
+jaunt by packtrain to the Lake of the Hanging
+Glaciers. The latter is one of the high glacial sources
+of the Columbia in the Selkirks, and Chester, learning
+that it had never been photographed, desired especially
+to visit it in person. Returning from our visit to the
+source of the river, we planned to embark on the boating
+voyage around the Big Bend. It was not until
+business finally intervened to make it impossible for
+Chester to get away for even a portion of the trip
+which he had been at such trouble to plan, that I
+decided to attempt the voyage down the Columbia as
+I had always dreamed of it&mdash;all the way from the
+eternal snows to tide-water. At Chester&#8217;s suggestion,
+it was arranged that his cameraman should accompany
+me during such portion of the journey as the
+weather was favourable to moving picture work.</p>
+
+<p>Our preliminary work and exploration among the
+sources of the river over (this was carried on either
+on foot or by packtrain, or in runs by canoe over short
+navigable stretches of the upper river), we pushed
+off from Beavermouth, at the head of the Big Bend.<span class="pagenum">[Pg xiv]</span>
+For this most arduous part of the voyage there were
+four in the party, with a big double-ended boat specially
+built for rough water. Further down, for a
+considerable stretch, we were three, in a skiff. Then,
+for a couple of hundred miles, there were four of
+us again, manning a raft and a towing launch. After
+that we were two&mdash;just the cameraman and myself,
+with the skiff. Him I finally dropped at the foot of
+Priest Rapids, fifty miles above Pasco, and the last
+two hundred and fifty miles down to Portland I rode
+alone. This &#8220;solo&#8221; run&mdash;though a one-man boat crew
+is kept rather too busy in swift water to have much
+time for enjoying the scenery&mdash;was far from proving
+the least interesting period of the journey.</p>
+
+<p>So far as I have been able to learn, my arrival in
+Portland marked the end of the first complete journey
+that has been made from the glacial sources of the
+Columbia to tide-water. David Thompson, scientist
+and explorer for the Northwest Company, racing
+against the Astor sea expedition to be first to establish
+a post at the mouth of the Columbia, boated down a
+very large part of the navigable part of the river over
+a hundred years ago. I have found no evidence, however,
+that he penetrated to the glacial fields in the
+Selkirks above Windermere and Columbia Lake from
+which spring the main feeders of the upper river.
+Thompson&#8217;s, and all of the other voyages of the early
+days of which there is authentic record, started from
+Boat Encampment, where the road from the plains
+and Montreal led down to the Columbia by the icy
+waters of Portage River, or, as it is now called, Wood
+River. Thus all of the old Hudson Bay and North<span class="pagenum">[Pg xv]</span>west
+voyageurs ran only the lower seventy-five miles
+of the Big Bend, and avoided what is by far its worst
+water&mdash;Surprise Rapids and the twenty-one miles of
+cascades below Kinbasket Lake. Ross Cox, Alexander
+Ross and Franchiere, whose diaries are the best
+commentaries extant upon early Columbia history,
+had no experience of the river above Boat Encampment.
+Lewis and Clark, and Hunt, with the remnants
+of the Astor transcontinental party, boated the
+river only below the Snake, and this was also true of
+Whitman and the other early missionaries and settlers.
+Frémont made only a few days&#8217; journey down
+the river from the Dalles.</p>
+
+<p>Of recent down-river passages, I have been able to
+learn of no voyageur who, having rounded the Big
+Bend, continued his trip down to the lower Columbia.
+The most notable voyage of the last three or four
+decades was that of Captain F. P. Armstrong and
+J. P. Forde, District Engineer of the Department of
+Public Works of Nelson, British Columbia, who,
+starting at the foot of the Lower Arrow Lake in a
+Peterboro canoe, made the run to Pasco, just above
+the mouth of the Snake, in ten days. As Captain
+Armstrong already knew the upper Columbia above
+the Arrow Lakes from many years of steamboating
+and prospecting, and as both he and Mr. Forde, after
+leaving their canoe at Pasco, continued on to Astoria
+by steamer, I am fully convinced that his knowledge
+of that river from source to mouth is more comprehensive
+than that of any one else of the present generation.
+This will be, perhaps, a fitting place to acknowledge
+my obligation to Captain Armstrong (who<span class="pagenum">[Pg xvi]</span>
+accompanied me in person from the mouth of the
+Kootenay to the mouth of the Spokane) for advice
+and encouragement which were very considerable factors
+in the ultimate success of my venture. To Mr.
+Forde I am scarcely less indebted for his courtesy in
+putting at my disposal a copy of his invaluable report
+to the Canadian Government on the proposal to open
+the Columbia to through navigation to the Pacific
+Ocean.</p>
+
+<p>Compared to the arduous journeys of the old
+Astorian and Hudson Bay voyageurs on the Columbia,
+my own trip&mdash;even though a considerably greater
+length of river was covered than by any of my predecessors&mdash;was
+negligible as an achievement. Only in
+rounding the Big Bend in Canada does the voyageur
+of to-day encounter conditions comparable to those
+faced by those of a hundred, or even fifty years ago
+who set out to travel on any part of the Columbia.
+For a hundred miles or more of the Bend, now just as
+much as in years long gone by, an upset with the loss
+of an outfit is more likely than not to spell disaster
+and probably tragedy. But in my own passage of the
+Big Bend I can claim no personal credit that those
+miles of tumbling water were run successfully. I was
+entirely in the hands of a pair of seasoned old river
+hands, and merely pulled an oar in the boat and did
+a few other things when I was told.</p>
+
+<p>But it is on the thousand miles of swiftly flowing
+water between the lower end of the Big Bend and the
+Pacific that conditions have changed the most in favour
+of the latter day voyageur. The rapids are, to be
+sure, much as they must have appeared to Thompson,<span class="pagenum">[Pg xvii]</span>
+Ross, Franchiere and their Indian contemporaries.
+The few rocks blasted here and there on the lower
+river in an attempt to improve steamer navigation
+have not greatly simplified the problems of the man
+in a rowboat or canoe. Nor is an upset in any part of
+the Columbia an experience lightly to be courted even
+to-day. Even below the Big Bend there are a score
+of places I could name offhand where the coolest kind
+of an old river hand, once in the water, would not have
+one chance in ten of swimming out. In half a hundred
+others he might reckon on an even break of crawling
+out alive. But if luck were with him and he <i>did</i> reach
+the bank with the breath in his body, then his troubles
+would be pretty well behind him. Below the Canadian
+border there is hardly ten miles of the river without
+a farm, a village, or even a town of fair size.
+Food, shelter and even medical attention are not,
+therefore, ever more than a few hours away, so that
+the man who survives the loss of his boat and outfit is
+rarely in serious straits.</p>
+
+<p>But in the case of the pioneers, their troubles in like
+instance were only begun. What between hostile
+Indians and the loss of their only means of travel, the
+chances were all against their ever pulling out with
+their lives. The story of how the vicious cascade of
+the <i>Dalles des Morts</i> won its grisly name, which I will
+set down in its proper place, furnishes a telling instance
+in point.</p>
+
+<p>It is a callous traveller who, in strange lands and
+seas, does not render heart homage to the better men
+that have gone before him. Just as you cannot sail
+the Pacific for long without fancying that Cook and<span class="pagenum">[Pg xviii]</span>
+Drake and Anson are sharing your night watches, so
+on the Columbia it is Thompson and Cox and Lewis
+and Clark who come to be your guiding spirits. At
+the head of every one of the major rapids you land
+just as you know they must have landed, and it is as
+through their eyes that you survey the work ahead.
+And when, rather against your better judgment, you
+decide to attempt to run a winding gorge where the
+sides are too steep to permit lining and where a portage
+would mean the loss of a day&mdash;you know that the
+best of the men who preceded you must have experienced
+the same hollowness under the belt when they
+were forced to the same decision, for were they not
+always gambling at longer odds than you are? And
+when, elate with the thrill of satisfaction and relief
+that come from knowing that what had been a menacing
+roar ahead has changed to a receding growl astern,
+you are inclined to credit yourself with smartness for
+having run a rapid where Thompson lined or Ross
+Cox portaged, that feeling will not persist for long.
+Sooner or later&mdash;and usually sooner&mdash;something or
+somebody will put you right. A broken oar and all
+but a mess-up in an inconsiderable riffle was all that
+was needed to quench the glow of pride that I felt
+over having won through the roughly tumbling left-hand
+channel of Rock Island Rapids with only a short
+length of lining. And it was a steady-eyed old river
+captain who brought me back to earth the night I told
+him&mdash;somewhat boastfully, I fear&mdash;that I had slashed
+my skiff straight down the middle of the final pitch
+of Umatilla Rapids, where Lewis and Clark had felt
+they had to portage.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg xix]</span>&#8220;But you must not forget,&#8221; he said gently, with
+just the shadow of a smile softening the line of his
+firm lips, &#8220;that Lewis and Clark had something to
+lose besides their lives&mdash;that they had irreplaceable
+records in their care, and much work still to do. It
+was their duty to take as few chances as possible. But
+they never let the risk stop them when there wasn&#8217;t
+any safer way. When you are pulling through Celilo
+Canal a few days from now, and being eased down a
+hundred feet in the locks, just remember that Lewis
+and Clark put their whole outfit down the Tumwater
+and Five-Mile Rapids of the Dalles, in either of which
+that skiff of yours would be sucked under in half a
+minute.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Bulking insignificantly as an achievement as does
+my trip in comparison with the many Columbia voyages,
+recorded and unrecorded, of early days, it still
+seems to me that the opportunity I had for a comprehensive
+survey of this grandest scenically of all the
+world&#8217;s great rivers gives me warrant for attempting
+to set down something of what I saw and experienced
+during those stirring weeks that intervened between
+that breathless moment when I let the whole stream
+of the Columbia trickle down my back in a glacial ice-cave
+in the high Selkirks, and that showery end-of-the-afternoon
+when I pushed out into tide-water at
+the foot of the Cascades.</p>
+
+<p>It is scant enough justice that the most gifted of
+pens can do to Nature in endeavouring to picture in
+words the grandest of her manifestations, and my own
+quill, albeit it glides not untrippingly in writing of
+lighter things, is never so inclined to halt and sputter<span class="pagenum">[Pg xx]</span>
+as when I try to drive it to its task of registering in
+black scrawls on white paper something of what the
+sight of a soaring mountain peak, the depth of a black
+gorge with a white stream roaring at the bottom, or
+the morning mists rising from a silently flowing river
+have registered on the sensitized sheets of my memory.
+Superlative in grandeur to the last degree as are the
+mountains, glaciers, gorges, waterfalls, cascades and
+cliffs of the Columbia, it is to my photographs rather
+than my pen that I trust to convey something of their
+real message.</p>
+
+<p>If I can, however, pass on to my readers some suggestion
+of the keenness of my own enjoyment of what
+I experienced on the Columbia&mdash;of the sheer <i>joie de
+vivre</i> that is the lot of the man who rides the running
+road; it will have not been in vain that I have cramped
+my fingers and bent my back above a desk during
+several weeks of the best part of the California year.
+Robert Service has written something about</p>
+
+<div class="poem" style="width: 28em;">
+<span class="i0">&#8220;Doing things just for the doing,</span>
+<span class="i2">Letting babblers tell the story....&#8221;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Shall I need to confess to my readers that the one
+cloud on the seaward horizon during all of my voyage
+down the Columbia was brooding there as a consequence
+of the presentiment that, sooner or later, I
+should have to do my own babbling?</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Pasadena</span>, July, 1921.</p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+<table border="0" style="width: 85%" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="2" summary="">
+<tr><td align="right">CHAPTER</td><td align="left">&nbsp;</td><td align="center">PAGE</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">&nbsp;</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Introduction</span></td><td align="center"><a href="#pagevi"> vi</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">I.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Preparing for the Big Bend</span></td><td align="center"><a href="#page1">1</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">II.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Up Horse Thief Creek</span></td><td align="center"><a href="#page20"> 20</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">III.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">At the Glacier</span></td><td align="center"><a href="#page48"> 48</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">IV.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Lake of the Hanging Glaciers</span></td><td align="center"><a href="#page63"> 63</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">V.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Canal Flats to Beavermouth</span></td><td align="center"><a href="#page77"> 77</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">VI.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Through Surprise Rapids</span></td><td align="center"><a href="#page92"> 92</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">VII.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Kinbasket Lake and Rapids</span></td><td align="center"><a href="#page134">134</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">VIII.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Boat Encampment to Revelstoke</span></td><td align="center"><a href="#page160">160</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">IX.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Revelstoke to the Spokane</span></td><td align="center"><a href="#page192">192</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">X.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Rafting Through Hell Gate</span></td><td align="center"><a href="#page235"> 235</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XI.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">By Launch Through Box Canyon</span></td><td align="center"><a href="#page267"> 267</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XII.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Chelan to Pasco</span></td><td align="center"><a href="#page286"> 286</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XIII.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Pasco to the Dalles</span></td><td align="center"><a href="#page323"> 323</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">XIV.</td><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Home Stretch</span></td><td align="center"><a href="#page360">360</a></td></tr>
+</table>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<div class="index"><ul class="none">
+<li>Mt. Sir Donald, which drains from all sides to the Columbia
+
+<span class="ralign"><a href="#pageii"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></span><br />
+</li></ul></div>
+
+<p><span class="ralign">FACING PAGE</span><br /></p>
+<div class="index"><ul class="none">
+<li>Mt. Assiniboine, near the headwaters of the Columbia<span class="ralign"><a href="#page10"> 10</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Twin Falls, Takakaw Falls, two great cataracts of the
+Columbia watershed<span class="ralign"><a href="#page11"> 11</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The &#8220;turning-in&#8221; scene shot in silhouette<span class="ralign"><a href="#page38">38</a></span></li>
+
+<li>"Reverse" of the "going-to-bed" shot<span class="ralign"><a href="#page38">38</a></span></li>
+
+<li>On the Horse Thief Trail<span class="ralign"><a href="#page39">39</a></span></li>
+
+<li>A dead-fall on the trail<span class="ralign"><a href="#page39">39</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Looking toward the entrance of the ice cave<span class="ralign"><a href="#page52"> 52</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Where the Hanging Glacier is about to fall<span class="ralign"><a href="#page53"> 53</a></span></li>
+
+<li>My shower bath in an ice cave<span class="ralign"><a href="#page58">58</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Warming up after my glacial shower bath<span class="ralign"><a href="#page58">58</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Ross and Harmon. Dragon moraine in distance<span class="ralign"><a href="#page59">59</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The horses in the mouth of the ice cave<span class="ralign"><a href="#page59"> 59</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Looking across the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers<span class="ralign"><a href="#page66"> 66</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The Lake of the Hanging Glaciers, taken from the ice
+walls, looking north<span class="ralign"><a href="#page67">67</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The face of the Hanging Glacier<span class="ralign"><a href="#page72"> 72</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Where my party foregathered with Harmon&#8217;s on the shore
+of the Lake of the Hanging Glacier<span class="ralign"><a href="#page73"> 73</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Old Hudson Bay cart at Beavermouth <span class="ralign"><a href="#page80"> 80</a></span></li>
+
+<li>My first push-off at the head of canoe navigation on the
+Columbia<span class="ralign"><a href="#page80"> 80</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Opening scene of the &#8220;Farmer&#8221; picture<span class="ralign"><a href="#page81"> 81</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Old stern wheelers at Golden<span class="ralign"><a href="#page81"> 81</a></span></li>
+
+<li>A quiet stretch of the Columbia near Golden<span class="ralign"><a href="#page81"> 81</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Arrival of our boat at Beavermouth<span class="ralign"><a href="#page96"> 96</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Our first camp at Beavermouth<span class="ralign"><a href="#page96">96</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The remains of a sunken forest<span class="ralign"><a href="#page96">96</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Trapper&#8217;s cabin where we found shelter for the night<span class="ralign"><a href="#page97">97</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Where we landed above Surprise Rapids<span class="ralign"><a href="#page97"> 97</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Where we tied up at &#8220;Eight mile&#8221;<span class="ralign"><a href="#page97"> 97</a></span></li>
+
+<li>&#8220;Shooting&#8221; the first bit of lining at Surprise Rapids<span class="ralign"><a href="#page122">122</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The camp where the roar of the rapids deafened us <span class="ralign"><a href="#page122"> 122</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Where Steinhof was drowned <span class="ralign"><a href="#page122">122</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Where Andy just missed drowning in Surprise Rapids<span class="ralign"><a href="#page123"> 123</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Looking through the pines at Surprise Rapids<span class="ralign"><a href="#page123"> 123</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Head of second fall of Surprise Rapids<span class="ralign"><a href="#page123"> 123</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Blackmore and the ling that refused to &#8220;register&#8221;<span class="ralign"><a href="#page142"> 142</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The winter, with pike-pole just before lining Death Rapids<span class="ralign"><a href="#page142"> 142</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Andy and I pulling down Kinbasket Lake <span class="ralign"><a href="#page143">143</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Our wettest camp, at Kinbasket Lake <span class="ralign"><a href="#page156">156</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The old ferry tower above Canoe River <span class="ralign"><a href="#page156"> 156</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Where we tied up at Kinbasket Lake <span class="ralign"><a href="#page157"> 157</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The bridge which the Columbia carried a hundred miles and
+placed across another stream<span class="ralign"><a href="#page157">157</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Lining down to the head of Death Rapids <span class="ralign"><a href="#page157">157</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Trapper&#8217;s cabin being undermined by stream <span class="ralign"><a href="#page168"> 168</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The camp above Twelve-Mile<span class="ralign"><a href="#page168">168</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Landing at sunset above Canoe River<span class="ralign"><a href="#page169"> 169</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Andy and Blackmore swinging the boat into the head of
+Rock Slide Rapids<span class="ralign"><a href="#page169"> 169</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The big rollers, from 15 to 20 feet from hollow to crest, at
+head of Death Rapids<span class="ralign"><a href="#page169">169</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Looking across to Boat Encampment<span class="ralign"><a href="#page180">180</a></span></li>
+
+<li>&#8220;Wood smoke at twilight&#8221; above Twelve-Mile<span class="ralign"><a href="#page180">180</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Lining down Rock Slide Rapids<span class="ralign"><a href="#page181">181</a></span></li>
+
+<li>When the Columbia took half of my riding breeches<span class="ralign"><a href="#page181">181</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Bonnington Falls of the Kootenay<span class="ralign"><a href="#page198">198</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Plastered log cabin in the Doukhobor village<span class="ralign"><a href="#page198">198</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Trucking the skiff through Kettle Falls<span class="ralign"><a href="#page199">199</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Twilight in the gorge at Kettle Falls<span class="ralign"><a href="#page199">199</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Waiting for the fog to lift above Bishop&#8217;s Rapids<span class="ralign"><a href="#page210"> 210</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Ross and Armstrong registering &#8220;gloom&#8221;<span class="ralign"><a href="#page210">210</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The &#8220;intake&#8221; at the Little Dalles<span class="ralign"><a href="#page211">211</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Where we started to line the Little Dalles<span class="ralign"><a href="#page211"> 211</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Map of the Upper Columbia<span class="ralign"><a href="#page236"> 236</a></span></li>
+
+<li>A &#8220;close-up&#8221; of Ike building his raft<span class="ralign"><a href="#page237"> 237</a></span></li>
+
+<li>My fifty pound salmon<span class="ralign"><a href="#page237"> 237</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Ike riding a log<span class="ralign"><a href="#page256"> 256</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Ike on the mooring line of the raft<span class="ralign"><a href="#page256">  256</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Raft in tow of launch near mouth of San Poil<span class="ralign"><a href="#page257">257</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Ike at the sweep below Hell Gate<span class="ralign"><a href="#page257">  257</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The suspension bridge at Chelan Falls<span class="ralign"><a href="#page270">  270</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Old River veterans on the landing at Potaris. (Capt. McDermid
+on left, Ike Emerson on right)<span class="ralign"><a href="#page270">  270</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Night was falling as we headed into Box Canyon<span class="ralign"><a href="#page271">  271</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The Columbia above Box Canyon<span class="ralign"><a href="#page271">  271</a></span></li>
+
+<li>A rocky cliff near head of Lake Chelan<span class="ralign"><a href="#page288">  288</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Rainbow Falls, 350 feet high, above head of Lake Chelan<span class="ralign"><a href="#page288">  288</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Wenatchee under the dust cloud of its speeding autos<span class="ralign"><a href="#page289"> 289</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Head of Rock Island Rapids<span class="ralign"><a href="#page289"> 289</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The picture that cost me a wetting<span class="ralign"><a href="#page310"> 310</a></span></li>
+
+<li>The wreck of the &#8220;Douglas&#8221;<span class="ralign"><a href="#page310"> 310</a></span></li>
+
+<li>We cooked our breakfast in the galley of the wreck of the
+"Douglas"<span class="ralign"><a href="#page311">  311</a></span></li>
+
+<li>A rocky cliff above Beverly<span class="ralign"><a href="#page311"> 311</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Lifted drawbridge on Celilo Canal<span class="ralign"><a href="#page354"> 354</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Tumwater Gorge of the Grand Dalles<span class="ralign"><a href="#page354"> 354</a></span></li>
+
+<li>&#8220;Imshallah&#8221; in the lock at Five-Mile<span class="ralign"><a href="#page355"> 355</a></span></li>
+
+<li>&#8220;Imshallah&#8221; half way through the Celilo Canal<span class="ralign"><a href="#page355">355</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Palisade Rock, lower Columbia River<span class="ralign"><a href="#page362"> 362</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Multnomah Falls, Columbia River Highway, near Portland<span class="ralign"><a href="#page363">363</a></span></li>
+
+<li>City of Portland with Mt. Hood in the distance<span class="ralign"><a href="#page370"> 370</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Bridge on Columbia Highway near Portland, Oregon<span class="ralign"><a href="#page371"> 371</a></span></li>
+</ul></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page1" name="page1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<p class="title"><big>DOWN THE COLUMBIA</big></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CHAPTER I<br />
+<br />
+PREPARING FOR THE BIG BEND</h2>
+
+<p>The itinerary of our Columbia trip as originally
+planned in Los Angeles called, first, for an expedition
+to the source of the river, next, a voyage by boat
+around the Big Bend from Beavermouth to Revelstoke,
+and, finally, if there was time and good weather
+held, a voyage of indefinite length on toward the sea.
+As the trip to the glaciers was largely a matter of
+engaging a good packer well in advance, while there
+was no certainty of getting any one who would undertake
+the passage of the Big Bend, it was to the latter
+that we first directed our attention. Chester wired the
+Publicity Department of the Canadian Pacific and I
+wrote friends in various parts of British Columbia.
+The C. P. R. replied that they had requested their
+Sub-Divisional Superintendent at Revelstoke to institute
+inquiries for boatmen in our behalf. The only
+one of my friends who contributed anything tangible
+stated that &#8220;while the Columbia above Golden and
+below Revelstoke was admirably suited to pleasure
+boating, any attempt to run the Big Bend between
+those points would result in almost certain disaster.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As this appeared to be about the extent of what we<span class="pagenum">[Pg 2]</span>
+were likely to learn from a distance, I decided to
+start north at once to see what could be arranged on
+the ground. Victoria yielded little save some large
+scale maps, and even these, they assured me in the
+Geographic Department of the B. C. Government
+where I secured them, were very inaccurate as to
+detail. The Big Bend region, it appeared, had never
+been surveyed north of the comparatively narrow zone
+of the C. P. R. grant. Several old hunting friends
+whom I met at the Club, although they had ranged the
+wildernesses of the Northwest from the Barren Lands
+to Alaska, spoke of the Big Bend as a veritable <i>terra
+incognita</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s said to be a great country for grizzly,&#8221; one
+of them volunteered, &#8220;but too hard to get at. Only
+way to get in and out is the Columbia, and that is
+more likely to land you in Kingdom Come than back
+in Civilization. Best forget about the Big Bend and
+go after sheep and goat and moose in the Kootenays.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>At Kamloops I was told of an Indian who had gone
+round the Big Bend the previous May, before the
+Spring rise, and come out not only with his own skin,
+but with those of seven grizzlies. I was unable to
+locate the Indian, but did find a white man who had
+made the trip with him. This chap spent half an hour
+apparently endeavouring to persuade me to give up
+the trip on account of the prohibitive risk (my experience
+on other rivers, he declared, would be worse
+than useless in such water as was to be encountered at
+Surprise, Kinbasket and Death Rapids) and about
+an equal amount of time trying to convince me that
+my life would be perfectly safe if only I would en<span class="pagenum">[Pg 3]</span>gage
+him and his Indian and confide it to their care.
+As the consideration suggested in return for this immunity
+figured out at between two and three times
+the rate we had been expecting to pay for boatmen,
+I had to decline to take advantage of it.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, in Revelstoke, through the efforts of T. C.
+McNab of the Canadian Pacific, who had been at considerable
+trouble to line up possible candidates for a
+Big Bend trip, I met Bob Blackmore. After that
+things began moving toward a definite end.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You won&#8217;t find old Bob Blackmore an active
+church-worker,&#8221; I was told in Revelstoke, &#8220;and at
+one time he had the reputation of being the smoothest
+thing in the way of a boot-legger in this part of
+B. C. But he drinks little himself, is a past-master of
+woodcraft, a dead shot, and has twice the experience
+of swift-water boating of any man on the upper Columbia.
+In spite of the fact that he has undergone
+no end of hardship in his thirty years of packing,
+hunting, prospecting, trapping and boating all over
+the West, he&#8217;s as hard to-day at fifty odd as most men
+are at thirty. Because he dished a boatload of freight
+last year somewhere up river, there are a few who are
+saying that old Bob Blackmore is losing his grip.
+Don&#8217;t believe it. He was never better in his life than
+he is right now, and if you can persuade him to run
+your show round the Big Bend you&#8217;re in luck. Once
+you start, you&#8217;ll come right on round to Revelstoke all
+right. No fear on that score. But if you have old
+Bob Blackmore you&#8217;ll stand a jolly lot better chance
+of arriving on top of the water.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I found Bob Blackmore at his river-side home in the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 4]</span>
+old town&mdash;what had been the metropolitan centre of
+Revelstoke in the days when it was the head of navigation
+of steamers from below the Arrow Lakes, and
+before the railway had come to drag settlement a
+mile northeastward and away from the Columbia.
+He was picking apples with one hand and slapping
+mosquitoes with the other&mdash;a grey-haired, grey-eyed
+man of middle height, with a muscular torso, a steady
+stare, and a grip that I had to meet half way to save
+my fingers. He might have passed for a well-to-do
+Middle Western farmer except for his iron-grey
+moustaches, which were long and drooping, like those
+affected by cowboy-town sheriffs in the movies.</p>
+
+<p>I knew at once that this was the man I wanted, and
+my only doubt was as to whether or not he felt the
+same way about me. They had told me in town that
+Blackmore, having some means and being more or less
+independent, never went out with a man or an outfit
+he did not like. I felt that it was I who was on approval,
+not he. I need not have worried, however. In
+this instance, at least, Bob Blackmore&#8217;s mind was
+made up in advance. It was the movies that had
+done it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The C. P. R. people wrote me that you might be
+wanting me for the Bend,&#8221; he said genially after I
+had introduced myself, &#8220;and on the chance that we
+would be hitching up I have put my big boat in the
+water to give her a good soaking. I&#8217;ve figured that
+she&#8217;s the only boat on the upper river that will do for
+what you want. I reckon I know them all. She&#8217;ll
+carry three or four times as much as the biggest Peterboro.
+Besides, if you tried to go round in canoes,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 5]</span>
+you&#8217;d be portaging or lining in a dozen places where
+I would drive this one straight through. With any
+luck, and if the water doesn&#8217;t go down too fast, I&#8217;d
+figure on going the whole way without taking her out
+of the river at more&#8217;n one place, and maybe not there.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So you&#8217;re willing to go ahead and see us through,&#8221;
+I exclaimed delightedly. &#8220;They told me in the town
+that you&#8217;d probably need a lot of persuading, especially
+as you&#8217;ve been saying for the last two or three
+years that you were through with the Bend for good
+and all.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Blackmore grinned broadly and somewhat sheepishly.
+&#8220;So I have,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Fact is, I&#8217;ve never yet
+been round the Bend that I didn&#8217;t tell myself and
+everybody else that I&#8217;d never try it again. I really
+meant it the last time, which was three or four years
+ago. And I&#8217;ve really meant it every time I said it
+right up to a few days back, when I heard that you
+wanted to take a movie machine in there and try and
+get some pictures. If that was so, I said to myself,
+it was sure up to me to do what I could to help, for
+there&#8217;s scenery in there that is more worth picturing
+than any I&#8217;ve come across in thirty years of knocking
+around all over the mountain country of the West.
+So I&#8217;m your man if you want me. Of course you
+know something of what you&#8217;re going up against in
+bucking the Bend?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; I replied a bit wearily. &#8220;I&#8217;ve been hearing
+very little else for the last week. Let&#8217;s talk about the
+scenery.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So they&#8217;ve been trying to frighten you out of it,&#8221;
+he said with a sympathetic smile. &#8220;They always do<span class="pagenum">[Pg 6]</span>
+that with strangers who come here to tackle the Bend.
+And mostly they succeed. There was one chap they
+couldn&#8217;t stop, though. He was a professor of some
+kind from Philadelphia. Fact is, he wasn&#8217;t enough
+frightened. That&#8217;s a bad thing with the Columbia,
+which isn&#8217;t to be taken liberties with. I buried him
+near the head of Kinbasket Lake. We&#8217;ll see his grave
+when we come down from Surprise Rapids. I&#8217;ll want
+to stop off for a bit and see if the cross I put up is still
+standing. He was....&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;<i>Et tu Brute</i>,&#8221; I muttered under my breath. Then,
+aloud: &#8220;Let&#8217;s look at the boat.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Already this penchant of the natives for turning the
+pages of the Big Bend&#8217;s gruesome record of death and
+disaster was getting onto my nerves, and it was rather
+a shock to find even the quiet-spoken, steady-eyed
+Blackmore addicted to the habit. Afterwards, when
+I got used to it, I ceased to mind. As a matter of
+fact, the good souls could no more help expatiating
+on what the Big Bend had done to people who had
+taken liberties with it than an aviator who is about to
+take you for a flight can help leading you round back
+of the hangar and showing you the wreckage of his
+latest crash. It seems to be one of the inevitable
+promptings of the human animal to warn his brother
+animal of troubles ahead. This is doubtless the outgrowth
+of the bogies and the &#8220;don&#8217;ts&#8221; which are calculated
+to check the child&#8217;s explorative and investigative
+instincts in his nursery days. From the source to
+the mouth of the Columbia it was never (according to
+the solicitous volunteer advisers along the way) the
+really dangerous rapids that I had put behind me.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 7]</span>
+These were always somewhere ahead&mdash;usually just
+around the next bend, where I would run into them
+the first thing in the morning. Luckily, I learned to
+discount these warnings very early in the game, and
+so saved much sleep which it would have been a real
+loss to be deprived of.</p>
+
+<p>Blackmore led the way back through his apple
+orchard and down a stairway that descended the
+steeply-sloping river bank to his boat-house. The
+Columbia, a quarter of a mile wide and with just a
+shade of grey clouding its lucent greenness to reveal
+its glacial origin, slid swiftly but smoothly by with a
+purposeful current of six or seven miles an hour. A
+wing-dam of concrete, evidently built to protect the
+works of a sawmill a bit farther down stream, jutted
+out into the current just above, and the boat-house, set
+on a raft of huge logs, floated in the eddy below.</p>
+
+<p>There were two boats in sight, both in the water.
+Blackmore indicated the larger one of the pair&mdash;a
+double-ender of about thirty feet in length and generous
+beam&mdash;as the craft recommended for the Big
+Bend trip. &#8220;I built her for the Bend more than fifteen
+years ago,&#8221; he said, tapping the heavy gunwale
+with the toe of his boot. &#8220;She&#8217;s the only boat I know
+that has been all the way round more than once, so
+you might say she knows the road. She&#8217;s had many a
+hard bump, but&mdash;with any luck&mdash;she ought to stand
+one or two more. Not that I&#8217;m asking for any more
+than can be helped, though. There&#8217;s no boat ever
+built that will stand a head-on crash &#8217;gainst a rock in
+any such current as is driving it down Surprise or
+Kinbasket or Death Rapids, or a dozen other runs of<span class="pagenum">[Pg 8]</span>
+swift water on the Bend. Of course, you&#8217;re going to
+hit once in a while, spite of all you can do; but, if
+you&#8217;re lucky, you&#8217;ll probably kiss off without staving
+in a side. If you&#8217;re not&mdash;well, if you&#8217;re not
+lucky, you have no business fooling with the Bend
+at all.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Now what I like about this big boat of mine,&#8221; he
+continued, taking up the scope of the painter to bring
+her in out of the tug of the current, &#8220;is that she&#8217;s a
+lucky boat. Never lost a man out of her&mdash;that is,
+directly&mdash;and only one load of freight. Now with
+that one (indicating the smaller craft, a canoe-like
+double-ender of about twenty feet) it&#8217;s just the other
+way. If there&#8217;s trouble around she&#8217;ll have her nose
+into it. She&#8217;s as good a built boat as any on the river,
+easy to handle up stream and down&mdash;but unlucky.
+Why, only a few weeks ago a lad from the town borrowed
+her to have a bit of a lark running the ripple
+over that dam there. It&#8217;s covered at high water, and
+just enough of a pitch to give the youngsters a little
+excitement in dropping over. Safe enough stunt with
+any luck at all. But that boat&#8217;s not lucky. She
+drifted on sidewise, caught her keel and capsized. The
+lad and the two girls with him were all drowned. They
+found his body a week or two later. All his pockets
+were turned wrong-side-out and empty. The Columbia
+current most always plays that trick on a man&mdash;picks
+his pockets clean. The bodies of the girls never
+did show up. Probably the sand got into their clothes
+and held them down. That&#8217;s another little trick of
+the Columbia. She&#8217;s as full of tricks as a box of
+monkeys, that old stream there, and you&#8217;ve got to<span class="pagenum">[Pg 9]</span>
+keep an eye lifting for &#8217;em all the time if you&#8217;re going
+to steer clear of trouble.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It won&#8217;t be the first time I&#8217;ve had my pockets
+picked,&#8221; I broke in somewhat testily. &#8220;Besides, if
+you&#8217;re going to charge me at the rate that Indian I
+heard of in Kamloops demanded, there won&#8217;t be anything
+left for the Columbia to extract.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>That brought us down to business, and I had no
+complaint to make of the terms Blackmore suggested&mdash;twelve
+dollars a day for himself and boat, I to buy
+the provisions and make my own arrangements with
+any additional boatmen. I already had sensed
+enough of the character of the work ahead to know
+that a good boatman would be cheap at any price, and
+a poor one dear if working only for his grub. Blackmore
+was to get the big boat in shape and have it
+ready to ship by rail to Beavermouth (at the head of
+the Bend and the most convenient point to get a craft
+into the river) when I returned from the source of the
+Columbia above Windermere.</p>
+
+<p>Going on to Golden by train from Revelstoke, I
+looked up Captain F. P. Armstrong, with whom I had
+already been in communication by wire. The Captain
+had navigated steamers between Golden and Windermere
+for many years, they told me at C. P. R. headquarters
+in Revelstoke, and had also some experience
+of the Bend. He would be unable to join me for the
+trip himself, but had spoken to one or two men who
+might be induced to do so. In any event his advice
+would be invaluable.</p>
+
+<p>I shall have so much to say of Captain Armstrong
+in the account of a later part of my down-river voy<span class="pagenum">[Pg 10]</span>age
+that the briefest introduction to a man who has
+been one of the most picturesque personalities in the
+pioneering history of British Columbia will suffice
+here. Short, compactly but cleanly built, with iron-grey
+hair, square, determined jaw and piercing black
+eyes, he has been well characterized as &#8220;the biggest
+little man on the upper Columbia.&#8221; Although he
+confessed to sixty-three years, he might well have
+passed for fifty, a circumstance which doubtless had
+much to do with the fact that he saw three years of
+active service in the transport service on the Tigris
+and Nile during the late war. Indeed, as became apparent
+later, he generally had as much reserve energy
+at the end of a long day&#8217;s paddling as another man
+I could mention who is rather loath to admit
+forty.</p>
+
+<p><a id="page10" name="page10"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 393px;">
+<img src="images/illo_042.jpg" width="393" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff<br />
+MT. ASSINIBOINE, NEAR THE HEADWATERS OF THE COLUMBIA</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><a id="page11" name="page11"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/illo_043.jpg" width="600" height="425" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">TWIN FALLS (<i>left</i>)<br />
+TAKAKAWA FALLS (<i>right</i>)<br />
+TWO GREAT CATARACTS OF THE COLUMBIA WATERSHED</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Captain Armstrong explained that he was about to
+close the sale of one of his mines on a tributary of the
+upper Columbia, and for that reason would be unable
+to join us for the Big Bend trip, as much as he would
+have enjoyed doing so. In the event that I decided
+to continue on down the Columbia after circling the
+Bend, it was just possible he would be clear to go
+along for a way. He spoke highly of Blackmore&#8217;s
+ability as a river man, and mentioned one or two others
+in Golden whom he thought might be secured. Ten
+dollars a day was the customary pay for a boatman
+going all the way round the Bend. That was about
+twice the ordinary wage prevailing at the time in the
+sawmills and lumber camps. The extra five was
+partly insurance, and partly because the work was
+hard and really good river men very scarce. It was
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 11]</span>fair pay for an experienced hand. A poor boatman
+was worse than none at all, that is, in a pinch, while a
+good one might easily mean the difference between
+success and disaster. And of course I knew that disaster
+on the Bend&mdash;with perhaps fifty miles of trackless
+mountains between a wet man on the bank and
+the nearest human habitation&mdash;was spelt with a
+big D.</p>
+
+<p>So far as I can remember, Captain Armstrong was
+the only one with whom I talked in Golden who did
+not try to dramatize the dangers and difficulties of the
+Big Bend. Seemingly taking it for granted that I
+knew all about them, or in any case would hear enough
+of them from the others, he turned his attention to
+forwarding practical plans for the trip. He even
+contributed a touch of romance to a venture that the
+rest seemed a unit in trying to make me believe was a
+sort of a cross between going over Niagara in barrel
+and a flight to one of the Poles.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;There was a deal of boot-legging on the river between
+Golden and Boat Encampment during the
+years the Grand Trunk was being built,&#8221; he said as
+we pored over an outspread map of the Big Bend,
+&#8220;for that was the first leg of the run into the western
+construction camps, where the sale of liquor was forbidden
+by law. Many and many a boatload of the
+stuff went wrong in the rapids. This would have been
+inevitable in any case, just in the ordinary course of
+working in such difficult water. But what made the
+losses worse was the fact that a good many of the bootleggers
+always started off with a load under their belts
+as well as in their boats. Few of the bodies were ever<span class="pagenum">[Pg 12]</span>
+found, but with the casks of whisky it was different,
+doubtless because the latter would float longer and
+resist buffeting better. Cask after cask has kept
+turning up through the years, even down to the present,
+when B. C. is a comparative desert. They are
+found in the most unexpected places, and it&#8217;s very
+rare for a party to go all the way round the Bend
+without stumbling onto one. So bear well in mind you
+are not to go by anything that looks like a small barrel
+without looking to see if it has a head in both ends.
+If you have time, it will pay you to clamber for a few
+hours over the great patch of drift just below Middle
+River on Kinbasket Lake. That&#8217;s the one great catch-all
+for everything floatable that gets into the river
+below Golden. I&#8217;ve found just about everything there
+from a canary bird cage to a railway bridge. Failing
+there (which will only be because you don&#8217;t search
+long enough), dig sixteen paces northwest by compass
+from the foundation of the west tower of the
+abandoned cable ferry just above Boat Encampment.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;How&#8217;s that again!&#8221; I exclaimed incredulously.
+&#8220;Sure you aren&#8217;t confusing the Big Bend with the
+Spanish Main?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;If you follow my directions,&#8221; replied the Captain
+with a grin, &#8220;you&#8217;ll uncover more treasure for five
+minutes&#8217; scratching than you&#8217;d be likely to find in
+turning over the Dry Tortugas for five years. You
+see, it was this way,&#8221; he went on, smiling the smile of
+a man who speaks of something which has strongly
+stirred his imagination. &#8220;It was only a few weeks
+after Walter Steinhoff was lost in Surprise Rapids<span class="pagenum">[Pg 13]</span>
+that I made the trip round the Bend in a Peterboro to
+examine some silver-lead prospects I had word of. I
+had with me Pete Bergenham (a first-class river man;
+one you will do well to get yourself if you can) and
+another chap. This fellow was good enough with the
+paddle, but&mdash;though I didn&#8217;t know it when I engaged
+him&mdash;badly addicted to drink. That&#8217;s a fatal weakness
+for a man who is going to work in swift water,
+and especially such water as you strike at Surprise
+and the long run of Kinbasket Rapids. The wreckage
+of Steinhoff&#8217;s disaster (Blackmore will spin you
+the straightest yarn about that) was scattered all the
+way from the big whirlpool in Surprise Rapids down
+to Middle River, where they finally found his body.
+We might easily have picked up more than the one
+ten-gallon cask we bumped into, floating just submerged,
+in the shallows of the mud island at the head
+of Kinbasket Lake.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t feel quite right about having so much
+whisky along; but the stuff had its value even in those
+days, and I would have felt still worse about leaving
+it to fall into the hands of some one who would be
+less moderate in its use than would I. I knew Pete
+Bergenham was all right, and counted on being able
+to keep an eye on the other man. That was just
+where I fell down. I should have taken the cask to
+bed with me instead of leaving it in the canoe.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;When the fellow got to the whisky I never knew,
+but it was probably well along toward morning. He
+was already up when I awoke, and displayed unwonted
+energy in getting breakfast and breaking
+camp. If I had known how heavily he had been tip<span class="pagenum">[Pg 14]</span>pling
+I would have given him another drink before
+pushing off to steady his nerve. That might have held
+him all right. As it was, reaction in mind and body
+set in just as we headed into that first sharp dip below
+the lake&mdash;the beginning of the twenty-one miles
+of Kinbasket Rapids. At the place where the bottom
+has dropped out from under and left the channel
+blocked by jagged rocks with no place to run
+through, he collapsed as if kicked in the stomach, and
+slithered down into the bottom of the canoe, blubbering
+like a baby. We just did manage to make our
+landing above the cascade. With a less skilful man
+than Bergenham at the stern paddle we would have
+failed, and that would have meant that we should
+probably not have stopped for good before we settled
+into the mud at the bottom of the Arrow Lakes.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Even after that I could not find it in my heart to
+dish for good and all so much prime whisky. So I
+compromised by burying it that night, after we had
+come through the rapids without further mishap, at
+the spot I have told you of. That it was the best thing
+to do under the circumstances I am quite convinced.
+The mere thought that it was still in the world has
+cheered me in many a thirsty interval&mdash;yes, even
+out on the Tigris and the Nile, when there was no certainty
+I would ever come back to get it again.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And now I&#8217;m going to tell you how to find it, for
+there&#8217;s no knowing if I shall ever have a chance to go
+for it myself. If you bring it out to Revelstoke safely,
+we&#8217;ll split it fifty-fifty, as they say on your side of the
+line. All I shall want to know is who your other boatmen
+are going to be. Blackmore is all right, but if<span class="pagenum">[Pg 15]</span>
+any one of the men whom he takes with him is a real
+drinker, you&#8217;d best forget the whole thing. If it&#8217;s an
+&#8216;all-sober&#8217; crew, I&#8217;ll give you a map, marked so plainly
+that you can&#8217;t go wrong. It will be a grand haul, for
+it was Number One Scotch even when we planted it
+there, and since then it has been ageing in wood for
+something like ten years. I suppose you&#8217;ll be keen to
+smuggle your dividend right on down into the &#8216;The
+Great American Desert&#8217;?&#8221; he concluded with a grin.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Trust me for that,&#8221; I replied with a knowing shake
+of my head. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t spend six months writing up
+opium smuggling on the China Coast for nothing.&#8221;
+Then I told him the story of the Eurasian lady who
+was fat in Amoy and thin in Hongkong, and who
+finally confessed to having smuggled forty pounds of
+opium, three times a week for five years, in oiled silk
+hip- and bust-pads.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You must have a lot of prime ideas,&#8221; said the
+Captain admiringly. &#8220;You ought to make it easy,
+especially if you cross the line by boat. How would a
+false bottom ... but perhaps it would be safer to
+float it down submerged, with an old shingle-bolt for
+a buoy, and pick it up afterwards.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Or inside my pneumatic mattress,&#8221; I suggested.
+&#8220;But perhaps it would taste from the rubber.&#8221; By
+midnight we had evolved a plan which could not fail,
+and which was almost without risk. &#8220;The stuff&#8217;s as
+good as in California,&#8221; I told myself before I went to
+sleep&mdash;&#8220;and enough to pay all the expenses of my trip
+in case I should care to boot-leg it, which I won&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Captain Armstrong&#8217;s mention of the Steinhoff disaster
+was not the first I had heard of it. The chap<span class="pagenum">[Pg 16]</span>
+with whom I had talked in Kamloops had shown me a
+photograph of a rude cross that he and his Indian
+companion had erected over Steinhoff&#8217;s grave, and in
+Revelstoke nearly every one who spoke of the Bend
+made some reference to the tragic affair. But here in
+Golden, which had been his home, the spectacularity of
+his passing seemed to have had an even more profound
+effect. As with everything else connected with the
+Big Bend, however, there was a very evident tendency
+to dramatize, to &#8220;play up,&#8221; the incident. I
+heard many different versions of the story, but there
+was one part, the tragic finale, in which they all were
+in practical agreement. When his canoe broke loose
+from its line, they said, and shot down toward the big
+whirlpool at the foot of the second cataract of Surprise
+Rapids, Steinhoff, realizing that there was no
+chance of the light craft surviving the maelstrom,
+coolly turned round, waved farewell to his companions
+on the bank, and, folding his arms, went down to his
+death. Canoe and man were sucked completely out
+of sight, never to be seen again until the fragments
+of the one and the battered body of the other were
+cast up, weeks later, many miles below.</p>
+
+<p>It was an extremely effective story, especially as
+told by the local member in the B. C. Provincial Assembly,
+who had real histrionic talent. But somehow
+I couldn&#8217;t quite reconcile the Nirvanic resignation
+implied by the farewell wave and the folded arms with
+the never-say-die, cat-with-nine-lives spirit I had
+come to associate with your true swift-water boatman
+the world over. I was quite ready to grant that the
+big sockdolager of a whirlpool below the second pitch<span class="pagenum">[Pg 17]</span>
+of Surprise Rapids was a real all-day and all-night
+sucker, but the old river hand who gave up to it like
+the Kentucky coons at the sight of Davy Crockett&#8217;s
+squirrel-gun wasn&#8217;t quite convincing. That, and the
+iterated statement that Steinhoff&#8217;s canoe-mate, who
+was thrown into the water at the same time, won his
+way to the bank by walking along the bottom <i>beneath</i>
+the surface, had a decidedly steadying effect on the
+erratic flights to which my fancy had been launched
+by Big Bend yarns generally. There had been something
+strangely familiar in them all, and finally it
+came to me&mdash;Chinese <i>feng-shui</i> generally, and particularly
+the legends of the sampan men of the portage
+villages along the Ichang gorges of the Yangtze.
+The things the giant dragon lurking in the whirlpools
+at the foot of the rapids would do to the luckless ones
+he got his back-curving teeth into were just a slightly
+different way of telling what the good folk of Golden
+claimed the Big Bend would do to the hapless wights
+who ventured down its darksome depths.</p>
+
+<p>Now that I thought of it in this clarifying light,
+there had been &#8220;dragon stuff&#8221; bobbing up about almost
+every stretch of rough water I had boated.
+Mostly it was native superstition, but partly it was
+small town pride&mdash;pride in the things their &#8220;Dragon&#8221;
+had done, and would do. Human nature&mdash;yes, and
+river rapids, too&mdash;are very much the same the world
+over, whether on the Yangtze, Brahmaputra or upper
+Columbia.</p>
+
+<p>That brought the Big Bend into its proper perspective.
+I realized that it was only water running
+down hill after all. Possibly it was faster than any<span class="pagenum">[Pg 18]</span>thing
+I had boated previously, and certainly&mdash;excepting
+the Yukon perhaps&mdash;colder. A great many men
+had been drowned in trying to run it; but so had men
+been drowned in duck-ponds. But many men had
+gone round without disaster, and that would I do,
+<i>Imshallah</i>. I always liked that pious Arab qualification
+when speaking of futurities. Later I applied
+the name&mdash;in fancy&mdash;to the skiff in which I made the
+voyage down the lower river.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, undoubtedly the most of the yarns and the
+warnings were &#8220;dragon stuff&#8221; pure and simple, but
+Romance remained. A hundred miles of river with
+possible treasure lurking in every eddy, and one place
+where it <i>had</i> to be! I felt as I did the first time I
+read &#8220;Treasure Island,&#8221; only more so. For that I
+had only <i>read</i>, and now I was going to search for myself&mdash;yes,
+and I was going to find, too. It was a golden
+sunset in more ways than one the evening before
+I was to leave for the upper river. Barred and
+spangled and fluted with liquid, lucent gold was the
+sky above hills that were themselves golden with the
+tints of early autumn. And in the Northwest there
+was a flush of rose, old rose that deepened and glowed
+in lambent crimson where a notch between the Selkirks
+and Rockies marked the approximate location
+of historic Boat Encampment. &#8220;Great things have
+happened at Boat Encampment,&#8221; I told myself, &#8220;and
+its history is not all written.&#8221; Then: &#8220;Sixteen paces
+northwest by compass from the foundation of the
+west tower of the abandoned cable ferry....&#8221; Several
+times during dinner that evening I had to check
+myself from humming an ancient song. &#8220;What&#8217;s that<span class="pagenum">[Pg 19]</span>
+about, &#8216;<i>Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of rum</i>&#8217;?&#8221; queried the
+mackinaw drummer from Winnipeg who sat next me.
+&#8220;I thought you were from the States. I don&#8217;t quite
+see the point.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s just as well you don&#8217;t,&#8221; I replied, and was
+content to let it go at that.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page20" name="page20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER II<br />
+<br />
+UP HORSE THIEF CREEK</h2>
+
+
+<p>When I started north from Los Angeles toward
+the end of August Chester, held up for the moment by
+business, was hoping to be able to shake free so as to
+arrive on the upper Columbia by the time I had arrangements
+for the Big Bend voyage complete. We
+would then go together to the Lake of the Hanging
+Glaciers before embarking on the Bend venture.
+Luck was not with him, however. The day I was
+ready to start on up river from Golden I received a
+wire stating that he was still indefinitely delayed, and
+that the best that there was now any chance of his
+doing would be to join me for the Bend. He had
+ordered his cameraman to Windermere, where full
+directions for the trip to the glaciers awaited him. He
+hoped I would see fit to go along and help with the
+picture, as some &#8220;central figure&#8221; besides the guides
+and packers would be needed to give the &#8220;story&#8221; continuity.
+I replied that I would be glad to do the best
+I could, and left for Lake Windermere by the next
+train. Few movie stars have ever been called to
+twinkle upon shorter notice.</p>
+
+<p>One is usually told that the source of the Columbia
+is in Canal Flats, a hundred and fifty miles above Golden,
+and immediately south of a wonderfully lovely
+mountain-begirt lake that bears the same name as the
+river. This is true in a sense, although, strictly speak<span class="pagenum">[Pg 21]</span>ing,
+the real source of the river&mdash;the one rising at the
+point the greatest distance from its mouth&mdash;would be
+the longest of the many mountain creeks which converge
+upon Columbia Lake from the encompassing
+amphitheatre of the Rockies and Selkirks. This is
+probably Dutch Creek, which rises in the perpetual
+snow of the Selkirks and sends down a roaring torrent
+of grey-green glacier water into the western side
+of Columbia Lake. Scarcely less distant from the
+mouth of the Columbia are the heads of Toby and
+Horse Thief creeks, both of which bring splendid
+volumes of water to the mother river just below Lake
+Windermere.</p>
+
+<p>It was the presence of the almost totally unknown
+Lake of the Hanging Glaciers near the head of the
+Horse Thief Creek watershed that was responsible
+for Chester&#8217;s determination to carry his preliminary
+explorations up to the latter source of the Columbia
+rather than to one slightly more remote above the
+upper lake. We had assurance that a trail, upon
+which work had been in progress all summer, would
+be completed by the middle of September, so that it
+would then be possible for the first time to take pack-horses
+and a full moving-picture outfit to one of the
+rarest scenic gems on the North American continent,
+the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers. To get the first
+movies of what is claimed to be the only lake in the
+world outside of the polar regions that has icebergs
+perpetually floating upon its surface was the principal
+object of Chester in directing his outfit up Horse
+Thief Creek. My own object was to reach one of the
+several points where the Columbia took its rise in the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 22]</span>
+glacial ice, there to do a right-about and start upon my
+long-dreamed-of journey from snowflake to brine.</p>
+
+<p>It is a dozen years or more since one could travel
+the hundred miles of the Columbia between Golden
+and Lake Windermere by steamer. The comparatively
+sparse population in this rich but thinly settled
+region was not sufficient to support both rail and
+river transport, and with the coming of the former
+the latter could not long be maintained. Two or
+three rotting hulks on the mud by the old landing at
+Golden are all that remain of one of the most picturesque
+steamer services ever run, for those old
+stern-wheelers used to flounder up the Columbia to
+Windermere, on through Mud and Columbia Lakes
+to Canal Flats, through a log-built lock to the Kootenay
+watershed, and then down the winding canyons
+and tumbling rapids of that tempestuous stream to
+Jennings, Montana. Those were the bonanza days
+of the upper Columbia and Kootenay&mdash;such days as
+they have never seen since nor will ever see again.
+I was to hear much of them later from Captain Armstrong
+when we voyaged a stretch of the lower river
+together.</p>
+
+<p>There is a train between Golden and Windermere
+only three times a week. It is an amiable, ambling
+&#8220;jerk-water,&#8221; whose conductor does everything from
+dandling babies to unloading lumber. At one station
+he held over for five minutes to let me run down to a
+point where I could get the best light on a &#8220;reflection&#8221;
+picture in the river, and at another he ran the
+whole train back to pick up a basket of eggs which
+had been overlooked in the rush of departure. The<span class="pagenum">[Pg 23]</span>
+Canadian Pacific has the happy faculty of being all
+things to all men. Its main line has always impressed
+me as being the best-run road I have ever travelled on
+in any part of the world, including the United States.
+One would hardly characterize its little country feeders
+in the same words, but even these latter, as the
+instances I have noted will bear out, come about as
+near to being run for the accommodation of the travelling
+public as anything one will ever find. There is
+not the least need of hurrying this Golden-Windermere
+express. It stops over night at Invermere anyway,
+before continuing its leisurely progress southward
+the next morning.</p>
+
+<p>Chester&#8217;s cameraman met me with a car at the station,
+and we rode a mile to the hotel at Invermere, on
+the heights above the lake. His name was Roos, he
+said&mdash;Len H. Roos of N. Y. C. It was his misfortune
+to have been born in Canada, he explained, but
+he had always had a great admiration for Americans,
+and had taken out his first papers for citizenship. He
+could manage to get on with Canadians in a pinch,
+he averred further; but as for Britishers&mdash;no &#8220;Lime-juicers&#8221;
+for him, with their &#8220;G&#8217;bly&#8217;me&#8217;s&#8221; and afternoon
+teas. I saw that this was going to be a difficult
+companion, and took the occasion to point out that,
+since he was going to be in Canada for some weeks, it
+might be just as well to bottle up his rancour against
+the land of his birth until he was back on the other
+side of the line and had completed the honour he intended
+to do Uncle Sam by becoming an American
+citizen. Maybe I was right, he admitted thoughtfully;
+but it would be a hard thing for him to do, as he<span class="pagenum">[Pg 24]</span>
+was naturally very frank and outspoken and a great
+believer in saying just what he thought of people and
+things.</p>
+
+<p>He was right about being outspoken. He had
+also rather a glittering line of dogma on the finer
+things of life. Jazz was the highest form of music
+(he ought to know, for had he not played both jazz
+and grand opera when he was head drummer of the
+Galt, Ontario, town band?); the Mack Sennett bathing
+comedy was his <i>belle ideal</i> of kinematic art; and
+the newspapers of William Hearst were the supreme
+development of journalism. This latter he knew, because
+he had done camera work for a Hearst syndicate
+himself. I could manage to make a few degrees
+of allowance for jazz and the Mack Sennett knockabouts
+under the circumstances, but the deification of
+Hearst created an unbridgeable gulf. I foresaw that
+&#8220;director&#8221; and &#8220;star&#8221; were going to have bumpy
+sledding, but also perceived the possibility of comedy
+elements which promised to go a long way toward redeeming
+the enforced partnership from irksomeness,
+that is, if the latter were not too prolonged. That it
+could run to six or seven weeks and the passage of
+near to a thousand miles of the Columbia without
+turning both &#8220;director&#8221; and &#8220;star&#8221; into actual assassins,
+I would never have believed. Indeed, I am
+not able to figure out even now how it could have
+worked out that way. I can&#8217;t explain it. I merely
+state the fact.</p>
+
+<p>Walter Nixon, the packer who was to take us &#8220;up
+Horse Thief,&#8221; had been engaged by wire a week previously.
+His outfit had been ready for several days,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 25]</span>
+and he called at the hotel the evening of my arrival
+to go over the grub list and make definite plans. As
+there were only two of us, he reckoned that ten horses
+and two packers would be sufficient to see us through.
+The horses would cost us two dollars a day a head, and
+the packers five dollars apiece. The provisions he
+would buy himself and endeavour to board us at a
+dollar and a half apiece a man. This footed up to
+between thirty-five and forty dollars a day for the
+outfit, exclusive of the movie end. It seemed a bit
+stiff offhand, but was really very reasonable considering
+present costs of doing that kind of a thing and the
+thoroughly first-class service Nixon gave us from beginning
+to end.</p>
+
+<p>Nixon himself I was extremely well impressed with.
+He was a fine up-standing fellow of six feet or more,
+black-haired, black-eyed, broad-shouldered and a
+swell of biceps and thigh that even his loose-fitting
+mackinaws could not entirely conceal. I liked particularly
+his simple rig-out, in its pleasing contrast
+to the cross-between-a-movie-cowboy-and-a-Tyrolean-yodeler
+garb that has come to be so much affected
+by the so-called guides at Banff and Lake Louise.
+Like the best of his kind, Nixon was quiet-spoken and
+leisurely of movement, but with a suggestion of
+powerful reserves of both vocabulary and activity. I
+felt sure at first sight that he was the sort of a man
+who could be depended upon to see a thing through
+whatever the difficulties, and I never had reason to
+change my opinion on that score.</p>
+
+<p>It was arranged that night that Nixon should get
+away with the pack outfit by noon of the next day, and<span class="pagenum">[Pg 26]</span>
+make an easy stage of it to the Starbird Ranch, at the
+end of the wagon-road, nineteen miles out from Invermere.
+The following morning Roos and I would
+come out by motor and be ready to start by the time
+the horses were up and the packs on. That gave us
+an extra day for exploring Windermere and the more
+imminent sources of the Columbia.</p>
+
+<p>Roos&#8217; instructions from Chester called for a
+&#8220;Windermere Picture,&#8221; in which should be shown the
+scenic, camping, fishing and hunting life of that region.
+The scenic and camping shots he had already
+made; the fish and the game had eluded him. I arrived
+just in time to take part in the final scurry to
+complete the picture. The fish to be shown were
+trout, and the game mountain sheep and goat, or at
+least that was the way Roos planned it at breakfast
+time. When inquiry revealed that it would take a day
+to reach a trout stream, and three days to penetrate to
+the haunts of the sheep and goats, he modified the
+campaign somewhat to conform with the limited time
+at our disposal. Close at hand in the lake there was
+a fish called the squaw-fish, which, floundering at the
+end of a line, would photograph almost like a trout, or
+so the hotel proprietor thought. And the best of it
+was that any one could catch them. Indeed, at times
+one had to man&#339;uvre to keep them from taking the
+bait that was meant for the more gamy and edible,
+but also far more elusive, ling or fresh-water cod.
+As for the game picture, said Roos, he would save
+time by having a deer rounded up and driven into the
+lake, where he would pursue it with a motor boat and
+shoot the required hunting pictures. He would like<span class="pagenum">[Pg 27]</span>
+to have me dress like a tourist and do the hunting and
+fishing. That would break me in to adopting an easy
+and pleasing manner before the camera, so that a
+minimum of film would be spoiled when he got down
+to our regular work on the Hanging Glacier picture.
+It wouldn&#8217;t take long. That was the advantage of
+&#8220;news&#8221; training for a cameraman. You could do
+things in a rush when you had to.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Clelland, secretary of the Windermere Company,
+courteously found us tackle and drove us down
+to the outlet of the lake to catch the squaw-fish.
+Three hours later he drove us back to the hotel for
+lunch without one single fragment of our succulent
+salt-pork bait having been nuzzled on its hook. I
+lost my &#8220;easy and pleasing manner&#8221; at the end of the
+first hour, and Roos&mdash;who was under rather greater
+tension in standing by to crank&mdash;somewhat sooner.
+He said many unkind things about fish in general and
+squaw-fish in particular before we gave up the fight
+at noon, and I didn&#8217;t improve matters at all by suggesting
+that I cut out the picture on a salmon can
+label, fasten it to my hook, and have him shoot me
+catching that. There was no sense whatever in the
+idea, he said. You had to have studio lighting to get
+away with that sort of thing. He couldn&#8217;t see how I
+could advance such a thing seriously. As I had some
+doubts on that score myself, I didn&#8217;t start an argument.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon no better success attended our
+effort to make the hunting picture,&mdash;this because no
+one seemed to know where a deer could be rounded up
+and driven into the lake. Again I discovered a way<span class="pagenum">[Pg 28]</span>
+to save this situation. On the veranda of the country
+club there was a fine mounted specimen of <i>Ovis Canadensis</i>,
+the Canadian mountain sheep. By proper
+ballasting, I pointed out to Roos, this fine animal
+could be made to submerge to a natural swimming
+depth&mdash;say with the head and shoulders just above
+the water. Then a little Evinrude engine could be
+clamped to its hind quarters and set going. Forthwith
+the whole thing must start off ploughing across
+the lake just like a live mountain sheep. By a little
+man&#339;uvring it ought to be possible to shoot at an
+angle that would interpose the body of the sheep between
+the eye and the pushing engine. If this proved
+to be impossible, perhaps it could be explained in a
+sub-title that the extraneous machinery was a fragment
+of mowing-machine or something of the kind
+that the sheep had collided with and picked up in his
+flight. Roos, while admitting that this showed a considerable
+advance over my salmon-label suggestion of
+the morning, said that there were a number of limiting
+considerations which would render it impracticable. I
+forget what all of these were, but one of them was
+that our quarry couldn&#8217;t be made to roll his eyes and
+register &#8220;consternation&#8221; and &#8220;mute reproach&#8221; in the
+close-ups. I began to see that there was a lot more
+to the movie game than I had ever dreamed. But
+what a stimulator of the imagination it was!</p>
+
+<p>As there was nothing more to be done about the
+hunting and fishing shots for the present, we turned
+our attention to final preparations for what we had
+begun to call the &#8220;Hanging Glacier Picture.&#8221; Roos<span class="pagenum">[Pg 29]</span>
+said it would be necessary to sketch a rough sort of
+scenario in advance&mdash;nothing elaborate like &#8220;Broken
+Blossoms&#8221; or &#8220;The Perils of Pauline&#8221; (we hadn&#8217;t the
+company for that kind of thing), but just the thread
+of a story to make the &#8220;continuity&#8221; ripple continuously.
+It would be enough, he thought, if I would
+enact the rôle of a gentleman-sportsman and allow
+the guides and packers to be just their normal selves.
+Then with these circulating in the foreground, he
+would film the various scenic features of the trip as
+they unrolled. All the lot of us would have to do
+would be to act naturally and stand or lounge gracefully
+in those parts of the picture where the presence
+of human beings would be best calculated to balance
+effectively and harmoniously the composition. I
+agreed cheerfully to the sportsman part of my rôle,
+but demurred as to &#8220;gentleman.&#8221; I might manage it
+for a scene, but for a sustained effort it was out of the
+question. A compromise along this line was finally
+effected. I engaged to act as much like a gentleman
+as I could for the opening shot, after which I was to
+be allowed to lapse into the seeming of a simple
+sportsman who loved scenery-gazing more than the
+pursuit and slaying of goat, sheep and bear. Roos
+observed shrewdly that it would be better to have the
+sportsman be more interested in scenery than game
+because, judging from our experience at Windermere,
+we would find more of the former than the latter.
+He was also encouragingly sympathetic about
+my transient appearance as a gentleman. &#8220;I only
+want about fifty feet of that,&#8221; he said as he gave me<span class="pagenum">[Pg 30]</span>
+a propitiating pat on the back; &#8220;besides, it&#8217;s all a
+matter of clothes anyhow.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Before we turned in that night it transpired that
+Chester&#8217;s hope of being the first to show moving pictures
+of the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers to the
+world was probably doomed to disappointment, or,
+at the best, that this honour would have to be shared
+with an equally ambitious rival. Byron Harmon, of
+Banff, formerly official photographer for the Canadian
+Pacific, arrived at Invermere and announced
+that he was planning to go &#8220;up Horse Thief&#8221; and endeavour
+to film a number of the remarkable scenic features
+which he had hitherto tried to picture in vain.
+His schedule was temporarily upset by the fact that
+we had already engaged the best packtrain and
+guides available. Seasoned mountaineer that he was,
+however, this was of small moment. A few hours&#8217;
+scurrying about had provided him with a light but
+ample outfit, consisting of four horses and two men,
+with which he planned to get away in the morning.
+He was not in the least perturbed by the fact that
+Roos had practically a day&#8217;s start of him. &#8220;There&#8217;s
+room for a hundred cameramen to work up there,&#8221; he
+told me genially; &#8220;and the more the world is shown of
+the wonders of the Rockies and the Selkirks, the more
+it will want to see. It will be good to have your company,
+and each of us ought to be of help to the other.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I had some difficulty in bringing Roos to a similarly
+philosophical viewpoint. His &#8220;Hearst&#8221; training impelled
+him to brook no rivalry, to beat out the other
+man by any means that offered. He had the better
+packtrain, he said, to say nothing of a day&#8217;s start.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 31]</span>
+Also, he had the only dynamite and caps available that
+side of Golden, so that he would have the inside track
+for starting avalanches and creating artificial icebergs
+in the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers. I would
+like to think that it was my argument that, since it
+was not a &#8220;news&#8221; picture he was after, the man who
+took the most time to his work would be the one to get
+the best results, was what brought him round finally.
+I greatly fear, however, it was the knowledge that the
+generous Harmon had a number of flares that did the
+trick. He had neglected to provide flares himself, and
+without them work in the ice caves&mdash;second only in
+interest to the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers itself&mdash;would
+be greatly circumscribed. At any rate, he
+finally agreed to a truce, and we took Harmon out to
+the end of the road in our car the following morning.
+Of the latter&#8217;s really notable work in picturing the
+mountains of western Canada I shall write later.</p>
+
+<p>The horses were waiting, saddled and packed, as
+we drove up to the rendezvous. The packer was a
+powerfully built fellow, with his straight black hair
+and high cheek bones betokening a considerable mixture
+of Indian blood. His name was Buckman&mdash;Jim
+Buckman. He was the village blacksmith of Athalmere,
+Nixon explained. He was making plenty of
+money in his trade, but was willing to come along at a
+packer&#8217;s wage for the sake of the experience as an
+actor. The lure of the movies was also responsible for
+the presence of Nixon&#8217;s fourteen-year-old son, Gordon,
+who had threatened to run away from home if he
+wasn&#8217;t allowed to come along. He proved a useful
+acquisition&mdash;more than sufficiently so, it seemed to<span class="pagenum">[Pg 32]</span>
+me, to compensate for what he did to the jam and
+honey.</p>
+
+<p>Roos called us around him and gave instructions
+for the &#8220;business&#8221; of the opening shot. Nixon and
+Jim were to be &#8220;picked up&#8221; taking the last of the
+slack out of a &#8220;diamond hitch,&#8221; Gordon frolicking in
+the background with his dog. When the car drove
+up, Nixon was to take my saddle horse by the bridle,
+walk up and shake hands with me. Then, to make
+the transition from Civilization to the Primitive
+(movie people never miss a chance to use that word)
+with a click, I was to step directly from the car into
+my stirrups. &#8220;Get me!&#8221; admonished Roos; &#8220;straight
+from the running board to the saddle. Don&#8217;t touch
+the ground at all. Make it snappy, all of you. I
+don&#8217;t want any of you to grow into &#8216;foot-lice.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>My saddle horse turned out to be a stockily-built
+grey of over 1200 pounds. He looked hard as nails
+and to have no end of endurance. But his shifty eye
+and back-laid ears indicated temperamentality, so that
+Nixon&#8217;s warning that he &#8220;warn&#8217;t exactly a lady&#8217;s
+hawss&#8221; was a bit superfluous. &#8220;When you told me
+you tipped the beam at two-forty,&#8221; he said, &#8220;I know&#8217;d
+&#8216;Grayback&#8217; was the only hawss that&#8217;d carry you up
+these trails. So I brung him in, and stuffed him up
+with oats, and here he is. He may dance a leetle on
+his toes jest now, but he&#8217;ll gentle down a lot by the
+end of a week.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Whether &#8220;Grayback&#8221; mastered all of the &#8220;business&#8221;
+of that shot or not is probably open to doubt,
+but that he took the &#8220;Make it snappy!&#8221; part to heart
+there was no question. He came alongside like a<span class="pagenum">[Pg 33]</span>
+lamb, but the instant I started to make my transition
+from &#8220;Civilization to the Primitive with a click&#8221; he
+started climbing into the car. The only click I heard
+was when my ear hit the ground. Roos couldn&#8217;t have
+spoiled any more film than I did cuticle, but, being a
+&#8220;Director,&#8221; he made a good deal more noise about it.
+After barking his hocks on the fender, &#8220;Grayback&#8221;
+refused to be enticed within mounting distance of the
+car again, so finally, with a comparatively un-clicky
+transition from Civilization to the Primitive, I got
+aboard by the usual route from the ground.</p>
+
+<p>The next shot was a quarter of a mile farther up
+the trail. Here Roos found a natural sylvan frame
+through which to shoot the whole outfit as it came
+stringing along. Unfortunately, the &#8220;Director&#8221;
+failed to tell the actors not to look at the camera&mdash;that,
+once and for all, the clicking box must be reckoned
+as a thing non-existent&mdash;and it all had to be done
+over again. The next time it was better, but the actors
+still had a wooden expression on their faces.
+They didn&#8217;t look at the camera, but the expression on
+their faces showed that they were conscious of it.
+Roos then instructed me to talk to my companions, or
+sing, or do anything that would take their minds off
+the camera and make them appear relaxed and natural.
+That time we did it famously. As each, in
+turn, cantered by the sylvan bower with its clicking
+camera he was up to his neck &#8220;doing something.&#8221;
+Nixon was declaiming Lincoln&#8217;s Gettysburg speech
+as he had learned it from his phonograph, Gordon was
+calling his dog, Jim was larruping a straggling pinto
+and cursing it in fluent local idiom, and I was singing<span class="pagenum">[Pg 34]</span>
+&#8220;Onward, Christian Soldiers!&#8221; We never had any
+trouble about &#8220;being natural&#8221; after that; but I hope
+no lip reader ever sees the pictures.</p>
+
+<p>After picking up Roos and his camera we made
+our real start. One pack-horse was reserved for the
+camera and tripod, and to prevent him from ranging
+from the trail and bumping the valuable apparatus
+against trees or rocks, his halter was tied to the tail
+of Nixon&#8217;s saddle animal. Except that the latter&#8217;s
+spinal column must have suffered some pretty severe
+snakings when the camera-carrier went through corduroy
+bridges or lost his footings in fords, the arrangement
+worked most successfully. The delicate
+instrument was not in the least injured in all of the
+many miles it was jogged over some of the roughest
+trails I have ever travelled.</p>
+
+<p>The sunshine by which the last of the trail shots was
+made proved the parting glimmer of what had been a
+month or more of practically unbroken fair weather.
+Indeed, the weather had been rather too fine, for,
+toward the end of the summer, lack of rain in western
+Canada invariably means forest fires. As these had
+been raging intermittently for several weeks all over
+British Columbia, the air had become thick with
+smoke, and at many places it was impossible to see
+for more than a mile or two in any direction. Both
+Roos and Harmon had been greatly hampered in
+their work about Banff and Lake Louise by the
+smoke, and both were, therefore, exceedingly anxious
+for early and copious rains to clear the air. Otherwise,
+they said, there was no hope of a picture of the
+Lake of the Hanging Glaciers that would be worth<span class="pagenum">[Pg 35]</span>
+the film it was printed on. They must have rain.
+Their prayer was about to be answered, in full measure,
+pressed down and running over&mdash;and then some.</p>
+
+<p>We had been encountering contending currents of
+hot and cold air all the way up the wagon-road from
+Invermere and the lower valley. Now, as we entered
+the mountains, these became more pronounced, taking
+the form of scurrying &#8220;dust-devils&#8221; that attacked
+from flank and van without method or premonitory
+signal. The narrowing gorge ahead was packed solid
+with a sullen phalanx of augmenting clouds, sombre-hued
+and sagging with moisture, and frequently illumined
+with forked lightning flashes discharged from
+their murky depths. Nixon, anxious to make camp
+before the storm broke, jogged the horses steadily all
+through the darkening afternoon. It was a point
+called &#8220;Sixteen-mile&#8221; he was driving for, the first
+place we would reach where there was room for the
+tent and feed for the horses. We were still four
+miles short of our destination when the first spatter
+of ranging drops opened up, and from there on the
+batteries of the storm concentrated on us all the way.</p>
+
+<p>We made camp in a rain driving solidly enough to
+deflect the stroke of an axe. I shall not enlarge upon
+the acute discomfort of it. Those who have done it
+will understand; those who have not would never be
+able to. It was especially trying on the first day out,
+before the outfit had become shaken down and one had
+learned where to look for things. Nixon&#8217;s consummate
+woodcraftsmanship was put to a severe test,
+but emerged triumphant. So, too, Jim, who proved
+himself as impervious to rain as to ill-temper. The<span class="pagenum">[Pg 36]</span>
+fir boughs for the tent floor came in dripping, of
+course, but there were enough dry tarpaulins and
+blankets to blot up the heaviest of the moisture, and
+the glowing little sheet-iron stove licked up the rest.
+A piping hot dinner drove out the last of the chill,
+and we spent a snug, comfy evening listening to Nixon
+yarn about his mountaineering exploits and of the
+queer birds from New York and London whom he had
+nursed through strange and various intervals of
+moose and sheep-hunting in the Kootenays and
+Rockies. We slept dry but rather cold, especially
+Roos, who ended up by curling round the stove and
+stoking between shivers. Nixon and Jim drew generously
+on their own blanket rolls to help the both of
+us confine our ebbing animal heat, and yet appeared
+to find not the least difficulty in sleeping comfortably
+under half the weight of cover that left us shaking.
+It was all a matter of what one was used to, of course,
+and in a few days we began to harden.</p>
+
+<p>It was September tenth that we had started from
+Invermere, hoping at the time to be able to accomplish
+what we had set out to do in from four to six days.
+The rain which had come to break the long dry spell
+put a very different face on things, however. The
+eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth we were held in our
+first camp by an almost continuous downpour, which
+turned the mountain streams into torrents and raised
+Horse Thief till it lapped over the rim of the flat
+upon which our tent was pitched. The night of the
+thirteenth, with a sharp drop of the temperature, the
+rain turned to snow, and we crawled out on the fourteenth
+to find the valley under a light blanket of<span class="pagenum">[Pg 37]</span>
+white. Then the clouds broke away and the sunshine
+and shadows began playing tag over the scarps and
+buttresses of the encompassing amphitheatre of
+mountains. For the first time there was a chance for
+a glimpse of the new world into which we had come.
+The transition from the cultivation and the gentle
+wooded slopes of Windermere was startling. Under
+the mask of the storm clouds we had penetrated from
+a smooth, rounded, pleasant country to one that was
+cliffy and pinnacled and bare&mdash;a country that was all
+on end, a land whose bones showed through. A towering
+Matterhorn reared its head six or eight thousand
+feet above us, and so near that slabs of rock
+cracked away from its scarred summit were lying
+just across the trail from the tent. The peaks walling
+in Horse Thief to the north were not so high but no
+less precipitous and barren, while to the west a jumble
+of splintered pinnacles whose bases barred the way
+were still lost in the witch-dance of the clouds. A
+tourist folder would have called it a &#8220;Land of Titans,&#8221;
+but Jim, leaning on his axe after nicking off a
+fresh back-log for the camp fire, merely opined it was
+&#8220;some skookum goat country. But not a patch,&#8221; he
+added, &#8220;to what we&#8217;ll be hittin&#8217; to-night if we get them
+<i>geesly</i> hawsses rounded up in time fer a start &#8217;fore
+noon.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It appeared that the horses, with their grazing
+spoiled by the snow, had become restless, broken
+through the barrier Nixon had erected at a bridge just
+below camp, and started on the back trail for Invermere.
+As their tracks showed that they had broken
+into a trot immediately beyond the bridge, it looked<span class="pagenum">[Pg 38]</span>
+like a long stern-chase, and Nixon did not reckon on
+being able to hit the trail for several hours. Roos
+grasped the occasion to make a couple of &#8220;camp life&#8221;
+shots his fertile brain had conceived the idea of during
+the long storm-bound days of enforced inaction. In
+one of these the &#8220;sportsman&#8221; was to go to bed in silhouette
+by candlelight. Ostensibly this was to be the
+shadow of a man crawling into his blankets <i>inside</i> of
+the tent, and taken from the outside. In reality, however,
+Roos set up his camera <i>inside</i> of the tent and
+shot the antics of the shadow the sunlight threw on the
+canvas when I went through the motions of turning in
+close against the <i>outside</i> of the wall. This went off
+smartly and snappily; but I would have given much
+for a translation of the voluble comments of a passing
+Indian who pulled up to watch the agile action of the
+retiring &#8220;sportsman.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It was while Roos was rehearsing me for this shot
+that Gordon must have heard him iterating his invariable
+injunction that I should not be a &#8220;foot-hog,&#8221;
+meaning, I shall hardly need to explain, that I should
+be quick in my movements so as not to force him to use
+an undue footage of film. A little later I overheard
+the boy asking Jim what a &#8220;foot-hog&#8221; was. &#8220;I don&#8217;t
+quite <i>kumtrux</i> myself,&#8221; the sturdy blacksmith-packer
+replied, scratching his head. &#8220;It sounds as if it might
+be suthin like pig&#8217;s feet, but they want actin&#8217; as if
+they wuz ready to eat anythin&#8217;, &#8217;less it was each other.&#8221;
+Now that I think of it, I can see how the clash of the
+artistic temperaments of &#8220;Director&#8221; and &#8220;Star&#8221; over
+just about every one of the shots they made might
+have given Jim that impression.</p>
+
+<p><a id="page38" name="page38"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 462px;">
+<img src="images/illo_072.jpg" width="462" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">THE &#8220;TURNING-IN&#8221; SCENE SHOT IN SILHOUETTE (<i>above</i>)<br />
+&#8220;REVERSE&#8221; OF THE &#8220;GOING-TO-BED&#8221; SHOT (<i>below</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><a id="page39" name="page39"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/illo_073.jpg" width="600" height="462" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">ON THE HORSE THIEF TRAIL <i>(left)</i><br />
+A DEAD-FALL ON THE TRAIL <i>(right)</i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 39]</span>The other shot we made that morning was one
+which Roos had labelled as &#8220;Berry Picking and Eating&#8221;
+in his tentative scenario. The &#8220;sportsman&#8221; was
+to fare forth, gather a bowlful of raspberries, bring
+them back to camp, put sugar and condensed milk on
+them, and finally eat them, all before the camera. I
+objected to appearing in this for two reasons: for one,
+because berry-picking was not a recognized out-door
+sport, and, for another, because I didn&#8217;t like raspberries.
+Roos admitted that berry-picking was not a
+sport, but insisted he had to have the scene to preserve
+his continuity. &#8220;Gathering and eating these
+products of Nature,&#8221; he explained, &#8220;shows how far
+the gentleman you were in the first scene has descended
+toward the Primitive. You will be getting
+more and more Primitive right along, but we must
+register each step on the film, see?&#8221; As for my distaste
+for raspberries, Roos was quite willing that,
+after displaying the berries heaped in the bowl in a
+close-up, I should do the real eating with strawberry
+jam. It was that last which overcame my spell of
+&#8220;temperament.&#8221; Both Roos and Gordon already had
+me several pots down in the matter of jam consumption,
+and I was glad of the chance to climb back a
+notch.</p>
+
+<p>We found raspberry bushes by the acre but, thanks
+to the late storm, almost no berries. This didn&#8217;t matter
+seriously in the picking shot, for which I managed
+to convey a very realistic effect in pantomime, but for
+the heaped-high close-up of the bowl it was another
+matter. One scant handful was the best that the four
+of us, foraging for half an hour, could bring in. But<span class="pagenum">[Pg 40]</span>
+I soon figured a way to make these do. Opening a
+couple of tins of strawberry jam into the bowl, I
+rounded over smoothly the bright succulent mass and
+then made a close-set raspberry mosaic of one side of
+it. That did famously for the close-up. As I settled
+back for the berry-eating shot Roos cut in sharply
+with his usual: &#8220;Snappy now! Don&#8217;t be a foot-hog!&#8221;
+Gordon, who had been digging his toe into the mud for
+some minutes, evidently under considerable mental
+stress, lifted his head at the word. &#8220;Hadn&#8217;t you better
+say &#8216;jam-hog&#8217;, Mr. Roos?&#8221; he queried plaintively.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m afraid it wouldn&#8217;t be any use,&#8221; was the dejected
+reply. Roos was right. At the word &#8220;Action!&#8221;
+I dug in with my spoon on the unpaved side of
+the bowl of jam, and several turns before the crank
+ceased revolving there was nothing left but a few
+daubed raspberries and several broad red smears radiating
+from my mouth. Roos tossed the two empty
+jam tins into the murky torrent of Horse Thief
+Creek and watched them bob away down stream.
+&#8220;You&#8217;re getting too darn primitive,&#8221; he said peevishly.</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly eleven o&#8217;clock before Nixon came
+with the horses; but we had camp struck and the
+packs made, so there was little delay in taking the
+trail. The bottom of the valley continued fairly
+open for a few miles, with the swollen stream serpentining
+across it, turned hither and thither by huge logjams
+and fortress-like rock islands. Where the North
+Fork came tumbling into the main creek in a fine run
+of cascades there was a flat several acres in extent and
+good camping ground. Immediately above the valley
+narrowed to a steep-sided canyon, and continued<span class="pagenum">[Pg 41]</span>
+so all the way up to the snow and glacier-line. The
+trail from now on was badly torn and washed and
+frequently blocked with dead-falls. Or rather it had
+been so blocked up to a day or two previously. Now
+I understood the reason for Nixon&#8217;s complaisance
+when Harmon&#8217;s outfit, travelling in the rain, had
+passed our camp a couple of days before. &#8220;Don&#8217;t
+worry, sonny,&#8221; he had said in comforting the impetuous
+Roos; &#8220;we won&#8217;t lose any time, and we will save
+a lot of chopping.&#8221; And so it had worked out. Harmon&#8217;s
+men had cut the dead-falls out of the whole
+twelve miles of trail between North Fork and the
+Dragon-Tail Glacier.</p>
+
+<p>Even so it was a beastly stretch of trail. The
+stream, completely filling the bottom of the gorge,
+kept the path always far up the side of the mountain.
+There were few dangerous precipices, but one had
+always to be on the lookout to keep his head from
+banging on dead-falls just high enough to clear a
+pack, and which, therefore, no one would take the
+trouble to cut away. The close-growing shrubbery
+was dripping with moisture, and even riding second to
+Nixon, who must have got all the worst of it, I found
+myself drenched at the end of the first half mile.
+Riding through wet underbrush can wet a man as no
+rain ever could. No waterproof ever devised offers
+the least protection against it; nothing less than a safe
+deposit vault on wheels could do so.</p>
+
+<p>Streams, swollen by the now rapidly melting snow,
+came tumbling down&mdash;half cataract, half cascade&mdash;all
+along the way. At the worst crossings these had been
+roughly bridged, as little footing for men or horses<span class="pagenum">[Pg 42]</span>
+was afforded by the clean-swept rock. Only one
+crossing of the main stream was necessary. It was a
+good natural ford at low water, but quite out of the
+question to attempt at high. We found it about medium&mdash;a
+little more than belly deep and something
+like an eight-mile current. With a foot more water it
+would have commenced to get troublesome; with
+another two feet, really dangerous. That prospect,
+with the rapidly rising water, was reserved for our
+return trip.</p>
+
+<p>Such a road was, of course, wonderfully picturesque
+and colourful, and Roos, with a quick eye for an
+effective composition, made the most of his opportunities
+for &#8220;trail shots.&#8221; A picture of this kind,
+simple enough to look at on the screen, often took half
+an hour or more to make. The finding of a picturesque
+spot on the trail was only the beginning. This
+was useless unless the light was right and a satisfactory
+place to set up the tripod was available. When
+this latter was found, more often than not a tree or
+two had to be felled to open up the view to the trail.
+Then&mdash;as the party photographed had to be complete
+each time, and with nothing to suggest the presence of
+the movie camera or its operator&mdash;Roos&#8217; saddle horse
+and the animal carrying his outfit had to be shuttled
+along out of line and tied up where they would not get
+in the picture. This was always a ticklish operation on
+the narrow trails, and once or twice the sheer impossibility
+of segregating the superfluous animals caused
+Roos to forego extremely effective shots.</p>
+
+<p>The mountains became higher and higher, and
+steeper and steeper, the farther we fared. And the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 43]</span>
+greater the inclines, the more and more precarious
+was the hold of the winter&#8217;s snow upon the mountainsides.
+At last we climbed into a veritable zone of
+avalanches&mdash;a stretch where, for a number of miles,
+the deep-gouged troughs of the snow-slides followed
+each other like the gullies in a rain-washed mudbank.
+Slide-time was in the Spring, of course, so the
+only trouble we encountered was in passing over the
+terribly violated mountainsides. If the trail came to
+the track of an avalanche far up on the mountainside,
+it meant descending a cut-bank to the scoured bedrock,
+click-clacking along over this with the shod
+hooves of the horses striking sparks at every step for
+a hundred yards or more, and then climbing out again.
+If the path of the destroyer was encountered low
+down, near the river, the way onward led over a fifty-feet-high
+pile of upended trees, boulders and sand.
+In nearly every instance one could see where the
+slides had dammed the stream a hundred feet high or
+more, and here and there were visible swaths cut in
+the timber of the further side, where the buffer of
+the opposite mountain had served to check the onrush.</p>
+
+<p>The going for the horses was hard at all times, but
+worst perhaps where the dam of a slide had checked
+the natural drainage and formed a bottomless bog too
+large for the trail to avoid. Here the hard-blown
+animals floundered belly deep in mud and rotten
+wood, as did also their riders when they had to slide
+from the saddles to give their mounts a chance to reach
+a solid footing. The polished granite of the runways
+of the slide was almost as bad, for here the horses
+were repeatedly down from slipping. My air-tread<span class="pagenum">[Pg 44]</span>ing,
+toe-dancing &#8220;Grayback&#8221; of the morning was
+gone in the back and legs long before we reached the
+end. My weight and the pace (Nixon was driving
+hard to reach a camping place before a fresh gathering
+of storm clouds were ready to break) had proved
+too much for him. The fighting light was gone from
+his eye, his head was between his legs, and his breath
+was expelled with a force that seemed to be scouring
+the lining from his bleeding nostrils. Dropping back
+to slacken his girths and breathe him a moment before
+leading him up the last long run of zigzags, I heard
+the sobbing <i>diminuendo</i> of the packtrain die out in
+the sombre depths above. It was like the shudder of
+sounds that rise through a blow-hole where the sea
+waves are pounding hard on the mouth of a subterranean
+grotto.</p>
+
+<p>I had developed a warm and inclusive sympathy for
+&#8220;Grayback&#8221; before I reached the crest of that final
+shoulder of mountain we had to surmount, but lost
+most of it on the slide back to the valley when, in lieu
+of anything else to hand as he found himself slipping,
+he started to canter up my spine. I found Nixon and
+Jim throwing off packs on a narrow strip of moss-covered
+bottom between the drop-curtain of the fir-covered
+mountainside and the bank of the creek. It
+was practically the only place for a camp anywhere
+in the closely-walled valley. Slide-wreckage claimed
+all the rest of it. An upward trickle of lilac smoke a
+half mile above told where Harmon&#8217;s outfit had effected
+some sort of lodgment, but it was on a <i>geesly</i>
+slither of wet side-hill, Nixon said, and badly exposed<span class="pagenum">[Pg 45]</span>
+to the wind that was always sucking down from the
+glacier.</p>
+
+<p>The moss underfoot was saturated with water, but
+with an hour of daylight and pines close at hand this
+was a matter of small moment. We were well under
+cover by the time the snuffer of the darkness clapped
+sharply down, and with a good day&#8217;s supply of wood
+for stove and camp-fire piled up outside the tent.
+Not having stopped for lunch on the trail, we were
+all rather &#8220;peckish&#8221; (to use Nixon&#8217;s expression) by
+the time dinner was ready. After that there was
+nothing much to bother about. Nixon told goat hunting
+stories all evening, putting a fresh edge on his axe
+the while with a little round pocket whetstone. A
+Canadian guide is as cranky about his private and
+personal axe as a Chicago clothing drummer is about
+his razors. So it was only to be expected that Nixon
+took it a bit hard when Roos had employed his keenly
+whetted implement to crack open a hunk of quartz
+with. That was the reason, doubtless, why most of his
+stories had to do with the fool escapades of various of
+the <i>geesly</i> (that was Nixon&#8217;s favourite term of contempt,
+and a very expressive one it was) tenderfeet
+he had guided. But one of his yarns (and I think a
+true one) was of a time that he was caught by a storm
+at ten thousand feet in the Rockies and had to spend
+the night on the rocks a mile above the timber-line.
+Lightly dressed and without a blanket, the only protection
+he had from a temperature many degrees below
+freezing was from the carcasses of the two freshly-shot
+goats that had lured him there. Splitting these<span class="pagenum">[Pg 46]</span>
+down the middle with his hunting knife, he had covered
+himself with them, entrails and all, in the hope
+that the remaining animal heat would keep him alive
+till daylight. Man and goat were frozen to one stiff
+mass by morning, but the man had still enough vitality
+to crack himself loose and descend to his camp.
+The exposure and hardship some of these northwest
+mountaineers have survived is almost beyond belief.</p>
+
+<p>I went to sleep with the sizzle of snowflakes on the
+dying embers of the camp-fire in my ears, and awoke
+to find the tent roof sagging down on my ear under
+the weight of a heavy night&#8217;s fall. The storm was
+over for the moment, but the clouds were still lurking
+ominously above the glacier, and there was little light
+for pictures. Harmon, crossing the several channels
+of the creek on fallen logs, came over later in the day.
+He had been storm-bound ever since his arrival, he said,
+and had done nothing at all in taking either stills or
+movies yet. But fires and smoke were finished for the
+year now, he added philosophically, and it was his intention
+to remain until he got what he was after.
+Before he left he told me something of his work.
+&#8220;Stills,&#8221; it appeared, were the main thing with him;
+his movie work was carried on merely as a side-line to
+pay the expenses of trips he could not otherwise afford.
+He had been photographing in the Selkirks
+and Rockies for a dozen years, and he would not be
+content to rest until the sets of negatives&mdash;as nearly
+perfect as they could be made&mdash;of every notable peak
+and valley of western Canada. Then he was going to
+hold a grand exhibition of mountain photographs at
+Banff and retire. The Lake of the Hanging Gla<span class="pagenum">[Pg 47]</span>ciers
+was one of the very few great scenic features he
+had never photographed, and he only hoped he would
+be able to do it justice. The fine reverence of Harmon&#8217;s
+attitude toward the mountains that he loved
+was completely beyond Roos&#8217; ken. &#8220;I never worries
+about not doing &#8217;em justice&mdash;not for a minute. What
+does worry me is whether or not these cracked up lakes
+and glaciers are going to turn out worth my coming
+in to do justice to. Get me?&#8221; &#8220;Yes, I think so,&#8221; replied
+the veteran with a very patient smile.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page48" name="page48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER III<br />
+<br />
+AT THE GLACIER</h2>
+
+<p>Snow flurries kept us close to camp all that day.
+The next one, the sixteenth, was better, though
+still quite hopeless for movie work. After lunch we
+set out on foot for the big glacier, a mile above, from
+which the creek took its life. The clouds still hung
+too low to allow anything of the mountains to be seen,
+but one had the feeling of moving in a long narrow
+tunnel through which a cold jet of air was constantly
+being forced. A few hundred yards above our camp
+was a frightful zone of riven trees mixed with gravel
+and boulders. It was one of the strangest, one of the
+savagest spots I ever saw. It was the battle ground
+of two rival avalanches, Nixon explained, two great
+slides which, with the impetus of six or eight thousand
+feet of run driving uncounted millions of tons of snow
+and earth, met there every spring in primeval combat.
+No man had ever seen the fantastic onslaught (for
+no man could reach that point in the springtime), but
+it was certain that the remains of it made a mighty
+dam all the way across the valley. Then the creek
+would be backed up half way to the glacier, when it
+would accumulate enough power to sweep the obstruction
+away and scatter it down to the Columbia.</p>
+
+<p>Straight down the respective paths of the rival
+slides, and almost exactly opposite each other, tumbled
+two splendid cascades. The hovering storm clouds<span class="pagenum">[Pg 49]</span>
+cut off further view of them a few hundred feet above
+the valley, but Nixon said that they came plunging
+like that for thousands of feet, from far up into the
+belt of perpetual snow. The one to the east (which
+at the moment seemed to be leaping straight out of
+the heart of a sinister slaty-purple patch of cumulonimbus)
+drained the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers;
+that to the west a desolate rock and ice-walled valley
+which was rimmed by some of the highest summits in
+the Selkirks. Our road to the lake would be wet with
+the spray of the former for a good part of the distance.</p>
+
+<p>We were scrambling through a land of snow-slides
+all the way to the glacier. For the first half mile
+patches of stunted fir survived here and there,
+due to being located in the lee of some cliff or
+other rocky outcrop which served to deflect the springtime
+onslaughts from above; then all vegetation
+ceased and nothing but snow-churned and ice-ground
+rock fragments remained. All along the last quarter
+of a mile the successive stages of the glacier&#8217;s retreat
+were marked by great heaps of pulverized rock, like
+the tailings at the mouth of a mine. Only the face
+of the glacier and the yawning ice caves were visible
+under the cloud-pall. The queerly humped uplift of
+the &#8220;dragon&#8221; moraine could be dimly guessed in the
+shifting mists that whirled and eddied in the icy
+draughts from the caves.</p>
+
+<p>Our principal object in going up to the grottoes on
+so inclement a day was to experiment with our dynamite
+on the ice, with a view to turning our knowledge
+to practical use in making artificial icebergs for the
+movies in the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers. Se<span class="pagenum">[Pg 50]</span>lecting
+what looked like a favourable spot at the base
+of what seemed a &#8220;fracturable&#8221; pinnacle of grey-green
+ice, we dug a three-feet-deep hole with a long-handled
+chisel, pushed in two sticks of sixty per cent.
+dynamite, tamped it hard with snow after attaching
+a lengthy fuse, touched a match to the latter and retired
+to a safe distance. The result, to put it in Roos&#8217;
+latest imported slang, was an &#8220;oil can,&#8221; which connotes
+about the same thing as fizzle, I took it. There&#8217;s
+a deal of kick in two sticks of &#8220;sixty per&#8221; set off in
+rock, but here it was simply an exuberant &#8220;whouf&#8221;
+after the manner of a blowing porpoise. A jet of soft
+snow and ice shot up some distance, but the pinnacle
+never trembled. And the hole opened up was smooth-sided
+and clean, as if melted out with hot water. Not
+the beginning of a crack radiated from it. Jim
+opined that a slower burning powder might crack ice,
+but there was certainly no hope of &#8220;sixty per&#8221; doing
+the trick. It was evident that we would have to find
+some other way of making artificial icebergs. We
+did. We made them of rock. But I won&#8217;t anticipate.</p>
+
+<p>It snowed again in the night, snowed itself out for a
+while. The following morning it was warm and brilliantly
+clear, and for the first time there was a chance
+to see what sort of a place it was to which we had entered.
+For a space the height and abruptness of the
+encompassing walls seemed almost appalling; it was
+more like looking up out of an immeasurably vast
+crater than from a valley. All around there were
+thousands of feet of sheer rocky cliff upon which no
+snow could effect a lodgment; and above these more
+thousands of feet solid with the glittering green of<span class="pagenum">[Pg 51]</span>
+glacial ice and the polished marble of eternal snow.
+The jagged patch of sky was a vivid imperial blue,
+bright and solid-looking like a fragment of rich old
+porcelain. The morning sun, cutting through the
+sharp notches between the southeastern peaks, was
+dappling the snow fields of the western walls in gay
+splashes of flaming rose and saffron, interspersed
+with mottled shadows of indigo and deep purple.
+Reflected back to the still shadowed slopes of the
+eastern walls, these bolder colours became a blended
+iridescence of amethyst, lemon and pale misty lavender.
+The creek flowed steely cold, with fluffs of grey-wool
+on the riffles. The tree patches were black, dead
+funereal black, throwing back no ray of light from
+their down-swooping branches. The air was so clear
+that it seemed almost to have assumed a palpability of
+its own. One imagined things floating in it; even that
+it might tinkle to the snip of a finger nail, like a crystal
+rim.</p>
+
+<p>In movies as in hay-making, one has to step lively
+while the sun shines. This was the first good shooting
+light we had had, and no time was lost in taking advantage
+of it. Long before the sun had reached the
+bottom of the valley we were picking our way up
+toward the foot of the glacier, this time on horseback.
+Early as we had started, the enterprising Harmon had
+been still earlier. He was finishing his shots of the
+face of the glacier and the mouth of the ice caves as
+we came up. He would now leave the field clear for
+Roos for an hour, he said, while he climbed to the
+cliffs above the glacier to make a goat-hunting picture.
+That finished, he would return and, by the light of his<span class="pagenum">[Pg 52]</span>
+flares both parties could shoot the interior of the ice
+caves. Before starting on his long climb, Harmon
+briefly outlined the scenario of his &#8220;goat&#8221; picture,
+part of which had already been shot. Two prospectors&mdash;impersonated
+by his guide and packer&mdash;having
+been in the mountains for many weeks without a
+change of diet, had become terribly sick of bacon.
+Finally, when one of them had disgustedly thrown
+his plate of it on the ground, even the camp dog, after
+a contemptuous sniff, had turned his back. He had
+had no trouble in getting the men to register &#8220;disgust,&#8221;
+Harmon explained, but that &#8220;contemptuous
+sniff&#8221; business with the dog was more difficult. After
+their voracious Airedale pup had wolfed three plates
+of bacon without paying the least heed to the director&#8217;s
+attempts to frighten him off at the psychological moment,
+they had tried thin strips of birch-bark, trimmed
+to represent curling rashers. Even these the hungry
+canine had persisted in licking, probably because they
+came from a greasy plate. Finally Harmon hit upon
+the expedient of anointing the birch-bark rashers with
+some of the iodine carried as an antiseptic in the event
+of cuts and scratches. &#8220;If the pup ate it, of course it
+would die,&#8221; he explained; &#8220;but that would be no more
+than he deserved in such a case.&#8221; But the plan worked
+perfectly. After his first eager lick, the outraged
+canine had &#8220;sniffed contemptuously&#8221; at the pungent
+fumes of the iodine, and then backed out of the picture
+with a wolfish snarl on his lifted lip.</p>
+
+<p><a id="page52" name="page52"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/illo_088a.jpg" width="600" height="397" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff<br />
+LOOKING TOWARD THE ENTRANCE OF THE ICE CAVE</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><a id="page53" name="page53"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/illo_089.jpg" width="600" height="398" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff<br />
+WHERE THE HANGING GLACIER IS ABOUT TO FALL</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Then the packer registered &#8220;fresh meat hunger&#8221;
+(&#8220;cut-in&#8221; of a butcher shop to be made later), immediately
+after which the guide pointed to the cliffs
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 53]</span>above the camp where some wild goats were frisking.
+By the aid of his long-distance lens, Harmon had shot
+the goats as they would appear through the binoculars
+the guide and packers excitedly passed back and forth
+between them. And now they were going forth to
+shoot the goats. Or rather they were going forth to
+&#8220;shoot&#8221; the goats, for these had already been shot
+with a rifle. In order to avoid loss of time in packing
+his cumbersome apparatus about over the cliffs, Harmon
+had sent out Conrad, his Swiss guide, the previous
+afternoon, with orders to shoot a goat&mdash;as fine a
+specimen as possible&mdash;and leave it in some picturesque
+spot where a re-shooting could be &#8220;shot&#8221; with the
+camera when the clouds lifted. The keen-eyed Tyrolese
+had experienced little difficulty in bringing down
+two goats. One of these&mdash;a huge &#8220;Billy&#8221;&mdash;he had
+left at the brink of a cliff a couple of thousand feet
+above the big glacier, and the other&mdash;a half-grown
+kid&mdash;he had brought into camp to cut up for the
+&#8220;meat-guzzling&#8221; shots with which guide, packer and
+canine were to indulge in as a finale. It was a cleverly
+conceived &#8220;nature&#8221; picture, one with a distinct
+&#8220;educational&#8221; value; or at least it was such when
+viewed from &#8220;behind the camera.&#8221; Roos was plainly
+jealous over it, but, as he had no goats of his own, and
+as Harmon&#8217;s goat was hardly likely to be &#8220;borrowable&#8221;
+after bouncing on rock pinnacles for a thousand
+feet, there was nothing to do about it. He would have
+to make up by putting it over Harmon on his &#8220;glacier
+stuff,&#8221; he said philosophically. And he did; though it
+was only through the virtuosity of his chief actor.</p>
+
+<p>Harmon had confined his glacier shots to one of his<span class="pagenum">[Pg 54]</span>
+party riding up over the rocks, and another of it
+grouped at the entrance of the largest cave and looking
+in. Being an old mountaineer, he was disinclined
+to take any unnecessary chances in stirring up a racket
+under hanging ice. Roos was new to the mountains,
+so didn&#8217;t labour under any such handicap. His idea
+was to bring the whole outfit right up the middle of the
+stream and on into the cave. The approach and the
+entrance into the mouth of the cave were to be shot
+first from the outside, and then, in silhouette, from the
+inside.</p>
+
+<p>Nixon, pointing out that the roof of the cave had
+settled two or three feet since we were there yesterday
+and that the heat seemed to be honeycombing all the
+lower end of the glacier pretty badly, said that he
+didn&#8217;t like the idea of taking horses inside, but would
+do so if it would make a better picture that way. He
+was quite willing to take chances if there was any
+reason for it. But what he did object to was trying
+to take the horses up the middle of the stream over big
+boulders when it would be perfectly plain to any one
+who saw the picture that there was comparatively
+smooth going on either side. &#8220;You can easy break a
+hawss&#8217; leg in one of them <i>geesly</i> holes,&#8221; he complained;
+&#8220;but the loss of a hawss isn&#8217;t a patch to what
+I&#8217;d feel to have some guy that I&#8217;ve worked with see the
+pictur&#8217; and think I picked that sluiceway as the best
+way up.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Roos replied with a rush of technical argument in
+which there was much about &#8220;continuity&#8221; and &#8220;back-lighting,&#8221;
+and something about using the &#8220;trick crank
+so that the action can be speeded up when it&#8217;s run.&#8221;<span class="pagenum">[Pg 55]</span>
+Not knowing the answer to any of this, Nixon finally
+shrugged his shoulders helplessly and signalled for
+Jim to bring up the horses. There was no need of a
+&#8220;trick crank&#8221; to speed up the action in the stream, for
+that glacial torrent, a veritable cascade, had carried
+away everything in its course save boulders four or
+five feet high. Nixon, in a bit of a temper, hit the
+ditch as though he were riding a steeplechase. So did
+Jim and Gordon. All three of them floundered
+through without mishap. &#8220;Grayback&#8221; tried to climb
+up on the tip of a submerged boulder, slipped with all
+four feet at once and went over sidewise. I kicked
+out my stirrups, but hit the water head first, getting
+considerably rolled and more than considerably wet.
+To Roos&#8217; great indignation, this occurred just outside
+the picture, but he had the delicacy not to ask me to
+do it over again.</p>
+
+<p>Taking the horses inside the cave was a distinctly
+ticklish performance, though there could be no question
+of its effectiveness as a picture. Roos set up a
+hundred feet in from the fifty-feet-wide, twenty-feet-high
+mouth and directed us to ride forward until a
+broad splashing jet of water from the roof blocked
+our way, and then swing round and beat it out. &#8220;Beat
+it out snappy!&#8221; he repeated. &#8220;Get me?&#8221; &#8220;Yep, <i>I</i> got
+you,&#8221; muttered Nixon; &#8220;you&#8217;re in luck if nothin&#8217; else
+does.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The ice that arched above the entrance looked to me
+like the salt-eaten packing round an ice-cream can as
+we pushed up and under it. The horses could hardly
+have noticed this, and it must have been their instincts&mdash;their
+good sound horse-sense&mdash;that warned them<span class="pagenum">[Pg 56]</span>
+that a dark hole full of hollow crackings and groanings
+and the roar of falling water was no place for self-respecting
+equines to venture. It took a deal of spurring
+and swearing to force them inside, and most of
+the linear distance gained was covered in circles on
+their hind legs. It was old &#8220;Grayback&#8221; whose nerves
+gave way first; he that started the stampede back to
+light and sunshine. There was no question but what
+we &#8220;beat it snappy.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Roos came out rubbing his hands gleefully. &#8220;That
+photographed like a million dollars,&#8221; he cried with
+enthusiasm. &#8220;Now just one thing more....&#8221;
+And forthwith he revealed what had been in his heart
+ever since he chanced onto that &#8220;natural shower bath&#8221;
+in the cave the previous afternoon. No one could deny
+that it was a natural shower bath. And since it <i>was</i>
+a natural shower bath, what could be more natural
+than for some one to take a shower under it? How
+would Nixon feel about trying it? Or Jim? He admitted
+that it might be something of a shock, but he
+was willing to make that all right. Would ten dollars
+be fair? Or say twenty? Or why not twenty-five?
+He knew Mr. Chester didn&#8217;t reckon cost when it was
+a question of getting a high class, he might say a
+unique, picture. Now which should it be? Nixon, a
+bit snappily, said his rheumatism put him out of the
+running, and Jim was equally decided. Money
+wouldn&#8217;t tempt him to go even into the Columbia at
+Windermere, let alone a liquid icicle under a glacier.</p>
+
+<p>And right then and there I did a thing which Roos
+maintained to the end of our partnership repaid him
+for all the grief and worry I had caused him to date,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 57]</span>
+and much that was still to accrue. &#8220;Since I&#8217;ve got
+to take a bath and dry these wet togs out sooner or
+later,&#8221; I said with a great assumption of nonchalance,
+&#8220;perhaps the ice cave will do as well as anywhere else.
+Just promise me you won&#8217;t spring a flare on the scene,
+and build a fire to dry my clothes by....&#8221; Roos
+was gathering wood for a fire before I finished speaking.
+As for the flares, Harmon had not given him
+any yet. It was only a silhouette he wanted&mdash;but
+that would show up like a million dollars in the spray
+and ice. There never had been such a picture; perhaps
+would never be again. I wasn&#8217;t joking, was I?
+And primitive....</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Go on and set up,&#8221; I cut in with. &#8220;I&#8217;ll be there
+by the time you&#8217;re ready to shoot. And don&#8217;t ever
+let me hear you say primitive again. Oh, yes&mdash;and
+you needn&#8217;t remind me to &#8216;Be snappy!&#8217; There won&#8217;t
+be any trouble on that score. Just make sure your
+lens is fast enough to catch the action.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I&#8217;ve had many a plunge overboard off the California
+coast that shocked me more than that &#8220;natural
+shower bath&#8221; did, but never a one with so exhilarant
+a reaction. Stripping off my wet clothes by the fire,
+I slipped into my big hooded &#8220;lammy&#8221; coat and hippity-hopped
+into the cave. Roos, set up ten yards
+inside the splashing jet from the roof, was already
+standing by to shoot. At his call of &#8220;Action!&#8221; I
+jumped out of my coat and into the black, unsparkling
+column of water. There was a sharp sting to the impact,
+but it imparted nothing of the numbing ache
+that accompanies immersion in water a number of
+degrees less cold than this&mdash;a feeling which I came<span class="pagenum">[Pg 58]</span>
+later to know only too well on the Columbia. Nixon
+had warned me against tempting Providence again
+by making any unnecessary racket in the cave, but it
+was no use. No one could have the fun that I was
+having and not holler. It was against nature.
+Whooping like a Comanche, I continued my hydro-terpsichorean
+revel until a muffled &#8220;Nuff&#8221; from Roos
+called a halt. He had come to the end of his roll.
+I have been in more of a shiver coming out of the
+Adriatic at the Lido in August than I was when I
+ambled back to dry off by the fire and the sunshine.
+Glowing with warmth, I even loafed along with my
+dressing, as one does at Waikiki.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;d make a fortune pulling the rough stuff in
+the movies,&#8221; Roos exclaimed, patting me on the back.
+&#8220;You&#8217;ve got everything the real gripping cave-man
+<i>has</i> to have&mdash;size, beef, a suggestion of brutal, elemental
+force, primitive....&#8221; I chucked a burning
+brand at him and went over to borrow Nixon&#8217;s
+glass. A shot from far up the cliffs told that Harmon&#8217;s
+&#8220;goat-hunt&#8221; was in full cry. The real thrill
+of the day was about to come off; rather more of a
+thrill, indeed, than any one was prepared for, Harmon
+included.</p>
+
+<p><a id="page58" name="page58"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/illo_096.jpg" width="600" height="465" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">MY SHOWER BATH IN AN ICE CAVE <i>(left)</i><br />
+WARMING UP AFTER MY GLACIAL SHOWER BATH <i>(right)</i></span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><a id="page59" name="page59"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 459px;">
+<img src="images/illo_097.jpg" width="459" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">ROSS AND HARMON. DRAGON MORAINE IN DISTANCE (<i>above</i>)<br />
+THE HORSES IN THE MOUTH OF THE ICE CAVE (<i>below</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>While we had been filming our &#8220;cave stuff&#8221; Harmon
+had finished setting the stage for his picture.
+He had two shots to make&mdash;one of his packers firing
+at the goat at the top of the cliff, and the other of
+the body of the goat falling to the glacier. Conrad,
+the Tyrolean, climbing like a fly, had scaled the face
+of the cliff and was standing by for the signal to start
+the goat &#8220;falling.&#8221; The shot which had attracted my
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 59]</span>attention had been the packer discharging his rifle
+at the goat, which had been propped up in a life-like
+position, as though peering down onto the glacier.
+Harmon was still cranking when I got him in focus,
+while the packer had jumped to his feet and was
+executing a <i>pas seul</i> evidently intended to convey the
+impression he had made a hit. A curl of blue smoke
+from his rifle was still floating in the air. They had
+contrived that effective little touch by dribbling a bit
+of melted butter down the barrel before firing.
+Smokeless powder is hardly &#8220;tell-tale&#8221; enough for
+movie work.</p>
+
+<p>Harmon now moved over and set up at the foot of
+the cliff, apparently to get as near as possible to the
+point where the goat was going to hit. As the sequel
+proves, he judged his position to a hair. Now he made
+his signal. I saw the flutter of his handkerchief. The
+goat gave a convulsive leap, and then shot straight out
+over the brink of the cliff. From where we stood I
+could plainly see the useful Conrad &#8220;pulling the
+strings,&#8221; but from where Harmon was set up this
+would hardly show. He was too careful to overlook a
+point like that in a &#8220;nature picture.&#8221; The white body
+caromed sharply off a couple of projecting ledges,
+and then, gathering momentum, began to describe a
+great parabola which promised to carry it right to the
+foot of the cliff.</p>
+
+<p>I had kept my eyes glued to the glass from the
+start, but it was Nixon&#8217;s unaided vision which was
+first to catch the drift of what was impending. &#8220;You
+couldn&#8217;t drive a six-hawss team &#8217;tween the side o&#8217;
+Mista Ha&#8217;mon&#8217;s head and the trail in the air that<span class="pagenum">[Pg 60]</span>
+<i>geesly</i> goat&#8217;s going to make passing by,&#8221; he said with
+a calculating drawl. &#8220;Not so su&#8217; you could squeeze a
+pack-hawss through.&#8221; Then, a couple of seconds
+later: &#8220;No&#8217; ev&#8217;n a big dawg.&#8221; And almost immediately:
+&#8220;By Gawd, it&#8217;s going to get him!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And that surely was what it looked like, to every
+one at least but the calmly cranking Harmon. He
+went on humping his back above the finder, and I
+could see the even rise and fall of his elbow against
+the snow. The dot of white had become a streak of
+grey, and it was the swift augmentation of this in
+his finder which finally (as he told me later) caused
+Harmon suddenly to duck. To me it looked as if
+the flying streak had passed right through him, but he
+was still there at the foot of his tripod after the Bolt
+of Wrath, striking the surface of the glacier with a
+resounding impact, threw up a fountain of pulverized
+snow and laid still. He was never quite sure whether
+it was the almost solid cushion of air or a side-swipe
+from a hoof or horn that joggled the tripod out of
+true. It was a near squeeze, for the flying body,
+which must have weighed all of two hundred pounds,
+was frozen hard as a rock. Conrad came staggering
+down with the remnants of the battered trunk over his
+shoulders. Only the heart and liver were fit to eat.
+The rest was a sausage of churned meat and bone
+splinters. There was no question about its fall having
+limbered it up.</p>
+
+<p>The illumination of the cave by the calcium flares
+was beautiful beyond words to describe, or at least so
+I was told. The first one was a failure, through the
+outward draught of air carrying the smoke back onto<span class="pagenum">[Pg 61]</span>
+the cameras. I had set this off in a side gallery, about
+a hundred yards in from the mouth, with the idea of
+throwing a sort of concealed back light. Foolishly
+opening my eyes while the calcium was burning, I was
+completely blinded by the intense glare and did not
+regain my sight for several minutes. Harmon&#8217;s
+packer, who held the next flare set off&mdash;this time to
+the leeward of the cameras&mdash;had still worse luck. A
+flake of the sputtering calcium kicked back up his
+sleeve and inflicted a raw, round burn with half the
+colours of the spectrum showing in its concentric rings
+of singed cuticle. The chap displayed astonishing
+nerve in refusing to relinquish his grip on the handle
+of the flare and thus ruin the picture. I most certainly
+would never have done so myself. Roos described
+the glittering ice walls as a &#8220;veritable
+Aladdin&#8217;s Cave of jewels,&#8221; and only regretted that he
+couldn&#8217;t have had that lighting on my shower-bath.</p>
+
+<p>That night we tried a camp-fire scene by flare.
+Roos set up on the further bank of the side channel
+of the creek which flowed past the tent. Between the
+door of the tent and the water a hole was dug in such
+a way that light from it would shine on a group in
+front of the tent but not on the lens of the camera.
+The glow from a flare burning in this hole represented
+the camp-fire. I was supposed to stroll up and tell
+a jovial story to Nixon, Jim and Gordon, who were
+to be &#8220;picked up&#8221; already seated around the fire. I
+made my entrance very snappily, but, unluckily, the
+blanket roll upon which I sat down spread out and
+let me back against the corner of the glowing sheet-iron
+stove, which was set up just inside the tent open<span class="pagenum">[Pg 62]</span>ing.
+Seeing I had not rolled out of the picture, Roos
+shouted for me to carry on, as it was the last flare.
+So, with the reek of burning wool rising behind me,
+I did carry on, making plausible gestures intended
+to convey the idea that the bit of comedy was just a
+humorous piece of by-play of my own. I carried on
+for something over half a minute. The only circumstance
+that prevented my carrying on my back the
+print of the corner of the stove for the rest of my
+days was the fact that the combined thicknesses of my
+duffle coat, lumberman&#8217;s shirt, sweater and heavy
+woollen undershirt were interposed to absorb the heat.
+The duffle coat was the worst sufferer, coming out
+with a bar-sinister branded most of the way through
+its half inch of pressed brown wool.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page63" name="page63">[Pg 63]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV<br />
+<br />
+THE LAKE OF THE HANGING GLACIERS</h2>
+
+<p>It was now neck-or-nothing with the Lake of the
+Hanging Glaciers picture. Having already been out
+much longer than we had expected to be, there were
+left only provisions for two days. Nixon had suggested
+making a hurried trip out and bringing in fresh
+supplies, but as the time set by Chester for his arrival
+for the Big Bend trip was already past, I did not
+feel warranted in prolonging the present jaunt any
+further. If the morrow was fair all would be well;
+if not, the main object of our trip would be defeated.</p>
+
+<p>By great good luck the clear weather held. There
+was not a cloud hovering above the mountains at daybreak
+the following morning, and we got away for
+an early start to make the most of our opportunity.
+Nixon himself had run and cut out the trail to the
+Lake earlier in the summer, but horses had never been
+taken over it. Though it was extremely steep in
+pitches, our maiden passage was marked with few
+difficulties. Much to Nixon&#8217;s surprise and satisfaction,
+only one big dead-fall had been thrown down to
+block the way, and our enforced halt here gave Roos
+the opportunity for a very effective &#8220;trail shot.&#8221; He
+also got some striking &#8220;back-lighting stuff&#8221; at spots
+along the interminable cascade that was tumbling and
+bounding beside the trail. The elevation of our camp
+on the creek was something like six thousand feet, and<span class="pagenum">[Pg 64]</span>
+that of the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers a bit under
+eight thousand. The trail is between three and four
+miles long, and we were rather over two hours in making
+the climb. There were several halts out of this;
+steady plugging would do it much quicker.</p>
+
+<p>Timber-line was passed half a mile below the lake,
+the last of the trees being left behind in a wonderful
+little mountain park studded with gnarled pines and
+still bright with late wild flowers. The autumn
+colouring here was a marvellous chromatic revel in
+dull golds and soft, subdued browns&mdash;the shedding
+tamaracks and the dying meadow grasses.</p>
+
+<p>Clambering on foot up a steep-sided hillock that
+appeared to be an ancient glacial moraine augmented
+by many slides, we suddenly found ourselves on the
+edge of the high-water level of the lake. The transition
+from the flower-strewn meadow to a region of
+almost Arctic frigidity was practically instantaneous&mdash;the
+matter of a half dozen steps. One moment we
+were climbing in a cliff-walled valley, with rocky
+buttresses and pinnacles soaring for thousands of feet
+on either side, and with brown-black gravel and thinning
+brown-grey bunch grass under foot and ahead;
+the next, as we gained the crest of the old terminal
+moraine, the landscape opened up with a blinding
+flash and we were gazing at a sparkling emerald lake
+clipped in the embrace of an amphitheatre of glaciers
+and eternal snow, and floating full of icebergs and
+marble-mottled shadows. The &#8220;Hanging Glacier&#8221;&mdash;perhaps
+a mile wide across its face, and rearing a
+solid wall of ice a couple of hundred feet in the sheer&mdash;closed
+the further or southeastern end of the lake.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 65]</span>
+Behind the glacier was a cliff of two thousand feet or
+more in height. It appeared to be almost solid ice
+and snow, but must have been heavily underlaid with
+native rock to maintain its abruptness as it did.
+Higher still a snow-cap, bright and smooth as polished
+marble, extended to the crest of the range and
+formed a glittering line against the cobalt of the sky.
+Of all the scenic gems of the North American continent,
+I recall none which is so well entitled to the
+characterization of &#8220;unique&#8221; as this white-flaming
+little jewel of the high Selkirks.</p>
+
+<p>The lake was now rapidly receding to its winter
+low-water level, and to reach its brink we had to
+press on across three hundred yards of black boulders
+which were evidently covered in the time of the late
+spring floods. Ordinarily one would have expected
+the worst kind of rough and slippery walking here,
+but, to my great surprise, the great rocks were set as
+solid and as level as a pavement of mosaic. The reason
+for this became plain when we approached the
+water, where a flotilla of small icebergs, rising and
+falling to the waves kicked up by the brisk breeze
+drawing down the lake, were steadily thump-thumping
+the bottom with dull heavy blows which could be
+felt underfoot a hundred yards away. This natural
+tamping, going on incessantly during the months of
+high-water, was responsible for the surprising smoothness
+of the rocky waste uncovered by the winter recession.
+The great boulders had literally been hammered
+flat.</p>
+
+<p>The icebergs, which were formed by the cracking
+off of the face of the great glacier filled half of the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 66]</span>
+lake. They varied in size from almost totally submerged
+chunks a few feet in diameter to huge floating
+islands of several hundred. They were of the most
+fantastic shapes, especially those which had been
+longest adrift and therefore most exposed to the capricious
+action of the sun. By and large, the effect
+was that of a Gargantuan bowl sprinkled with puffy
+white popcorn. But if one took his time and searched
+carefully enough there were very few things of heaven
+or earth that were not represented in the amazing
+collection. One berg, floating on another, had been
+reduced by the sun to the seeming of a gigantic view
+camera&mdash;box, bellows and lens. A number of famous
+groups of statuary were there, but of course very
+much in the rough. &#8220;The Thinker&#8221; was perhaps the
+best of these, but even Rodin would have wanted to
+do a bit more &#8220;finishing&#8221; on the glacial cave-man
+humped up on his icy green pedestal. Roos, who had
+never heard of Rodin, said it reminded him of me
+drying out after my shower-bath in the ice-cave. His
+facile imagination also discovered something else. He
+had once seen a picture of &#8220;Lohengrin&#8217;s Farewell&#8221;
+in a Victrola record price-list, and there was a much
+sun-licked hunk of ice, very near the shore, which suggested
+the barge to him, swans and all. I saw the
+barge all right, but the Pegasus of my imagination
+had to have some spurring before he would take the
+&#8220;swan&#8221; hurdle.</p>
+
+<p><a id="page66" name="page66"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/illo_106.jpg" width="600" height="399" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff<br />
+LOOKING ACROSS THE LAKE OF THE HANGING GLACIERS</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><a id="page67" name="page67"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/illo_107.jpg" width="600" height="397" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff<br />
+THE LAKE OF THE HANGING GLACIERS, TAKEN FROM THE ICE WALLS, LOOKING NORTH</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was Roos&#8217; idea that I should swim off, clamber
+over the side of the barge, lassoo the &#8220;near&#8221; swan
+with a piece of pack-rope to represent reins, and let
+him shoot me as &#8220;Lohengrin.&#8221; It wouldn&#8217;t exactly
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 67]</span>run into the &#8220;continuity&#8221; of the &#8220;sportsman&#8221; picture,
+he admitted; but he thought that Chester might use
+it, with a lot of other odds and ends, under some such
+title as &#8220;Queer People in Queer Places.&#8221; The idea
+appealed to me strongly. &#8220;Lohengrin&#8217;s Farewell&#8221; had
+always moved me strangely; and here was a chance
+actually to appear in the classic rôle! &#8220;You bet I&#8217;ll
+do it,&#8221; I assented readily. &#8220;What shall I wear?&#8221;
+The &#8220;Shining Armour,&#8221; which we both seemed to
+connect with &#8220;Lohengrin,&#8221; happened to be one of the
+things not brought up in our saddle-bags that morning.
+We were in a hot discussion as to the best manner
+of improvising a helmet and cuirass out of condensed
+milk and sardine tins, when Nixon, asking if we knew
+that the sun only shone about three hours a day in
+that &#8220;<i>geesly</i> crack in the hills,&#8221; dryly opined that we
+should take our pictures of the lake while there was
+plenty of light. That sounded sensible, and we
+started feverishly to hurry through with the routine
+grind so as to be free to do proper justice to &#8220;Lohengrin.&#8221;
+As Fate would have it, however, that which
+was presently revealed to me of the ways of fresh-water
+icebergs quenched effectually my desire to swim
+off and take liberties with the capricious things at
+close quarters.</p>
+
+<p>After making a number of scenic shots, Roos announced
+that he was ready to go ahead with the &#8220;falling
+iceberg&#8221; stuff. As it was quite out of the question
+making our way along the base of the cliffs on either
+side of the lake to the face of the glacier in the limited
+time at our disposal, and, moreover, as we had already
+demonstrated the impossibility of making artificial<span class="pagenum">[Pg 68]</span>
+icebergs with &#8220;sixty per&#8221; dynamite, it became necessary
+to improvise something closer at hand. It was
+Roos&#8217; idea that a piece of cliff cracked off into the
+lake might produce the effect desired, especially if
+&#8220;cut&#8221; with discrimination. &#8220;Here&#8217;s the way it goes,&#8221;
+he explained. &#8220;The cracked off rock plunks down
+into the lake right into the middle of a bunch of floating
+icebergs. I starts cranking at the splash, and
+with the bergs all rolling about and bumping into
+each other no one can tell but what it was one of them
+that really started it. Then I&#8217;ll pick you up hopping
+up and down on the bank and registering &#8216;surprise&#8217;
+and &#8216;consternation&#8217;; and then follow with a close-up
+of you standing on that high rock, looking down on
+the quieting waves with folded arms. Now you register
+&#8216;relief&#8217; and finally a sort of &#8216;awed wonder.&#8217; Then
+you take a big breath and raise your eyes to the face
+of the glacier. You keep right on registering &#8216;awed
+wonder&#8217; (only more intense) and as I fade you out you
+shake your head slowly as if the mighty mysteries of
+Nature were beyond your understanding. Get me?
+They ought to colour the film for that dark blue in the
+laboratory (I could tell &#8217;em just the solution to make
+that ice look cold), and the sub-title ought to be &#8216;The
+Birth of an Iceberg,&#8217; and....&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Jim&#8217;s the midwife, is he?&#8221; I cut in. &#8220;Yes, I get
+you. Tell him to uncork some of that &#8216;sixty per&#8217; &#8216;Twilight
+Sleep&#8217; of his and I&#8217;ll stand by for the christening.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>After a careful technical examination of the terrain,
+Jim, chief &#8220;Powder Monkey,&#8221; located what he
+thought was a favourable spot for operations and<span class="pagenum">[Pg 69]</span>
+started to enlarge a thin crack in the cliff to make it
+take five sticks of dynamite. That was more than
+half of our remaining stock; but Roos was insisting
+on a big iceberg, and plenty of powder was the best
+way to insure success. It must have been the tamping
+that was at the bottom of the trouble, for moss and
+damp earth are hardly solid enough to deflect the
+kick of the dynamite in the desired direction. At any
+rate, although there was a roaring detonation, the
+mighty force released was expended outward rather
+than inward. The face of the cliff hardly shivered,
+and only an inconsiderable trickle of broken rocks
+and sand slid down into the lake. Too sore to take
+more than hostile notice of Nixon&#8217;s somewhat rough
+and ready little <i>mot</i> about the &#8220;&#8216;Birth o&#8217; the Iceberg&#8217;
+turning out a <i>geesly</i> miscarriage,&#8221; Roos clapped the
+cap over his lens, unscrewed the crank and began
+taking his camera off its tripod. That rather hasty
+action was responsible for his missing by a hair what
+I am certain was the greatest opportunity ever presented
+to a moving picture operator to film one of the
+most stupendous of Nature&#8217;s manifestations.</p>
+
+<p>The roar of the detonating dynamite reverberated
+for half a minute or more among the cliffs and peaks,
+and it was just after the last roll had died out that
+a renewed rumble caused me to direct a searching gaze
+to the great wall of ice and snow that towered above
+the farther end of the lake. For an instant I could
+not believe my eyes. It could not be possible that the
+whole mountainside was toppling over! And yet that
+was decidedly the effect at a first glance. From the
+rim of the snow-cap down to the back of the glacier<span class="pagenum">[Pg 70]</span>&mdash;a
+mile wide and two thousand feet high&mdash;there was
+one solid, unbroken Niagara of glittering, coruscant
+ice and snow. Like a curtain strung with diamonds
+and pearls and opals it streamed, while the shower of
+flaming colours was reflected in the quivering waters
+of the lake in fluttering scarves of sun-shot scarlet, in
+tenuous ribbons of lavender, jade and primrose. It
+was only when the last shreds of this marvellous
+banner had ceased to stream (at the end of thirty or
+forty seconds perhaps) that I saw what it was that had
+caused it. The whole hair-poised brink of the great
+snow-cap&mdash;sharply jolted, doubtless, by the explosion
+of the dynamite&mdash;had cracked away and precipitated
+itself to the glacier level, nearly half a mile below.
+The shock to the latter appeared to have had the effect
+of jarring it sufficiently to crack down great blocks
+all along its face. The glacier had, in fact, been
+shocked into giving birth to a whole litter of real icebergs
+where, nearer at hand, we had failed dismally
+in our efforts to incubate even an artificial one. As
+glacial obstetricians it appeared that we still had
+much to learn.</p>
+
+<p>Roos made a great effort to get his camera set up
+again in time to make it record something of the wonderful
+spectacle. He was just too late, however.
+Only a few thin trickles of snow were streaking the
+face of the cliff when he finally swung his powerful
+tele-photo lens upon it, and even these had ceased before
+he had found his focus. It was no end of a pity.
+I saw several of the great <i>valangas</i> started by the
+Austrian and Italian artillery in the Dolomites, and,
+previous to that, what I had thought were very con<span class="pagenum">[Pg 71]</span>siderable
+slides on Aconcagua and Chimborazi, in the
+Andes, and on Kinchinjunga and among the hanging
+ice-fields above the Zoji-la in the Himalayas. But
+any half dozen of the greatest of these would have
+been lost in that mighty avalanche of ice and snow
+that we saw descend above the Lake of the Hanging
+Glaciers. Nixon, with a lifetime spent in the Selkirks
+and Rockies, said he had never seen anything to compare
+with it.</p>
+
+<p>Jim, reporting that he still had three sticks of dynamite
+in hand, said he reckoned there might be a better
+chance of starting an &#8220;iceberg&#8221; on the southern side
+of the lake than on the northern one, where we had
+failed to accomplish anything. The southern slope
+was even more precipitous than the northern, he
+pointed out, and he had his eye on a rock which looked
+as if a charge might turn it over and start it rolling.
+&#8220;You never can tell what you may be startin&#8217; among
+a bunch o&#8217; tiltin&#8217; rocks like them &#8217;uns,&#8221; he said hopefully.
+Nixon&#8217;s muttered &#8220;That ain&#8217;t no <i>geesly</i> hooch
+dream&#8221; might have meant several things; but I took
+it that he intended to imply that there was too much
+&#8220;unstable equilibrium&#8221; along that southern shore to
+make it the sort of a place that a neurasthenic would
+seek out for a rest cure. I felt the same way about it,
+only more so; but Roos&#8217; disappointment over what
+he had already missed was so keen that neither of us
+had the heart to interpose any objections when he told
+Jim to go ahead and see what he could do. As two
+sticks of dynamite were already promised to Harmon,
+the trick, if it came off, would have to be pulled with
+one. Spitting tobacco juice on the taffy-like cylinder<span class="pagenum">[Pg 72]</span>
+for luck, Jim clambered off up the cliff and planted
+it under his &#8220;likely rock,&#8221; Roos meantime setting up
+in a favourable position below.</p>
+
+<p><a id="page72" name="page72"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 417px;">
+<img src="images/illo_114.jpg" width="417" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff<br />
+THE FACE OF THE HANGING GLACIER</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><a id="page73" name="page73"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/illo_115.jpg" width="600" height="413" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff<br />
+WHERE MY PARTY FOREGATHERED WITH HARMON&#8217;S ON THE SHORE OF THE LAKE OF
+THE HANGING GLACIER</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Whether Jim&#8217;s &#8220;tobaccanalian libation&#8221; had anything
+to do with it or not, this time luck was with us.
+The sharp blast kicked Jim&#8217;s rock up on one ear,
+where it teetered for a second or two indecisively before
+rolling over sidewise and coming down kerplump
+on a huge twenty-ton cube of basalt that no one would
+have thought of moving with a barrel of giant. It
+wasn&#8217;t so much what the little rock did as the way it
+did it. The big block gave a sort of a quiver, much
+as a man awakening from a doze would stretch his
+arms and yawn, and when it quivered a lot of loose
+stuff slipped away from beneath and just let it go.
+It lumbered along at an easy roll for a bit, and then
+increased its speed and started jumping. Its first
+jump was no more than a nervous little hop that
+served to hurdle it clear of a length of flat ledge that
+reached out to stop its downward progress. A second
+later it had hit its stride, so that when it struck the
+water there had been nothing but rarefied air trying
+to stop it for two hundred feet. Down it went, pushing
+a column of compressed <i>aqua pura</i> ahead of it
+and sucking a big black hole along in its wake. It
+was when that column of compressed water spouted
+up again and tried to chase its tail down the hole it
+had come out of that things began to happen, for it
+found something like a dozen fat icebergs crowding
+in and trying to insinuate their translucent bulks into
+the same opening. And of course they made a tremendous
+fuss about it. When an iceberg found that
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 73]</span>it couldn&#8217;t get in standing up, it forthwith lay down
+on its side, or even rolled over on its back; which didn&#8217;t
+help it in the least after all, for the very good reason
+that all the other icebergs were adopting the same
+tactics. And so Roos, who was cranking steadily all
+the time, got his &#8220;Birth of an Iceberg&#8221; picture after
+all.</p>
+
+<p>When the bergs ceased butting their heads off
+against each other Roos shot me in the scenes where I
+registered &#8220;consternation,&#8221; &#8220;relief&#8221; and &#8220;awed wonder,&#8221;
+and our hard-striven-for Lake of the Hanging
+Glaciers picture was complete. There was just a bit
+of a hitch at the &#8220;awed wonder&#8221; fade-out, though, but
+that was Roos&#8217; fault in trying to introduce a &#8220;human
+touch&#8221; by trying to make Gordon&#8217;s dog perch up beside
+me on the crest of a hatchet-edged rock. The
+pup sat quietly wagging his tail until the moment
+came for me to lift up mine eyes unto the hills and
+increase the tenseness of my &#8220;awed wonder&#8221; registration.
+Then the altitude began to affect his nerves and
+he started doing figure &#8220;8&#8217;s&#8221; back and forth between
+my precariously planted feet. As a natural consequence,
+when Roos started in on his &#8220;fade-out&#8221; I was
+seesawing my arms wildly to maintain my balance,
+talking volubly, and registering&mdash;well, what would a
+temperamental movie star be registering while in the
+act of telling a dog and a man what he thought of
+them for their joint responsibility in all but pitching
+him off a twenty-foot-high rock into a vortex of tumbling
+icebergs? Again (unless this part of the film
+has been discreetly cut in the studio before exhibition)
+I beg the indulgence of lip-readers.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 74]</span></p>
+
+<p>The lake was deeply shadowed before we were
+finally at liberty to take up again the sartorics of
+&#8220;Lohengrin&#8221;; but it was not that fact, nor yet the not
+entirely prohibitive difficulty of making shining
+armour out of tin cans, that nipped that classic conception
+in the bud. Rather it was the astonishing
+unstable-mindedness displayed by the bergs when impinged
+upon from without. Of the hundred or more
+hunks of floating ice within a five-hundred-yard radius
+of the point where our artificial berg had hit the water,
+only a half dozen or so of the broadest and flattest
+continued to expose the same profiles they had presented
+before the big splash. Most of the others had
+turned over and over repeatedly, and one, which
+seemed to &#8220;hang&#8221; in almost perfect balance, continued
+slowly revolving like a patent churn. &#8220;Lohengrin&#8217;s
+Barge,&#8221; half a mile distant from the heart of the
+&#8220;birth splash&#8221; and lapped by but the lightest of expiring
+waves, was rolling drunkenly to port and starboard
+as though in the trough of the seas of a typhoon.
+It looked ready to turn turtle at a touch, and there
+were too many angular projections on it&mdash;especially
+about the &#8220;swans&#8221;&mdash;to make even a man who aspired
+to grand opera care to court lightly the experience of
+tangling himself up in the wreck.</p>
+
+<p>Descending to the timber-line meadow where the
+horses had been left, we found Harmon had brought
+up his outfit and pitched his tent midway of an enchanting
+vista framed in green-black pines and golden
+tamaracks, and with a wonderful background for
+&#8220;camp shots&#8221; both up and down the valley. There he
+was going to make his base, he said, until he found<span class="pagenum">[Pg 75]</span>
+just the light he wanted on the Lake of the Hanging
+Glaciers. Then he hoped to get at least a negative
+or two that would do something approaching justice
+to so inspiring a subject. And there, working and
+waiting patiently through an almost unbroken succession
+of storms that raged in the high Selkirks for many
+days, he held on until he got what he wanted. It was
+in that quiet persistent way that he had been photographing
+the mountains of the Canadian West for
+many years, and it will be in that way that he will
+continue until he shall have attained somewhere near
+to the high goal he has set for his life&#8217;s work&mdash;a complete
+photographic record of the Rockies and Selkirks.
+It is a privilege to have met an artist who
+works with so fine a spirit, who has set himself so
+high an ideal. A number of Harmon&#8217;s scenic pictures
+of the mountains where the Columbia takes its rise are
+so much better than the best of my own of the same
+subjects, that I am giving them place in a work which
+it was my original intention to illustrate entirely myself.</p>
+
+<p>We returned to our camp at the head of Horse
+Thief Creek that night, and set out on our return
+to Windermere the following morning. Save for a
+rather sloppy passage of the main ford, the journey
+was without incident. With light packs, we pushed
+right through to the head of the wagon-road&mdash;something
+over thirty miles&mdash;the first day. The seventeen
+miles to Invermere we covered in a leisurely fashion,
+reaching the hotel at three in the afternoon of the following
+day, Sunday, the twentieth of September.
+Here I found a wire from Chester, stating that it had<span class="pagenum">[Pg 76]</span>
+finally proved impossible for him to get away from
+business, and asking me to go ahead and see the Big
+Bend trip through without him. In the event I decided
+to continue on down the river he would be glad
+to have his cameraman accompany me as long as the
+weather and light were favourable for his work. A
+letter with full instructions covering the two pictures
+he desired made had already been dispatched.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page77" name="page77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER V<br />
+<br />
+CANAL FLATS TO BEAVERMOUTH</h2>
+
+<p>Chester&#8217;s instructions respecting the two new pictures
+he wanted us to work on came through to Roos
+the day following our return to Windermere. One of
+these was to be confined entirely to the Big Bend
+voyage. Essaying again my role of &#8220;gentleman-cum-sportsman,&#8221;
+I was to get off the train at Beavermouth,
+meet my boatman, launch the boat and start off down
+the river. The various things seen and done <i>en
+voyage</i> were to make up the picture.</p>
+
+<p>In the other picture I was to play the part of a
+young rancher who was farming his hard-won clearing
+on the banks of the Columbia near its source.
+With the last of his crops in, he is assailed one day
+with a great longing to see the ocean. Suddenly it
+occurs to him that the river flowing right by his door
+runs all the way to the sea, and the sight of a prospector
+friend, about to push off with a sack of samples
+for the smelter many hundreds of miles below, suggests
+a means of making the journey. And so the
+two of them start off down the Columbia. What happened
+to them on their way was to be told in the picture.
+The introductory scenes of this picture were
+to be made somewhere in the vicinity of Windermere,
+but the thread of the story was to be picked up below
+the Arrow Lakes after the Big Bend voyage was
+over.</p>
+
+<p>Hunting &#8220;location&#8221; and rainy weather kept us four<span class="pagenum">[Pg 78]</span>
+or five days in Windermere and vicinity, giving an
+opportunity we otherwise would have missed to meet
+and become acquainted with the always kindly and
+hospitable and often highly distinguished people of
+this beautiful and interesting community. From the
+time of David Thompson, the great astronomer and
+explorer of the Northwest Company who wintered
+there in 1810, down to the present Windermere seems
+always to have attracted the right sort of people. The
+predominant class is what one might call the gentleman-farmer,
+with the stress perhaps on &#8220;gentleman.&#8221;
+I mean to say, that is, that while a number of them
+have failed of outstanding achievement as farmers,
+there was none that I met who would not have qualified
+as a gentleman, and in the very best sense of the
+word. Sportsmen and lovers of the out-of-doors,
+there was this fine bond of fellowship between all of
+them. Nowhere have I encountered a fresher, more
+wholesome social atmosphere than that of this fine
+community of the upper Columbia.</p>
+
+<p>That genial and big-hearted old Scot, Randolph
+Bruce, I recall with especial affection, as must every
+one of the many who has known the hospitality of
+his great log lodge on a bay of the lake below Invermere.
+An Edinburgh engineer, Bruce was one of
+the builders of the Canadian Pacific, and as such an
+associate and intimate of Van Horne, O&#8217;Shaughnessy
+and the rest of those sturdy pioneers who pushed to
+accomplishment the most notable piece of railway construction
+the world has ever known. In love with the
+West by the time the railway was finished, he built
+him a home in the most beautiful spot he knew<span class="pagenum">[Pg 79]</span>&mdash;such
+a spot as few even among the Scottish lochs could
+rival&mdash;and associated himself with various projects for
+the advancement of the country. At the present time
+he is the owner of the Paradise mine, one of the richest
+silver-lead properties in British Columbia, and the
+head of an enterprise which purposes to bring the
+Windermere region to its own among the grandest of
+the playgrounds of North America.</p>
+
+<p>We made the preliminary scenes for the &#8220;farmer&#8221;
+picture at a gem of a little mountain ranch in a clearing
+to the west of Lake Windermere. Shooting
+through one of his favourite &#8220;sylvan frames,&#8221; Roos
+picked me up violently shocking hay at the end of a
+long narrow field which the labour of a young Scotch
+immigrant had reclaimed from the encompassing forest.
+(As a matter of fact the hay was already in
+shocks when we arrived, and I had to unshock a few
+shocks so as to shock them up again before the camera
+and thus give the impression that this was the last of
+my season&#8217;s crop.) Then I threw up a couple of
+shocks for him set up at closer range, with more attention
+to &#8220;technique.&#8221; (This latter came easy for me,
+as I had been pitching hay for a fortnight on my California
+ranch earlier in the summer.) Finally I
+stopped work, leaned on my fork and gazed into the
+distance with visioning eyes. (I was supposed to be
+thinking of the sea, Roos explained, and in the finished
+picture there would be a &#8220;cut-in&#8221; of breakers at this
+point.) Then I registered &#8220;impatience&#8221; and &#8220;restlessness,&#8221;
+hardening to &#8220;firm resolve.&#8221; At this juncture
+I threw down my fork and strode purposefully
+out of the right side of the picture. (The cabin to<span class="pagenum">[Pg 80]</span>
+which I was supposed to be striding was really on
+my left, but Roos explained that some sort of a movie
+Median law made it imperative always to exit to
+right.) Then we went over to make the cabin shots.</p>
+
+<p><a id="page80" name="page80"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 456px;">
+<img src="images/illo_124.jpg" width="456" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">OLD HUDSON BAY CART AT BEAVERMOUTH (<i>above</i>)<br />
+MY FIRST PUSH-OFF AT THE HEAD OF CANOE NAVIGATION ON
+THE COLUMBIA (<i>below</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><a id="page81" name="page81"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/illo_125.jpg" width="600" height="427" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">OPENING SCENE OF THE "FARMER"
+PICTURE <i>(left)</i><br />
+OLD STERN WHEELERS AT
+GOLDEN (<i>above</i>)<br />
+A QUIET STRETCH OF THE COLUMBIA
+NEAR GOLDEN (<i>below</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The owner of the cabin was away at the moment,
+but his young Scotch wife&mdash;a bonnie bit of a lass who
+might have been the inspiration for &#8220;Annie Laurie&#8221;&mdash;was
+on hand and mightily interested. She asked if I
+was Bill Hart, and Roos made the tactical error of
+guffawing, as though the idea was absurd. She was
+a good deal disappointed at that, but still very ready
+to help with anything calculated to immortalize her
+wee home by emblazoning it on the imperishable celluloid.
+First I strode into the cabin, but almost immediately
+to emerge unfolding a map. Going over
+to a convenient stump, I sat down and disposed of a
+considerable footage of &#8220;intent study.&#8221; Then we
+made a close-up of the map&mdash;the Pacific Northwest&mdash;with
+my index finger starting at Windermere and
+tracing the course of the Columbia on its long winding
+way to the sea. That proved that there was water
+transit all the way to that previous cut-in of breakers
+which my visioning eyes had conjured up just before
+I threw down my fork. I stood up and gazed at the
+nearby river (which was really Lake Windermere, a
+mile distant), and presently stiffened to my full
+height, registering &#8220;discovery.&#8221; What I was supposed
+to see was a prospector tinkering with his boat.
+As this latter scene could not be made until we had
+bought a boat and signed up a &#8220;prospector,&#8221; all that
+was left to do here was to shoot me striding away from
+the cabin on the way to discuss ways and means with
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 81]</span>my mythical companion, and then striding back, getting
+my roll of blankets and exiting in a final fade-out.
+As we had neglected to provide a roll of blankets
+for this shot, we had to improvise one from such material
+as was available. I forget all that went to make
+up that fearful and wonderful package; but it is just
+as well the precariously-roped bundle didn&#8217;t resolve
+into its component parts until the fade-out was pretty
+nearly complete.</p>
+
+<p>Roos tried hard to introduce &#8220;human interest&#8221; and
+&#8220;heart appeal&#8221; by staging a farewell scene with &#8220;wife
+and child,&#8221; both of which were ready to hand. I was
+adamant, however, even when he agreed to compromise
+by leaving out the child. He was rather stubborn
+about it, refusing to admit the validity of my
+argument to the effect that a would-be screen hero
+who deserted so fair a wife would alienate the sympathies
+of the crowd at the outset. Finally it was
+decided for us. &#8220;It&#8217;s too late noo,&#8221; cooed a wee voice
+in which I thought I detected both reproach and relief;
+&#8220;while ye&#8217;re talkin&#8217;, yon cooms Jock.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It <i>was</i> too late all right; even Roos was ready to
+grant that. Jock was about six-feet-three, and built
+in proportion. Also a wee bitty dour, I thought. At
+least he glowered redly under his bushy brows when
+he discovered that I had wrapped up his own and
+another <i>nicht-goon</i> in my hastily assembled blanket-roll.
+If that bothered him, I hate to think what might
+have happened had he surprised that farewell scene,
+especially as Roos&mdash;with his Mack Sennett training
+and D. W. Griffith ideals&mdash;would have tried to stage
+it.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 82]</span></p>
+
+<p>Roos was young and inexperienced, and lacking in
+both finesse and subtlety. I granted that this wouldn&#8217;t
+have cramped his style much in doing &#8220;old home town
+stuff;&#8221; but farther afield it was electric with dangerous
+possibilities. Driving back to the hotel I quoted
+to him what Kipling&#8217;s hero in &#8220;The Man Who Would
+Be King&#8221; said on the subject, paraphrasing it slightly
+so he would understand. &#8220;A man has no business
+shooting farewell scenes with borrowed brides in foreign
+parts be he three times a crowned movie director,&#8221;
+was the way I put it.</p>
+
+<p>It was my original intention to start the boating
+part of my Columbia trip from Golden, at the head
+of the Big Bend, the point at which the calm open
+reaches of the upper river give way to really swift
+water. The decision to make the push-off from Beavermouth,
+twenty-nine miles farther down, was come
+to merely because it was much easier to get the boat
+into the water at the latter point. There was little
+swift-water boating worthy of the name above Beavermouth.
+Donald Canyon was about the only rough
+water, and even that, I was assured, was not to be
+mentioned in the same breath with scores of rapids
+farther down the Bend. In the ninety miles between
+the foot of Lake Windermere and Golden there were
+but twenty-five feet of fall, so that the winding river
+was hardly more than a series of lagoon-like reaches,
+with a current of from one to four miles an hour. Between
+Columbia Lake&mdash;practically the head of the
+main channel of the river&mdash;and Mud Lake, and between
+the latter and the head of Lake Windermere,
+there was a stream of fairly swift current, but at this<span class="pagenum">[Pg 83]</span>
+time of year not carrying enough water to permit the
+passage of even a canoe without much lining and
+portaging.</p>
+
+<p>From the practical aspect, therefore, I was quite
+content with the plan to start my voyage from Beavermouth.
+For the sake of sentiment, however, I <i>did</i>
+want to make some kind of a push-off from the very
+highest point that offered sufficient water to float a
+boat at the end of September. This, I was assured
+in Invermere, would be Canal Flats, just above the
+head of Columbia Lake and immediately below
+the abandoned locks which at one time made navigation
+possible between the Kootenay and the Columbia.
+Although these crude log-built locks have never been
+restored since they were damaged by a great freshet
+in the nineties, and although the traffic they passed
+in the few years of their operation was almost
+negligible, it may be of interest to give a brief description
+of the remarkable terrain that made their
+construction possible by the simplest of engineering
+work, and to tell how the removal of a few shovelfuls
+of earth effected the practical insulation of the whole
+great range of the Selkirks.</p>
+
+<p>As a consequence of recent geological study, it has
+been definitely established that the divide between the
+Columbia and Kootenay rivers, now at Canal Flats,
+was originally a hundred and fifty miles farther north,
+or approximately where Donald Canyon occurs.
+That is to say, a great wall of rock at the latter point
+backed up a long, narrow lake between the Rockies
+on the east and the Selkirks on the west. This lake,
+unable to find outlet to the north, had risen until its<span class="pagenum">[Pg 84]</span>
+waters were sufficiently above the lower southern barriers
+to give it drainage in that direction. At that
+time it was doubtless the main source of the Kootenay
+River, and its waters did not reach the Columbia until
+after a long and devious southerly course into what is
+now Montana, thence northward into Kootenay Lake,
+and finally, by a dizzy westerly plunge, into a much-extended
+Arrow Lake. An upheaval which carried
+away the dyke at Donald provided a northward drainage
+for the lake, and the divide was ultimately established
+at what is now called Canal Flats. It was a
+shifting and precarious division, however, for the
+Kootenay&mdash;which rises some distance to the northward
+in the Rockies and is here a sizable stream&mdash;discharged
+a considerable overflow to the Columbia basin
+at high water. It was this latter fact which called
+attention to the comparative ease with which navigation
+could be established between the two rivers by
+means of a canal. For an account of how this canal
+came to be built I am indebted to E. M. Sandilands,
+Esq., Mining Recorder for the British Columbia Government
+at Wilmer, who has the distinction of being,
+to use his own language, &#8220;the person who made the
+Selkirk Mts. an Island by connecting the Columbia
+and Kootenay rivers.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sandilands, in a recent letter, tells how an ex-big-game
+hunter by the name of Baillie-Grohman obtained,
+in 1886, a concession from the Provincial
+Government of British Columbia for 35,000 acres of
+land along the Kootenay River. In return for this
+he was to construct at his own expense a canal connecting
+the Columbia and Kootenay. This cut<span class="pagenum">[Pg 85]</span>
+was for the ostensible purpose of opening up navigation
+between the two streams, but as nothing was
+stipulated in respect of dredging approaches the
+obligation of the concessionaire was limited to the
+construction of the canal and locks. &#8220;For this reason,&#8221;
+writes Mr. Sandilands, who was working on the
+job at the time, &#8220;our &#8216;Grand Canal&#8217; was practically
+useless. Nevertheless, in 1888, it was opened with
+due form and pomp, engineer, contractor and concessionaire
+paddling up to the lock in a canoe well
+laden with the &#8216;good cheer&#8217; demanded by such an
+occasion. I was driving a team attached to a &#8216;slush-scraper,&#8217;
+and together with a jovial Irish spirit who
+rejoiced in the name of Thomas Haggerty, was ordered
+by the foreman to scrape out the false dam
+holding the Kootenay back from the canal. This we
+did as long as we dared. Then I was deputed, with
+gum-boots and shovel, to dig a hole through what was
+left of the false dam, and allow the Kootenay into
+the canal and the Columbia. This being done, the
+fact was wired to the Provincial Government at Victoria ... ,
+and the promised concession of land was
+asked for and granted. I little thought at the time,&#8221;
+Mr. Sandilands concludes, &#8220;how distinguished a part
+I was playing, that I was making the Selkirk Mountains
+an &#8216;Island,&#8217; a fact which few people realize to
+this day.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Later a little dredging was done, so that finally, by
+dint of much &#8220;capstaning,&#8221; a shallow-draught stern-wheeler
+was worked up to and through the lock and
+canal, and on down the Kootenay to Jennings, Montana.
+It was Captain F. P. Armstrong who per<span class="pagenum">[Pg 86]</span>formed
+this remarkable feat, only to lose the historic
+little craft later in one of the treacherous canyons of
+the Kootenay. His also was the distinction, after
+maintaining an intermittent service between the Columbia
+and Kootenay for a number of years, of being
+the captain and owner of the last boat to make that
+amazing passage.</p>
+
+<p>We reached Canal Flats at the end of a forty-mile
+auto-ride from Invermere. Traces of the old dredged
+channel were still visible running up from the head of
+Columbia Lake and coming to an abrupt end against
+a caving wall of logs which must at one time have
+been a gate of the inter-river lock. Out of the tangle
+of maiden hair fern which draped the rotting logs
+came a clear trickle of water, seeping through from
+the other side of the divide. This was what was popularly
+called the source of the Columbia. I could just
+manage to scoop the river dry with a quick sweep of
+my cupped palm.</p>
+
+<p>A hundred yards below the source the old channel
+opened out into a quiet currentless pool, and here I
+found a half-filled Peterboro belonging to a neighbouring
+farmer, which I had engaged for the first leg
+of my voyage down the Columbia. It leaked rather
+faster than I could bail, but even at that it floated as
+long as there was water to float it. Fifty yards farther
+down a broad mudbank blocked the channel all
+the way across, and in attempting to drag the old
+canoe out for the portage, I pulled it in two amidships.
+I had made my start from almost chock-a-block
+against the source, however. Sentiment was
+satisfied. I was now ready for the Bend. Groping<span class="pagenum">[Pg 87]</span>
+my way back to the car through an almost impenetrable
+pall of mosquitoes, I rejoined Roos and we returned
+to Invermere.</p>
+
+<p>A wire from Blackmore stating that it would still
+be several days before his boat was ready for the Bend
+offered us a chance to make the journey to Golden by
+river if we so desired. There was nothing in it on the
+boating side, but Roos thought there might
+be a chance for some effective scenic shots. I,
+also, was rather inclined to favour the trip, for the
+chance it would give of hardening up my hands and
+pulling muscles before tackling the Bend. An unpropitious
+coincidence in the matter of an Indian name
+defeated the plan. Roos and I were trying out on
+Lake Windermere a sweet little skiff which Randolph
+Bruce had kindly volunteered to let us have for the
+quiet run down to Golden. &#8220;By hard pulling,&#8221; I
+said, &#8220;we ought just about to make Spillimacheen at
+the end of the first day.&#8221; &#8220;Spill a what?&#8221; ejaculated
+Roos anxiously; &#8220;you didn&#8217;t say &#8216;machine,&#8217; did you?&#8221;
+&#8220;Yes; Spillimacheen,&#8221; I replied. &#8220;It&#8217;s the name of a
+river that flows down to the Columbia from the Selkirks.&#8221;
+&#8220;Then that settles it for me,&#8221; he said decisively.
+&#8220;I don&#8217;t want to spill my machine. It cost
+fifteen hundred dollars. I&#8217;m not superstitious; but,
+just the same, starting out for a place with a name
+like that is too much like asking for trouble to suit
+yours truly.&#8221; And so we went down to Golden by
+train and put in the extra time outfitting for the Bend.</p>
+
+<p>Golden, superbly situated where the Kicking Horse
+comes tumbling down to join the Columbia, is a typical
+Western mining and lumbering town. Save for<span class="pagenum">[Pg 88]</span>
+their penchant for dramatizing the perils of the Big
+Bend, the people are delightful. It is true that the
+hospitable spirit of one Goldenite <i>did</i> get me in rather
+bad; but perhaps the fault was more mine than his.
+Meeting him on the railway platform just as he was
+about to leave for Vancouver, he spoke with great enthusiasm
+of his garden, and said that he feared some of
+his fine strawberries might be going to waste in his absence
+for lack of some one to eat them. I gulped with
+eagerness at that, and then told him bluntly&mdash;and
+truthfully&mdash;that I would willingly steal to get strawberries
+and cream, provided, of course, that they
+couldn&#8217;t be acquired in some more conventional way.
+He hastened to reassure me, saying that it wouldn&#8217;t
+be necessary to go outside the law in this case. &#8220;The
+first chance you get,&#8221; he said with a twinkle in his eye,
+&#8220;just slip over and make love to my housekeeper, and
+tell her I said to give you your fill of berries and
+cream, and I have no doubt she&#8217;ll provide for you.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>If his Vancouver-bound train had not started to
+pull out just then, perhaps he would have explained
+that that accursed &#8220;love stuff&#8221; formula was a figure
+of speech. Or perhaps he felt sure that I would understand
+it that way, if not at once, at least when the
+time came. And I would have, ordinarily. But my
+strawberry-and-cream appetite is so overpowering
+that, like the lions at feeding time, my finer psychological
+instincts are blunted where satiation is in sight.
+That was why I blurted out my hospitable friend&#8217;s
+directions almost verbatim when I saw that the door
+of his home (to which I had rushed at my first opportunity)
+had been opened by a female. It was only<span class="pagenum">[Pg 89]</span>
+after I had spoken that I saw that she was lean, angular,
+gimlet-eyed, and had hatred of all malekind
+indelibly stamped upon her dour visage. She drew
+in her breath whistlingly; then controlled herself with
+an effort. &#8220;I suppose I must give you the berries and
+cream,&#8221; she said slowly and deliberately, the clearly
+enunciated words falling icily like the drip from the
+glacial grottoes at the head of the Columbia; &#8220;but the&mdash;the
+other matter you would find a little difficult.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Ye-es, ma&#8217;am,&#8221; I quavered shiveringly, &#8220;I would.
+If you&#8217;ll please send the strawberries and cream to
+the hotel I am quite content to have it a cash transaction.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Considering the way that rapier-thrust punctured
+me through and through, I felt that I deserved no
+little credit for sticking to my guns in the matter of
+the strawberries and cream. For the rest, I was
+floored. The next time any one tries to send me into
+the Hesperides after free fruit I am going to know
+who is guarding the apples; and I am <i>not</i> going to
+approach the delectable garden by the love-path.</p>
+
+<p>I had taken especial pains to warn Roos what he
+would have to expect from Golden in the matter of
+warnings about the Big Bend, but in spite of all, that
+garrulous social centre, the town pool-room, did manage
+to slip one rather good one over on him before we
+got away. &#8220;How long does it take to go round the
+Bend?&#8221; he had asked of a circle of trappers and
+lumber-jacks who were busily engaged in their favourite
+winter indoor-sport of decorating the pool-room
+stove with a frieze of tobacco juice. &#8220;Figger it
+fer yerself, sonny,&#8221; replied a corpulent woodsman<span class="pagenum">[Pg 90]</span>
+with a bandaged jaw. &#8220;If yer gets inter yer boat an&#8217;
+lets it go in that ten-twent&#8217;-thirt&#8217; mile current, it&#8217;s a
+simpl&#8217; problum of &#8217;rithmatick. If yer ain&#8217;t dished in
+a souse-hole, yer <i>has</i> ter make Revelstoke insider one
+day. As yer has ter do sum linin&#8217; to keep right side
+up, it&#8217;s sum slower. Best time any of us makes it in
+is two days. But we never rushes it even like that
+&#8217;nless we&#8217;re hurryin&#8217; the cor&#8217;ner down ter sit on sum
+drownded body.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As the whole court had nodded solemn acquiescence
+to this, and as none had cracked anything remotely
+resembling a smile, Roos was considerably impressed&mdash;not
+to say depressed. (So had I been the first time
+I heard that coroner yarn.) Nor did he find great
+comfort in the hotel proprietor&#8217;s really well-meant
+attempt at reassurance. &#8220;Don&#8217;t let that story bother
+you, my boy,&#8221; the genial McConnell had said; &#8220;they
+<i>never</i> did take the coroner round the Big Bend. Fact
+is, there <i>never</i> was a coroner here that had the guts to
+tackle it!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>We met Blackmore at Beavermouth the afternoon
+of the twenty-eighth of September. He reported
+that his boat had been shipped from Revelstoke by
+that morning&#8217;s way freight, and should arrive the
+following day. As I had been unable to engage a
+boatman in Golden, and as Blackmore had found
+only one in Revelstoke to suit him, it was decided to
+give me an oar and a pike-pole and make out the best
+we could without another man. I had brought provisions
+for a fortnight with me from Golden, and
+Blackmore had tents and canvases. Through the efforts
+of influential friends in Golden I had also been<span class="pagenum">[Pg 91]</span>
+able to secure two bottles of prime Demerara rum.
+Knowing that I was going to pick up at least one
+cask of Scotch on the way, and perhaps two or three,
+I had not been very keen about bothering with the
+rum. But on the assurance that it might well be two
+or three days before any whisky was found, and that
+getting wet in the Columbia without something to
+restore the circulation was as good as suicide, I allowed
+myself to be persuaded. It was wonderful
+stuff&mdash;thirty per cent. over-proof; which means that
+it could be diluted with four parts of water and still
+retain enough potency to make an ordinary man blink
+if he tried to bolt it. We did find one man&mdash;but he
+was not ordinary by any means; far from it. I will
+tell about &#8220;Wild Bill&#8221; in the proper place.</p>
+
+<p>There was a wonderful <i>aurora borealis</i> that night&mdash;quite
+the finest display of the kind I recall ever having
+seen in either the northern or southern hemispheres.
+Blackmore&mdash;weather-wise from long experience&mdash;regarded
+the marvellous display of lambently licking
+light streamers with mixed feelings. &#8220;Yes, it&#8217;s a fine
+show,&#8221; he said, following the opalescent glimmer of
+the fluttering pennants with a dubious eye; &#8220;but I&#8217;m
+afraid we&#8217;ll have to pay through the nose for it. It
+means that in a couple of days more the rain will be
+streaming down as fast as those lights are streaming
+up. Just about the time we get well into Surprise
+Rapids there will be about as much water in the air
+as in the river. However, it won&#8217;t matter much,&#8221; he
+concluded philosophically, &#8220;for we&#8217;ll be soaked anyway,
+whether we&#8217;re running or lining, and rain water&#8217;s
+ten degrees warmer than river water.&#8221;</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page92" name="page92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VI<br />
+<br />
+I. RUNNING THE BEND</h2>
+
+<p class="title"><i>Through Surprise Rapids</i></p>
+
+<p>We pushed off from Beavermouth at three o&#8217;clock
+of the afternoon of September twenty-ninth. We had
+hoped for an early start, but the erratically running
+local freight, six or eight hours behind time, did not
+arrive with our boat until noon. The introductory
+shots had already been made. Made up momentarily
+as a gentleman&mdash;wearing an ankle length polished
+waterproof and a clean cap, that is,&mdash;I jumped the
+westbound Limited as it slowed down on entering the
+yard, dropping off presently at the platform with a
+&#8220;here-I-am&#8221; expression when Roos signalled that the
+focus was right. Then I shook hands with the waiting
+Blackmore, and together we strode to the door of
+the station and met the previously-rehearsed agent.
+(Roos had wanted me to shake hands with the agent
+as well as with Blackmore, but I overruled him by
+pointing out that I was a &#8220;gentleman-sportsman&#8221; not
+a &#8220;gentleman-politician,&#8221; and served notice on him
+that pump-handling must henceforth be reduced to a
+minimum.) We tried to perfect the agent in a
+sweeping gesture that would say as plainly as words
+&#8220;The train with your boat is just around that next
+bend, sir,&#8221; but somehow we couldn&#8217;t prevent his trying
+to elevate his lowly part. His lips mumbled<span class="pagenum">[Pg 93]</span>
+the words we had put on them all right, but the gesture
+was a grandiose thing such as a Chesterfieldian
+footman might have employed in announcing &#8220;My
+Lord, the carriage waits.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Roos, in all innocence, narrowly missed provoking a
+fight with a hot-tempered half-breed while he was setting
+up to shoot the incoming freight. He had an ingenious
+method of determining, without bending over
+his finder, just what his lens was going to &#8220;pick-up.&#8221;
+This consisted of holding his arms at full length, with
+his thumbs placed tip to tip and the forefingers standing
+straight up. The right-angling digits then
+framed for his eye an approximation of his picture.
+To one not used to it this esoteric performance looked
+distinctly queer, especially if he chanced to be standing
+somewhere near the arch priest&#8217;s line of vision.
+And that, as it happened, was exactly the place from
+which it was revealed to the choleric near-Shuswap
+section hand. I didn&#8217;t need the breed&#8217;s subsequent
+contrite explanation to know that, from where he had
+been standing, those twiddling thumbs and fingers,
+through the great fore-shortening of the arms, looked
+to be right on the end of the nose of the grimacing
+little man by the camera. Not even a self-respecting
+white man would have stood for what that twiddling
+connoted, let alone a man in whose veins flowed blood
+that must have been something like fifteen-sixteenths
+of the proudest of Canadian strains. Luckily, both
+Blackmore and his burly boatman were men of action.
+Even so, it was a near squeeze for both camera and
+cameraman. Roos emerged unscarred in anything
+but temperament. And, of course, as every one even<span class="pagenum">[Pg 94]</span>
+on the fringes of the movies knows, the temperaments
+of both stars and directors are things that require
+frequent harrowing to keep them in good working
+order.</p>
+
+<p>Roos&#8217; filming of the unloading of the boat was the
+best thing he did on the trip. Every available man in
+Beavermouth was requisitioned. This must have been
+something like twenty-five or thirty. A half dozen,
+with skids and rollers, could have taken the boat off
+without exerting themselves seriously, but could
+hardly have &#8220;made it snappy.&#8221; And action was what
+the scene demanded. There was no time for a rehearsal.
+The agent simply told us where the car
+would be shunted to, Blackmore figured out the best
+line from there over the embankment and through the
+woods to the river, and Roos undertook to keep up
+with the procession with his camera. Blackmore was
+to superintend the technical operation and I was ordered
+to see that the men &#8220;acted natural.&#8221; And thus
+we went to it. The big boat, which must have weighed
+close to half a ton, came off its flat car like a paper
+shallop, but the resounding thwack with which her
+bows hit a switch-frog awakened Blackmore&#8217;s concern.
+&#8220;Easy! Easy! Don&#8217;t bust her bottom,&#8221; he
+began shouting; while I, on the other side, took up
+my refrain of &#8220;Don&#8217;t look at the camera!&mdash;make it
+snappy.&#8221; The consequence of these diametrically opposed
+orders was that the dozen or more men on my
+side did most of the work. But even so it was
+&#8220;snappy&#8221;&mdash;very.</p>
+
+<p>Down the embankment we rushed like a speeding
+centipede, straight at the fine hog-proof wire fence of<span class="pagenum">[Pg 95]</span>
+the C. P. R. right-of-way. That fence may have been
+hog-proof, but it was certainly not proof against the
+charge of a thirty-foot boat coming down a fifty per
+cent. grade pushed by twenty-five men. We had intended
+lifting over it, but our momentum was too
+great, especially after I had failed to desist from
+shouting &#8220;Make it snappy!&#8221; soon enough. The barrier
+gave way in two or three places, so that we were
+shedding trailing lengths of wire all the way to the
+river. On through the woods we juggernauted, Roos
+following in full cry. His city &#8220;news stuff&#8221; training
+was standing him in good stead, and he showed no
+less cleverness than agility in making successive &#8220;set-ups&#8221;
+without staying our progress. Only in the last
+fifty yards, where the going over the moss and pine
+needles was (comparatively speaking) lightning fast,
+did we distance him. Here, as there was plenty of
+time, he cut a hole in the trees and shot the launching
+through one of his favourite &#8220;sylvan frames.&#8221; For
+the push-off shot he provided his customary heart
+throb by bringing down the station agent&#8217;s three-year-old
+infant to wave farewell. That he didn&#8217;t try
+to feature the mother prominently seemed to indicate
+that what I had said at Windermere on the subject
+had had some effect.</p>
+
+<p>After the &#8220;farewell&#8221; had been filmed, we landed at
+the fire ranger&#8217;s cabin to pick up Roos and his camera.
+The ranger told us that a couple of trappers who had
+been for some weeks engaged in portaging their winter
+supplies round Surprise Rapids would be waiting
+for us at the head of the first fall in the expectation of
+getting the job of packing our stuff down to the foot.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 96]</span>
+&#8220;Nothing doing,&#8221; Blackmore replied decisively;
+&#8220;going straight through.&#8221; The ranger grinned and
+shook his grizzled head. &#8220;You&#8217;re the man to do it,&#8221;
+he said; &#8220;but jest the same, I&#8217;m glad it&#8217;s you and not
+me that has the job.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The station agent came down with Roos, evidently
+with the cheering purpose of showing us the place
+where his predecessor and a couple of other men had
+been drowned in attempting to cross the river some
+months previously. &#8220;Only man in the boat to be
+picked up alive was a one-armed chap,&#8221; he concluded
+impressively. &#8220;Too late now for operations on any of
+this crew,&#8221; laughed Blackmore, pushing off with a
+pike-pole. &#8220;Besides, every man jack of us is going
+to have a two-arm job all the way.&#8221; To the parting
+cheers of the mackinawed mob on the bank, he eased
+out into the current and headed her down the Bend.</p>
+
+<p><a id="page96" name="page96"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 400px;">
+<img src="images/illo_142.jpg" width="400" height="700" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">ARRIVAL OF OUR BOAT AT BEAVERMOUTH (<i>above</i>)<br />
+OUR FIRST CAMP AT BEAVERMOUTH (<i>centre</i>)<br />
+THE REMAINS OF A SUNKEN FOREST (<i>below</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><a id="page97" name="page97"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 408px;">
+<img src="images/illo_143.jpg" width="408" height="700" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">TRAPPER&#8217;S CABIN WHERE WE FOUND SHELTER FOR THE
+NIGHT (<i>above</i>)<br />
+WHERE WE LANDED ABOVE SURPRISE RAPIDS (<i>centre</i>)<br />
+WHERE WE TIED UP AT &#8220;EIGHT MILE&#8221; (<i>below</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Roos stationed himself in the bow, with camera set
+up on its shortened tripod, waiting to surprise any
+scenery caught lurking along the way. Blackmore
+steered from the stern with his seven-feet-long birch
+paddle. Andy Kitson and I, pulling starboard and
+port oars respectively, rubbed shoulders on the broad
+&#8217;midship&#8217;s thwart. Our outfit&mdash;a comparatively light
+load for so large a boat&mdash;was stowed pretty well aft.
+I saw Blackmore lean out to &#8220;con ship&#8221; as we got
+under way. &#8220;Good trim,&#8221; he pronounced finally,
+with an approving nod. &#8220;Just load enough to steady
+her, and yet leave plenty of freeboard for the sloppy
+water. This ought to be a dryer run than some the
+old girl&#8217;s had.&#8221; I chuckled to myself over that &#8220;dryer.&#8221;
+I hadn&#8217;t told Blackmore yet what was hidden down
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 97]</span>Canoe River way. I had promised Captain Armstrong
+not to do so until I had ascertained that we had
+a teetotal crew&mdash;or one comparatively so.</p>
+
+<p>Andy Kitson was a big husky North-of-Irelander,
+who had spent twenty years trapping, packing, hunting,
+lumbering and boating in western Canada. Like
+the best of his kind, he was deliberate and sparing of
+speech most of the time, but with a fine reserve vocabulary
+for emergency use. He was careful and
+cautious, as all good river boatmen should be, but
+decidedly &#8220;all there&#8221; in a pinch. He pulled a good
+round-armed thumping stroke with his big oar, and
+took to the water (as has to be done so frequently on
+a bad stretch of &#8220;lining down&#8221;) like a beaver. Best
+of all, he had a temper which nothing from a leak in
+the tent dribbling down his neck to a half hour up to
+his waist in ice-cold water seemed equal to ruffling. I
+liked Andy the moment I set eyes on his shining red
+gill, and I liked him better and better every day I
+worked and camped with him.</p>
+
+<p>As it was three-thirty when we finally pushed off,
+Blackmore announced that he would not try to make
+farther than &#8220;Eight-Mile&#8221; that afternoon. With comparatively
+good water all the way to the head of Surprise
+Rapids, we could have run right on through, he
+said; but that would force us to make camp after
+dark, and he disliked doing that unless he had to. In
+a current varying from three to eight miles an hour,
+we slid along down stream between banks golden-gay
+with the turning leaves of poplar, cottonwood and
+birch, the bright colours of which were strikingly accentuated
+by the sombre background of thick-growing<span class="pagenum">[Pg 98]</span>
+spruce, hemlock, balsam and fir. Yellow, in a score
+of shades, was the prevailing colour, but here and
+there was a splash of glowing crimson from a patch of
+<i>chin-chinick</i> or Indian tobacco, or a mass of dull maroon
+where a wild rose clambered over the thicket.
+Closely confined between the Rockies to the right and
+the Selkirks to the west, the river held undeviatingly
+to its general northwesterly course, with only the
+patchiest of flats on either side. And this was the
+openest part of the Bend, Blackmore volunteered;
+from the head of Surprise Rapids to the foot of Priest
+Rapids the Columbia was so steeply walled that we
+would not find room for a clearing large enough to
+support a single cow. &#8220;It&#8217;s a dismal hole, and no
+mistake,&#8221; he said.</p>
+
+<p>We took about an hour to run to &#8220;Eight Mile,&#8221;
+Andy and I pulling steadily all the way in the deep,
+smoothly-running current. We tied up in a quiet
+lagoon opening out to the west&mdash;evidently the mouth
+of a high-water channel. There was a magnificent
+stand of fir and spruce on a low bench running back
+from the river, not of great size on account of growing
+so thickly, but amazing lofty and straight. We
+camped in the shelter of the timber without pitching
+a tent, Andy and Blackmore sleeping in the open and
+Roos and I in a tumble-down trapper&#8217;s cabin. Or
+rather we spread our blankets in the infernal hole.
+As the place was both damp and rat-infested, we did
+not sleep. Roos spent the night chopping wood and
+feeding the rust-eaten&mdash;and therefore smoky&mdash;sheet-iron
+stove. I divided my time between growling at
+Roos for enticing me into keeping him company in the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 99]</span>
+cabin against Blackmore&#8217;s advice, and throwing things
+at the prowling rodents. It did not make for increased
+cheerfulness when I hit him on the ear with a hob-nailed
+boot that I had intended for a pair of eyes
+gleaming vitreously on a line about six inches back of
+his gloomily bowed head. He argued&mdash;and with some
+reason I must admit&mdash;that I had no call to draw so
+fine a bead until I was surer of my aim. Largely as
+a point of repartee, I told him not to be too certain I
+was not sure of my aim. But I really had been trying
+to hit the rat....</p>
+
+<p>I took the temperature of the air and the river
+water in the morning, finding the former to register
+thirty-eight degrees and the latter forty-one. There
+was a heavy mist resting on the river for a couple of
+hours after daybreak, but it was lifting by the time
+we were ready to push off. In running swift water
+good visibility is even more imperative than at sea,
+but as there was nothing immediately ahead to bother
+Blackmore did not wait for it to clear completely.
+The sun was shining brightly by nine-thirty, and Roos
+made several shots from the boat and one or two from
+the bank. One of the most remarkable sights unfolded
+to us was that of &#8220;Snag Town.&#8221; Just what
+was responsible for this queer maze of upended trees
+it would be hard to say. It seems probable, however,
+that a series of heavy spring floods undermined a considerable
+flat at the bend of the river, carrying away
+the earth and leaving the trees still partially rooted.
+The broadening of the channel must have slowed
+down the current a good deal, and it appears never to
+have been strong enough to scour out below the te<span class="pagenum">[Pg 100]</span>naciously
+clinging roots. The former lords of the
+forest are all dead, of course, but still they keep their
+places, inclining down-stream perhaps twenty-degrees
+from their former proud perpendicular, and firmly
+anchored. It takes careful steering to thread the
+maze even in a small boat, but the current is hardly
+fast enough to make a collision of serious moment.</p>
+
+<p>The current quickened for a while beyond &#8220;Snag
+Town&#8221; and then began slowing again, the river broadening
+and deepening meanwhile. I thought I read the
+signs aright and asked Blackmore. &#8220;Yes,&#8221; he replied
+with a confirmatory nod; &#8220;it&#8217;s the river backing up for
+its big jump. Stop pulling a minute and you can
+probably hear the rapid growling even here.&#8221; Andy
+and I lay on our oars and listened. There it was
+surely enough, deep and distant but unmistakable&mdash;the
+old familiar drum-roll of a big river beating for the
+charge. It was tremendous music&mdash;heavy, air-quivering,
+earth-shaking; more the diapason of a great
+cataract than an ordinary rapid, it seemed to me. I
+was right. Surprise is anything but an ordinary
+rapid.</p>
+
+<p>We pulled for a half hour or more down a broad
+stretch of slackening water that was more like a lake
+than a river. Out of the looming shadows of the
+banks for a space, mountain heights that had been cut
+off leaped boldly into view, and to left and right lifted
+a lofty sky-line notched with snowy peaks rising from
+corrugated fields of bottle-green glacier ice. Mt.
+Sanford, loftiest of the Selkirks, closed the end of the
+bosky perspective of Gold Creek, and the coldly
+chiselled pyramids of Lyell, Bryce and Columbia<span class="pagenum">[Pg 101]</span>
+pricked out the high points on the Continental Divide
+of the Rockies. We held the vivid double panorama&mdash;or
+quadruple, really, for both ranges were
+reflected in the quiet water&mdash;for as long as it took us
+to pull to a beach at the narrowing lower end of the
+long lake-like stretch above the rapids, finally to lose
+it as suddenly as it had been opened to us behind the
+imminently-rearing river walls.</p>
+
+<p>The two trappers of whom the fire-ranger at
+Beavermouth had spoken were waiting for us on the
+bank. They had permits for trapping on a couple of
+the creeks below Kinbasket Lake, and were getting
+down early in order to lay out their lines by the time
+the season opened a month or so hence. They had
+been packing their stuff over the three-mile portage
+to the foot of the rapids during the last three weeks,
+and now, with nothing left to go but their canoes,
+were free to give us a hand if we wanted them. Blackmore
+replied that he could save time and labour by
+running and lining the rapids. &#8220;Besides,&#8221; he added
+with a grin, &#8220;I take it these movie people have come
+out to get pictures of a river trip, not an overland
+journey.&#8221; The trappers took the dig in good part,
+but one of them riposted neatly. Since he was out for
+furs, he said, and was not taking pictures or boot-legging,
+time was not much of an object. The main
+thing with him was to reach his destination with his
+winter&#8217;s outfit. If all the river was like Surprise
+Rapids he would be quite content to go overland all
+the way. Neither of them made any comments on the
+stage of the water or offered any suggestions in connection
+with the job we had ahead. That was one<span class="pagenum">[Pg 102]</span>
+comfort of travelling with Blackmore. In all matters
+pertaining to river work his judgment appeared to be
+beyond criticism. If he was tackling a stunt with a
+considerable element of risk in it, that was his own
+business. No one else knew the dangers, and how to
+avoid them, so well as he.</p>
+
+<p>Blackmore looked to the trim of the boat carefully
+before shoving off, putting her down a bit more by the
+stern it seemed to me. He cautioned me on only one
+point as we pulled across the quarter of mile to where
+the banks ran close together and the quiet water
+ended. &#8220;Don&#8217;t never dip deep in the white water, and
+&#8217;specially in the swirls,&#8221; he said, stressing each word.
+&#8220;If you do, a whirlpool is more&#8217;n likely to carry your
+oar-blade under the boat and tear out half the side
+&#8217;fore you can clear your oar-lock. That&#8217;s the way
+that patched gunnel next you came to get smashed.&#8221;
+As we were about at the point where it is well to confine
+all the talking done in the boat to one man, I
+refrained from replying that I had been told the
+same thing in a dozen or so languages, on four different
+continents, and by &#8220;skippers&#8221; with black, yellow
+and copper as well as white skins, at fairly frequent
+intervals during the last fifteen years. There were
+enough slips I might make, but that of dipping deep
+in rough water was hardly likely to be one of them.</p>
+
+<p>The rumble of the rapid grew heavier as we proceeded,
+but only a single flickering white &#8220;eyelash&#8221;
+revealed the imminent ambush lurking beyond the
+black rocks. The current accelerated rapidly as the
+walls closed in, but ran easily, effortlessly, unripplingly,
+and with an almost uncanny absence of swirls<span class="pagenum">[Pg 103]</span>
+and eddies. &#8220;Have plenty way on her &#8217;fore she
+hits the suds,&#8221; cautioned Blackmore, and Andy and I
+grunted in unison as we leaned a few more pounds of
+beef onto our bending spruces. That started our inside
+elbows to bumping, but without a word each of
+us sidled along an inch or two toward his gunwale to
+get well set while yet there was time.</p>
+
+<p>With an easy bob&mdash;quick like a rowboat rides the
+bow wave of a steamer, but smoother, easier in its lift&mdash;we
+ran into the head of the rapid. There was a
+swift V-shaped chute of smooth jade-green water;
+then we slapped right into the &#8220;suds.&#8221; High-headed
+waves slammed against the bows and threw spray all
+over the boat and far astern of it. But they lacked
+jolt. They had too much froth and not enough
+green water to make them really formidable. We
+were in rough but not really bad water. I tried to
+grin at Blackmore to show him I understood the situation
+and was enjoying it highly; but his eyes, pin-points
+of concentration under bent brows, were directed
+over my head and far in advance. Plainly, he
+was thinking as well as looking well ahead.</p>
+
+<p>Reassured by the smart way we were slashing
+through that first riffle, I ventured to steal a look over
+my shoulder. In the immediate foreground Roos,
+with his waterproof buttoned close around his neck,
+was shaking the spray out of his hair and watching
+for a chance to snap with his kodak. Ahead there was
+perhaps another hundred yards of about the same sort
+of water as that in which we were running; then a
+yeasty welter of white where the river disappeared
+round a black cliff into what seemed a narrow gorge.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 104]</span>
+Opposite the cliff the river wall sloped slightly and
+was thickly covered with a dense growth of evergreen.
+The heavy roar we had been hearing for hours was
+still muffled. Evidently the main disturbance was
+somewhere beyond the bend at the cliff.</p>
+
+<p>The thunder of falling water grew louder as we
+headed down toward the white smother in the embrasure
+of the bend, and it was from Blackmore&#8217;s lips
+rather than from any words I heard that I gathered
+that he was calling for &#8220;More way!&#8221; Still keeping
+fairly good stroke, Andy and I quickly had her going
+enough faster than the current to give the big paddle
+all the steerage &#8220;grip&#8221; Blackmore could ask for.
+Swinging her sharply to the right, he headed her past
+the out-reaching rock claws at the foot of the cliff,
+and, with a sudden blaze of light and an ear-shattering
+rush of sound we were into the first and worst fall
+of Surprise Rapids.</p>
+
+<p>That dual onslaught of light and sound had something
+of the paralyzing suddenness of that which occurs
+when a furnace door is thrown wide and eye and
+ear are assailed at the same instant with the glare and
+the roar from within. One moment we were running
+in a shadowed gorge with a heavy but deadened and
+apparently distant rumble sounding somewhere
+ahead; the next we were in the heart of a roar that
+fairly scoured our ear-drums, and blinking in a fluttering
+white light that seemed to sear the eyeballs.
+The one hurried glance that I threw behind me as I
+began floundering on the end of my kicking oar
+photographed an intensely vivid picture on my memory.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 105]</span></p>
+
+<p>What had been merely a swiftly-flowing river with
+a streak of silver riffles down the middle had changed
+to a tumultuous tumble of cascades that gleamed in
+solid white from bank to bank like the churned snow
+of a freshly descended avalanche. There was no green
+water whatever; not even a streak that was tinged
+with green. All that relieved the coruscating, sun-silvered
+tumble of whiteness were the black tips of
+jutting bedrock, sticking up through the foam
+they had churned. The deeply shadowed western
+wall, hanging above the river like a dusky pall, served
+only to accentuate by contrast the intense white light
+that danced above the cascade. It was as though the
+golden yellow had been filtered out of the sunlight in
+the depths, and only the pure blue-white of calcium
+reflected back into the atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p>Heavy as was the fall of the river over the stretch
+we had now entered, I could just make out a point
+perhaps a half mile farther down where it dropped
+out of sight entirely. That, I told myself, must be
+the place where there was an unbroken reef of bedrock
+all the way across the stream, and where there
+was an abrupt drop of eight or ten feet. A great
+throbbing rumble cutting into the slightly higher-keyed
+roar that already engulfed us also seemed to
+indicate that the steepest pitch had not yet been
+reached. I had, of course, seen worse water than this,
+but certainly had never (as appeared to be the case
+now) been irretrievably committed to running it. I
+had heard that it was quite unrunnable in any kind
+of a boat, it certainly looked unrunnable, and I seemed
+to have the impression that Blackmore had said he<span class="pagenum">[Pg 106]</span>
+was not intending to run it. Yet here we were into
+it, and without (so far as I could see) anything to do
+but drive ahead. However, that was Blackmore&#8217;s
+affair....</p>
+
+<p>The rather smart team-work which Andy and I had
+maintained for a while dissolved like the morning
+mists as we banged in among the walloping rollers at
+the head of the real cascade. Both of us were in difficulties,
+but his round-armed thumping stroke
+seemed rather more true to form than the shattered
+remnants of my fine straight-armed slide-and-recover,
+with its dainty surface-skimming &#8220;feather.&#8221; Nothing
+but the sharpest of dabs with the tip of an oar can
+get any hold in a current of fifteen to twenty miles an
+hour, and the short, wristy pull (which is all there is
+time for) doesn&#8217;t impart a lot of impulse to a thirty-foot
+boat. That, and the staggering buffets on the
+bows, for it was solid, lumpy water that was coming
+over us now, quickly reduced our headway. (Headway
+<i>through</i> the current, I mean; our headway floating
+<i>in</i> the current was terrific.) This was, of course, a
+serious handicap to Blackmore, as it deprived him of
+much of the steerage-way upon which he was dependent
+for quick handling of the boat. The difficulty of
+maintaining steerage-way in rough water with oars
+makes a bow as well as a stern paddle very desirable in
+running bad rapids. The bow paddler can keep a
+very sharp lookout for rocks immediately ahead, and,
+in a pinch, can jerk the boat bodily to one side or the
+other, where oarsmen have to <i>swing</i> it. However,
+Blackmore knew just what he was going up against,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 107]</span>
+and had made the best disposition possible of his
+available crew.</p>
+
+<p>I was too busy keeping myself from being bucked
+off the thwart by my floundering oar to steal more
+than that first hurried look over my shoulder. It was
+not my concern what was ahead anyway. All I had
+to do was to take a slap at the top of a wave every time
+I saw a chance, and be ready to back, or throw my
+weight into a heavy stroke, when Blackmore needed
+help to turn her this way or that. My signal&mdash;a jerk
+of the steersman&#8217;s head to the left&mdash;came sooner than
+I expected. It looked a sheer impossibility to drive
+through the maze of rocks to the bank, yet that&mdash;after
+a long, anxious look ahead&mdash;was evidently what
+he had decided to attempt. As it was my oar he called
+on, I knew it was the right or east bank, a sharply
+sloping reach of black bedrock littered with water-scoured
+boulders.</p>
+
+<p>By the way Blackmore was leaning onto his paddle
+I knew that he needed all the pull I could give him
+to bring her round. Swinging back hard, I threw
+every pound I had onto my oar. For an instant the
+lack of resistance as the blade tore through foam
+nearly sent me reeling backwards; then it bit into
+solid water, and, under impulse of oar and paddle, the
+boat pivoted through more than half a quadrant and
+shot straight for the bank. Right in where the black
+rock tips were scattered like the raisins in a pudding
+he headed her. There was no room to use the oars
+now, but she still carried more than enough way to
+send her to the bank. Or rather, it would have carried<span class="pagenum">[Pg 108]</span>
+her through if the course had been clear. Missing two
+or three rocks by inches, she rasped half her length
+along another, and onto a fourth&mdash;lurking submerged
+by a foot&mdash;she jammed full tilt. It was her port bow
+that struck, and from the crash it seemed impossible
+that she could have escaped holing. Andy went over
+the side so suddenly that, until I saw him balancing on
+a rock and trying to keep the boat from backing off
+into the current, I thought he had been thrown overboard
+by the impact. Thumping her bow with his
+boot, he reported her leaking slightly but not much
+damaged. Then, swinging her round into an eddy,
+he jumped off into the waist-deep water and led her
+unresistingly up against the bank. It was astonishing
+to see so wild a creature so suddenly become tame.</p>
+
+<p>We would have to &#8220;line down&#8221; from here to the
+foot of the first fall, Blackmore said. While Roos was
+setting up his camera the veteran explained that he
+could have run four or five hundred yards farther
+down, right to the brink of the &#8220;tip off,&#8221; but that he
+preferred getting in out of the wet where he had a
+good landing. I agreed with him heartily&mdash;without
+putting it in words. But if that was his idea of a
+&#8220;good landing place,&#8221; I hoped he would continue to
+avoid bad ones.</p>
+
+<p>The basic principles of &#8220;lining down&#8221; are the same
+on all rivers. Where water is too rough to run, it is
+the last resort before portaging. As generally practised,
+one man, walking along the bank, lets the boat
+down with a line, while another&mdash;or as many others
+as are available&mdash;keeps it off the rocks with poles.
+&#8220;Lining&#8221; can be effected more rapidly and with much<span class="pagenum">[Pg 109]</span>
+less effort if one man remains in the boat and fends off
+with his pole from there. This is much the better
+method where the fall is not too great and the water
+comparatively warm. On the upper Columbia, where
+the breaking away of a boat from a line means its
+almost inevitable loss with all on board, it is resorted
+to only when absolutely necessary, and when a man
+of great experience is handling the line. It takes a
+natural aptitude and years of experience for a man to
+master all the intricacies of &#8220;lining.&#8221; I shall not endeavour
+to enumerate even the few that I am familiar
+with; but the one thing beyond all others to avoid is
+letting the bow of the boat swing outwards when the
+stern is held up by a rock. This brings the full current
+of the river against its up-stream side, exerting a
+force that a dozen men could not hold against, let
+alone one or two. As Blackmore was noted for his
+mastery of the &#8220;lining&#8221; game, however, we had no
+apprehension of trouble in this department.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing of the outfit save the moving picture camera
+was removed from the boat at this juncture. Coiling
+his line&mdash;something over a hundred feet of half-inch
+Manila hemp&mdash;over his left arm, Blackmore
+signalled Andy to shove off. Paying out the line
+through his right hand, he let the eddy carry the boat
+out into the drag of the current. Armed with long
+pike-poles, Andy and I ran on ahead to keep it clear
+of the banks as it swung in. This was easy enough
+as long as we had only the bank to contend with.
+But almost immediately the trouble which makes
+Surprise Rapids one of the nastiest stretches on any
+river in the world to line began to develop. This<span class="pagenum">[Pg 110]</span>
+came from the submerged rocks which crop up all
+along between the banks and the deeper water of
+mid-channel.</p>
+
+<p>Pulling her up and releasing her with a hand that
+reminded me of that of a consummate natural horseman,
+Blackmore nursed the boat along and managed
+to avoid most of these obstructions. But every now
+and then she would wedge between a close-set pair
+of boulders and resist the force of the current to drive
+her on. At such times it was up to Andy and me to
+wade in and try to dislodge her with our poles. Failing
+this, we had to wade out still farther and lift
+her through. Andy always took the lead in this lifting
+business, claiming that it required a lot of experience
+to know just the instant to stop shoving at the
+boat as she began to move, and start bracing against
+the current to keep from getting carried away. I
+have no doubt he was right. In any event he would
+never let me come out until he had tugged and hauled
+for several minutes trying to budge her alone, and
+even then&mdash;notwithstanding his four or five inches
+less of height&mdash;he always took his station in the deepest
+hole. Two or three times, shaking himself like a
+Newfoundland, he came out wet to the armpits with
+the icy water. As the sun was beating hotly upon
+the rocks, however, neither of us felt the cold much
+that afternoon. A few days later it was another story.</p>
+
+<p>We made something like eight or nine hundred
+yards before we stopped&mdash;right to the head of the
+roaring chute that ran down to the sheer drop-off.
+Roos&mdash;always at his best when there was plenty of
+unpremeditated action going on, so that &#8220;directorial&#8221;<span class="pagenum">[Pg 111]</span>
+worries sat lightly on him&mdash;followed us closely all the
+way. It was hard enough keeping one&#8217;s footing on
+those ice-slippery boulders at all; how he managed it
+with something like a hundred pounds of camera and
+tripod over his shoulder and a bulky case in one hand
+is more than I can figure. But he did it, keeping
+close enough so that he got just about everything
+without having to ask us to do it over again. This
+latter was a good deal of a comfort, especially in
+those waist-deep-in-the-Columbia lifting stunts. I
+had always hated &#8220;lining down,&#8221; even in the tropics,
+and I already saw that what we had ahead wasn&#8217;t
+going to modify my feelings for the better.</p>
+
+<p>At the head of that rough-and-tumble cascade leading
+to the fall, Blackmore decided that we would have
+to unload the boat completely before trying to let her
+down. It was always bad business there at the best, he
+said, and the present stage of water made the rocks
+quite a bit worse than when either higher or lower.
+If we hustled, there ought to be time to get through
+before dark, and then a half mile run would take us
+to a good camping place near the head of the second
+fall. Here Roos intervened to point out that the sun
+was already behind the western wall, and asking if it
+wouldn&#8217;t be possible to camp where we were. He
+wanted to keep the &#8220;continuity&#8221; of this particular
+piece of &#8220;lining&#8221; unbroken, and would need good
+light to finish it in. Blackmore said he could manage
+the camp if we thought our ear-drums would stand the
+roar.</p>
+
+<p>So we unloaded the boat, and Blackmore leading
+her into the quietest pool he could find, moored her<span class="pagenum">[Pg 112]</span>
+for the night. As there was a couple of feet of &#8220;lop&#8221;
+even there, this was rather a nice operation. With
+lines to stern and bow, and held off from the rocks on
+either side by lashed pike-poles, she looked for all the
+world like some fractious horse that had been secured
+to prevent its banging itself up against the sides of
+its stall. It was a beastly job, carrying the fifteen or
+twenty heavy parcels of the outfit a hundred yards
+over those huge polished boulders to the bit of sand-<span class="pagenum">[Pg 113]</span>bar
+where camp was to be pitched. My old ankles&mdash;endlessly
+sprained during my football days&mdash;protested
+every step of my several round trips, and I
+congratulated myself that I had had the foresight to
+bring leather braces to stiffen them. Reeking with
+perspiration after I had thrown down my last load, I
+decided to use the river for a bath that I would have
+to take anyway on shifting from my wet clothes. The
+half-glacial water was not a lot above freezing, of
+course; but that is of small moment when one has
+plenty of animal heat stored up to react against it.
+My worst difficulty was from the bumpiness of my
+rocky bathing pool, which also had a rather troublesome
+undercurrent pulling out toward the racing
+chute of the main channel. Blackmore, pop-eyed with
+astonishment, came down to watch the show. It was
+the first time he had ever seen a man take a voluntary
+bath in Surprise Rapids, he said. And all the others&mdash;the
+involuntary bathers&mdash;they had picked up later
+in Kinbasket Lake.</p>
+
+<p>That was about the most restricted space I can
+recall ever having camped in. The great boulders
+of the high-water channel extended right up to the
+foot of the mountain wall and neither the one nor the
+other afforded enough level space to set a doll&#8217;s house.
+A four-by-six patch of sand was the most extensive
+area that seemed to offer, and, doubling this in size
+by cutting away a rotting spruce stump and a section
+of fallen birch, there was just enough room for the
+little shed-tent. It was a snug and comfortable camp,
+though, and highly picturesque, perched as it was almost
+in the spray of the cascade. The noise was the
+worst thing, and we would have had to stay there
+even longer than we did to become quite used to it.
+All of us were shouting in each other&#8217;s ears for days
+afterwards, and even trying to converse in signs in the
+idyllic quietude of Kinbasket Lake.</p>
+
+<p>The storm which Blackmore&#8217;s seer-like vision had
+descried in the blue-green auroral flutters of a couple
+of nights previously arrived quite on schedule. Although
+the western sky had glowed for half an hour
+after sunset with that supposedly optimistic tinge of
+primrose and terra-cotta, it was pouring before midnight,
+and the next morning there was truly almost
+as much water in the air as in the river. Pictures were
+out of the question, so there was nothing to do but
+hang on until the weather cleared. Leaving Roos
+whittling and Andy struggling to divert a swelling
+young river that was trying to sluice away the sand
+on which the tent was pitched, Blackmore and I pulled
+on our waterproofs and clambered a mile through the
+woods to a camp of C. P. R. engineers. Blackmore
+wanted to get an extra axe; I to get some further
+data on the fall of the river. We found a crude cable-ferry
+thrown across just below the foot of the big<span class="pagenum">[Pg 114]</span>
+fall, and a rough, boggy path from the eastern end of
+it took us to the camp of three or four comfortable
+cabins.</p>
+
+<p>The Canadian Pacific, I learned&mdash;both on account
+of the high and increasing cost of its oil fuel and because
+of the trouble experienced in clearing their tunnels
+from smoke&mdash;was contemplating the electrification
+of all of its mountain divisions. There were
+numerous high falls along the line where power could
+be economically developed, but it was not considered
+desirable that the scenic beauty of these should be
+marred by diversion. Besides the Columbia, in a
+hundred miles of the Big Bend, offered the opportunity
+for developing more hydro-electric energy than
+all the west of Canada could use in the next twenty
+years. The Surprise Rapids project alone would
+provide far more power than the Canadian Pacific
+could use for traction, and it was expected that there
+would be a large surplus for municipal and industrial
+uses along the line. &#8220;All this, of course,&#8221; the engineer
+at the camp explained, &#8220;in the event the company
+decides to go ahead with the development.
+Raising the money will probably be the greatest difficulty,
+and in the present state of the financial market
+it is hard to see how much can be done for two
+or three years. In the meantime we are measuring
+the flow of the river every day, and will have accurate
+data to go by when the time for construction comes.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I learned that the total length of Surprise Rapids
+was three and a third miles, in which distance there
+was a fall of nearly one hundred feet. The greatest
+drop was in that stretch which we were waiting to<span class="pagenum">[Pg 115]</span>
+&#8220;line,&#8221; where there was a fall of twenty-one feet in
+seven hundred and fifty. At the second cascade
+there was a fall of fifteen feet in twelve hundred,
+and at the third, twenty-five feet in twenty-five hundred.
+It was planned to build the dam across the
+very narrow canyon near the foot of the lower fall,
+making it of such a height that a lake would be backed
+up as far as Beavermouth, incidentally, of course,
+wiping out the whole of Surprise Rapids. &#8220;They
+can&#8217;t wipe it out any too soon to suit me,&#8221; Blackmore
+commented on hearing this. &#8220;It&#8217;d have saved
+me a lot of work and many a wetting if they&#8217;d wiped
+it out twenty year ago. And that&#8217;s saying nothing
+of the men drownded there. It was that big whirlpool
+down through the trees there that did for Walter
+Steinhoff.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>We had left the camp now and were picking our
+way down the narrow trail to the foot of the second
+fall. I had been waiting to hear Blackmore speak of
+Steinhoff for two reasons: first, because I was curious
+to know how much truth there was in those dramatic
+versions of his death I had heard in Golden, and also
+because the subject would lead up naturally to that
+of the buried whisky. This latter was rather too
+delicate a matter to broach offhand, and I had therefore
+been carefully watching for a favourable opening.
+Now that it had come, I was quick to take advantage
+of it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Tell me about Steinhoff,&#8221; I said. &#8220;He was on
+some kind of a boot-legging stunt, wasn&#8217;t he?&#8221; I
+was just a bit diffident about bringing up that drink-running
+business, for although I had been told that<span class="pagenum">[Pg 116]</span>
+Blackmore was a smooth hand at the game himself,
+I had a sort of sneaking idea that it was the kind of
+a thing a man ought to be sensitive about, like having
+had smallpox or a sister in the movies. I need not have
+worried, however. &#8220;You bet he was boot-legging,&#8221;
+Blackmore replied; &#8220;and so was I. Both outfits
+heading for <i>Tete Jaune Cache</i> on the Grand Trunk,
+and racing to get there first. That was what got him
+into trouble&mdash;trying to catch up with me after I had
+passed him by running and lining the first fall (the
+one we are doing the same way now) while he had
+portaged. I reckon it was his first intention to portage
+all the way to the foot of the second fall, but
+when he saw me slip by in the water he put in his
+canoes at the foot of the first fall and came after me.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>We had come out above the river now, and I saw
+a savage stretch of foam-white water falling in a roaring
+cascade to a mighty whirlpool that filled all of
+the bottom of the steeply-walled amphitheatre formed
+by a right-angling bend of the Columbia. Thirty
+feet or more above the present level of the whirlpool
+were the marks of its swirling scour at mid-summer
+high-water. Awesome enough now (and it was not
+any the less so to me since we still had to take the
+boat through it), I could see at once that, with the
+power of the floods driving it round and round at
+turbine speed, it must indeed be a veritable thing of
+terror. It was into this whirlpool, as well as others
+at Revelstoke Canyon and Death Rapids, that whole
+uprooted pines were said to be sucked in flood-time,
+to reappear only as battered logs many miles below.
+There seemed hardly enough water there at the pres<span class="pagenum">[Pg 117]</span>ent
+to make this possible; but the story was at least
+credible to me now, which was more than it had been
+previously.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;So this is your &#8216;All Day Sucker,&#8217;&#8221; I remarked
+carelessly, in a studied attempt to keep Blackmore
+from noting how greatly the savage maelstrom had
+impressed me. Seeing through the bluff, he grinned
+indulgently and resumed his story of Steinhoff as
+soon as we had moved far enough round the whirlpool
+to make his voice comfortably heard above the roar
+of the cascade. A line had parted&mdash;sawed through
+in working round a rocky point a few hundred yards
+above&mdash;and Steinhoff&#8217;s big Peterboro was swept out
+into the current. Striking a rock, it turned over and
+threw him into the water. He made a brave effort
+to swim out, keeping his head above water most of
+the way down the cascade. The whirlpool had been
+too much for him, however. He was fighting hard
+to keep up when he was carried into the vortex and
+sucked under. Blackmore took no stock in the story
+of the dramatic gesture of farewell. &#8220;A man don&#8217;t
+pull that grand opry stuff with the cold of the Columbia
+biting into his spine,&#8221; was the way he put it.</p>
+
+<p>Then I told him about the whisky&mdash;spoke to him
+as a son to his father. And he, meeting me point for
+point in all seriousness of spirit, answered as father to
+son. He thought there was little chance of finding
+anything along the river. He had not done so himself
+for a number of years&mdash;and he hadn&#8217;t been overlooking
+any bets, either. There was, of course, still
+much good stuff buried in the drift below Middle
+River, but it would be like looking for a needle in a<span class="pagenum">[Pg 118]</span>
+haystack trying to find it. But the cache above
+Canoe River&mdash;ah, that was another matter! Captain
+Armstrong could be absolutely depended upon in a
+matter of that kind, and the directions sounded right
+as rain. Yes, he quite understood that I should want
+to take it all to California with me. He would want
+to do the same thing if he were in my place. It would
+be easy as picking pippins getting it over the line.
+He could tell me three different ways, all of them
+dead sure. He would not think of taking any of it
+for himself. The rum we had would be ample for the
+trip, except in extreme emergency. That &#8220;thirty
+over-proof&#8221; went a long way. And I need not worry
+in the least about Andy. He wasn&#8217;t a teetotaler
+exactly, but he never took too much under any provocation.
+Yes, I could depend upon the both of them
+to nose out that stuff at the old ferry. Put it there!
+We looked each other square in the eye, and shook
+hands solemnly there above the big whirlpool which
+was originally responsible for the good fortune that
+had come to us&mdash;or rather to me. Men have clasped
+hands and sworn to stand by each other in lesser
+things. At least that was the way it seemed to me
+at the moment. I could have embraced the fine old
+woodsman for his loyalty and generosity of spirit.
+I always called him Bob after that.</p>
+
+<p>The rain thinned down and became a light Scotch
+mist as we picked our way back to camp. That struck
+me as being a good omen&mdash;it&#8217;s being &#8220;Scotch,&#8221; I
+mean. Later it cleared up entirely, and there was a
+glorious fairweather sunset of glowing saffron and
+flaming poppy red. To the northwest&mdash;Canoe<span class="pagenum">[Pg 119]</span>
+River-ward&mdash;there poured a wonderful light of pale
+liquescent amber. I had never seen such a light on
+land or sea, I told myself; or anywhere else, for that
+matter&mdash;except when holding a glass of Scotch up
+against the sun. That was another good omen.
+Funny thing, but I can still recall the date offhand,
+so indelibly had the promise of that day impressed
+itself on my mind. It was the first of October.</p>
+
+<p>Although it snowed an inch or two during the night,
+the following morning fulfilled the promise of the
+sunset by breaking bright and cloudless. We were
+to line the boat down empty for a couple of hundred
+yards, and then load up again and line about an
+equal distance of slightly better water. This would
+take us to the brink of the abrupt fall, where both
+outfit and boat had to be portaged over the rocks for
+a short distance. That would leave us clear for the
+short, swift run to the head of the second fall.</p>
+
+<p>Cutting himself a &#8220;sylvan frame&#8221; through the
+pines on a point a hundred yards below the camp,
+Roos set up to shoot the first piece of lining. It was
+a mean looking job, for the river was tumbling in a
+half-cataract all the way, turning and squirming like
+a wounded dragon. I could see Blackmore was a bit
+worried over it, and, as the sequel proved, with good
+reason. I never quite understood his explanation of
+the cause of what happened, but I believe he claimed
+it was due to his obeying (against his better judgment)
+Roos&#8217; signal to keep the boat in fairly close
+to the bank so that she would not pass &#8220;out of the
+picture&#8221;&mdash;beyond the range of his lens, that is. At
+any rate, the boat had hardly started before she swung<span class="pagenum">[Pg 120]</span>
+broadside to the current and, clapping like a limpet
+upon a big round boulder, hung there immovable.
+Heeled till her starboard side showed like the belly
+of a sharply sheering shark, her port gunwale dipped
+deep into the swirling current. In a wink she had
+taken all the water she would hold with the half-heel
+that was on her&mdash;enough, perhaps, to fill her half full
+when on an even keel.</p>
+
+<p>It was a case for instant action&mdash;a case where the
+nearest available man had to follow his first hunch
+without thinking it over or counting the cost. A few
+seconds more on that rock, and one of two things
+must happen to the boat: either she would settle a
+few inches farther, fill completely and sink, or else
+the force of the current would tear her to pieces where
+she was. Blackmore was tugging at his line and
+shouting directions, but the roar stopped the words
+at his lips. Andy did not need to be told what was
+needed, however. For myself, I was not quite sure of
+what to do, and less so of how to do it. Also, I
+doubted my ability to keep my footing in the current.
+In short, I found myself thinking and weighing
+chances in one of those emergencies where a man to
+be worth his salt has no business to do either.</p>
+
+<p>There was only one place where a man could get
+at the boat, and Andy beat me to it by a mile. (I
+would have seen to that even had he moved a lot
+slower than he did.) He was rather more than waist
+deep, but quite safe as long as the boat stuck where
+she was. Unfortunately, getting her off was the very
+thing he was there for. It was a good deal like a
+man&#8217;s having to saw off the branch on which he sat.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 121]</span>
+But Andy never hesitated&mdash;probably because there
+was not time to think and reckon the consequences.
+Setting his heavy shoulders under her bilge, he gave
+a mighty upward heave. She shuddered through her
+long red length, and then, as the kick of the current
+got under her submerged gunwale, shot up and off as
+though discharged from a catapult. The job had
+been well done, too, for she came off with her stern
+down stream, which made it comparatively easy for
+Blackmore to check her way with his line, even half-filled
+as she was.</p>
+
+<p>Whether he failed to recover as the boat was swept
+away, or whether he lost his balance in avoiding entanglement
+in the line, Andy was not quite sure. His
+first recollection after releasing the boat, he said, was
+of floundering in the water and of finding that his
+first kick or two did not strike bottom. The thing
+that is always possible when a man has lifted off a
+boat in a swift current had happened: he had lost his
+footing, and in just about the one worst place in the
+whole Columbia.</p>
+
+<p>Blackmore, dragged down the bank after his floundering
+boat, was not in a position where he could
+throw the end of his line to any purpose. I waded
+in and reached out my pike-pole, but Andy&#8217;s back
+was to it the only time he came within grabbing distance.
+The only thing that saved him was luck&mdash;the
+fact that the current at the point he lost his footing
+did not swirl directly into the main chute, but did a
+little double-shuffle of its own along the side of an
+eddy before taking the big leap. Hooking into the
+solid green water of that eddy, Andy found himself<span class="pagenum">[Pg 122]</span>
+a toehold, and presently clambered out. He had not
+swallowed any water, and did not seem much chilled
+or winded. A violent sickness of the stomach, where
+the cold had arrested digestive operations, was about
+the only ill effect. What seemed to annoy him most
+was the fact that all of his pockets were turned wrong-side-out,
+with all of their contents&mdash;save only his
+watch, which had been secured by a thong&mdash;missing.
+Blackmore nodded grimly to me as he came up after
+securing the boat. &#8220;<i>Now</i> perhaps you&#8217;ll believe what
+I told you about the old Columbia picking pockets,&#8221;
+he said dryly.</p>
+
+<p>Roos came down complaining that he had been too
+far away to pick up any details of the show even with
+his &#8220;six-inch&#8221; lens and cursing his luck for not having
+been set up closer at hand. Considering what he had
+missed, I thought he showed unwonted delicacy in
+not asking Blackmore and Andy to stage it over
+again for him.</p>
+
+<p>Bailing out the boat, we found one oar missing, but
+this we subsequently recovered from an eddy below.
+That left our net loss for the mishap only the contents
+of Andy&#8217;s pockets and the picture Roos did not
+get. Some might have figured in the extra ration of
+rum Andy drew to straighten out the kinks of his
+outraged stomach; but that seemed hardly the sporting
+way to look at it, especially with our prospects in
+the drink line being what they were.</p>
+
+<p><a id="page122" name="page122"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 404px;">
+<img src="images/illo_170.jpg" width="404" height="700" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&#8220;SHOOTING&#8221; THE FIRST BIT OF LINING AT SURPRISE
+RAPIDS (<i>above</i>)<br />
+THE CAMP WHERE THE ROAR OF THE RAPIDS DEAFENED US (<i>centre</i>)<br />
+WHERE STEINHOF WAS DROWNED (<i>below</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><a id="page123" name="page123"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 335px;">
+<img src="images/illo_171.jpg" width="335" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">WHERE ANDY JUST MISSED DROWNING IN SURPRISE
+RAPIDS (<i>above</i>)<br />
+LOOKING THROUGH THE PINES AT SURPRISE RAPIDS (<i>centre</i>)<br />
+HEAD OF SECOND FALL OF SURPRISE RAPIDS (<i>below</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The portage at the fall proved a mighty stiff bit of
+hard labour. It was one thing to skid the boat along
+on the pine needles at Beavermouth with a couple of
+dozen men pushing it, and quite another for three
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 123]</span>men to take it out of the water, lift it over forty or
+fifty feet of boulders, and put it back into the river
+again. By the free use of rollers&mdash;cut from young
+firs&mdash;we managed, however, Roos cranking his camera
+through all of the operation and telling us to &#8220;Make
+it snappy!&#8221; and not to be &#8220;foot-hogs.&#8221; Almost worse
+than portaging the boat was the unspeakably toil-some
+task of packing the outfit over the boulders for
+a couple of hundred yards to where there was a quiet
+spot to load again. Every step had to be balanced
+for, and even then one was down on his knees half the
+time. With my numerous bad joints&mdash;there are but
+three from shoulder to heel that had not been sprained
+or dislocated from two to a dozen times&mdash;this boulder
+clambering work was the only thing in connection
+with the whole voyage that I failed to enjoy.</p>
+
+<p>A half mile run with an eight-mile current took us
+to the head of the second fall, all but the first hundred
+yards of which had to be lined. Landing this time on
+the west bank, we worked the boat down without much
+difficulty past the jutting point where the line of
+Steinhoff&#8217;s boat had parted. Blackmore had hoped to
+line her all the way down without unloading, but the
+last fifty yards before the cascade tumbled into the
+big whirlpool were so thickly studded with rocks along
+the bank that he finally decided not to risk it. As
+there were thirty or forty feet of deep pools and
+eddies between the rocks on which she was stuck and
+the nearest stretch of unsubmerged boulders, unloading
+was a particularly awkward piece of work.
+Finally everything was shifted out onto a flat-topped
+rock, and Roos and I were left to get this ashore<span class="pagenum">[Pg 124]</span>
+while Andy and Blackmore completed lining down.
+It was an especially nice job, taking the boat down
+that last steep pitch into the big whirlpool and then
+working her round a huge square-faced rock to a
+quiet eddy, and I should greatly like to have seen it.
+Unluckily, what with stumbling over hidden boulders
+and being down with my nose in the water half of the
+time, and the thin blue mist that hovered round me
+the rest of the time from what I said as a consequence
+of stumbling, I could only guess at the finesse and
+highly technical skill with which the difficult operation
+was accomplished. The worst part appeared to
+be getting her down the fall. Once clear of the submerged
+rocks, Blackmore seemed to make the whirlpool
+do his work for him. Poised on a projecting log
+of the jam packed on top of the jutting rock, he paid
+out a hundred feet of line and let the racing swirl of
+the spinning pool carry the boat far out beyond all
+obstructions. Then, gently and delicately as if playing
+a salmon on a trout rod, he nursed her into an
+eddy and simply coiled his line and let the back-setting
+current carry her in to the bit of sandy beach
+where he wanted to tie her up for the night. It takes
+a lifetime of swift-water experience to master the
+intricacies of an operation like that.</p>
+
+<p>It was still early in the afternoon, but with a thick
+mist falling Blackmore thought best to stop where we
+were. The next available camping place was below
+the half-mile-long third cascade, and no old river man
+likes to go into a rapid when the visibility is poor.
+We pitched the tent in a hole cut out of the thick-growing
+woods on a low bench at the inner angle of<span class="pagenum">[Pg 125]</span>
+the bend. Everything was soaking wet, but it was
+well back from the falls, and for the first time in two
+days we were able to talk to each other without shouting.
+Not that we did so, however; from sheer force
+of habit we continued roaring into each other&#8217;s ears
+for a week or more yet.</p>
+
+<p>The great pile of logs on top of the flat-topped
+rock above the whirlpool had fascinated me from the
+first. Over a hundred feet square, forty feet high,
+and packed as though by a titanic hydraulic press, it
+must have contained thousands and thousands of
+cords of wood. On Blackmore&#8217;s positive assurance
+as a timberman that there was nothing in the pile of
+any value for lumber, even in the improbable contingency
+that a flood would ever carry it beyond the
+big drifts of Kinbasket Lake, I decided to make a
+bonfire of it. Never had I had such an opportunity,
+both on the score of the sheer quantity of combustible
+and the spectacular setting for illumination.</p>
+
+<p>The whirlpool was <i>whouf-whoufing</i> greedily as it
+wolfed the whole cascade when I clambered up just
+before dark to touch off my beacon. It was fairly
+dry at the base, and a pile of crisp shavings off a slab
+from some distant up-river sawmill caught quickly.
+From a spark of red flickering dimly through the
+mist when we sat down to supper, this had grown to a
+roaring furnace by the time we had relaxed to pipes
+and cigarettes. An hour later the flames had eaten a
+clear chimney up through the jam and the red light
+from their leaping tips was beginning to drive back
+the encompassing darkness. Roos, who had read
+about India, thought it would have been fine if we<span class="pagenum">[Pg 126]</span>
+only had a few widows to cast themselves on the flaming
+pyre and commit <i>suttee</i>. Andy and Blackmore,
+both sentimental bachelors, were a unit in maintaining
+that it would be a shame to waste good widows
+that way, especially on the practically widowless Big
+Bend. All three were arguing the point rather heatedly
+when they crawled into their blankets. For
+myself, with a vision of the wonder about to unroll
+impinging on my brain, I could not think of turning
+in for hours yet.</p>
+
+<p>By ten o&#8217;clock the pile was well alight underneath,
+but it was not until nearly midnight, when the mist
+had turned to snow and a strong wind had sprung
+up, that it was blazing full strength. I hardly know
+what would have been the direction of the wind in
+the upper air, but, cupped in the embrasure of the
+bend, it was sucking round and round, like the big
+whirlpool, only more fitfully and with an upward
+rather than a downward pull. Now it would drag
+the leaping flame-column a hundred feet in the air,
+twisting it into lambent coils and fining the tip down
+to a sharp point, like that of the Avenging Angel&#8217;s
+Sword of Fire in the old Biblical prints, now sweep it
+out in a shivering sheet above the whirlpool, now
+swing it evenly round and round as though the flame,
+arrow-pointed and attenuated, were the radium-coated
+hand of a Gargantuan clock being swiftly revolved
+in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>But the wonder of wonders was less the fire itself
+than the marvellous transformations wrought by the
+light it threw. And the staggering contrasts! The
+illuminated snow clouds drifting along the frosted-<span class="pagenum">[Pg 127]</span>pink
+curtain of the tree-clad mountain walls made a
+roseate fairyland; even the foam covered sweep of
+the cascade, its roar drowned in the sharp crackle of
+the flames, was softened and smoothened until it
+seemed to billow like the sunset-flushed canvas of a
+ship becalmed: but the whirlpool, its sinister character
+only accentuated by the conflict of cross-shadows and
+reflections, was a veritable Pit of Damnation, choking
+and coughing as it swirled and rolled in streaky coils
+of ox-blood, in fire-stabbed welters of fluid coal-tar.</p>
+
+<p>Wrapped in my hooded duffle coat, I paced the
+snow-covered moss and exulted in the awesome spectacle
+until long after midnight. I have never envied
+Nero very poignantly since. Given a fiddle and a
+few Christians, I would have had all that was his on
+the greatest night of his life&mdash;and then some. Father
+Tiber never had a whirlpool like mine, even on the day
+Horatius swam it &#8220;heavy with his armour and spent
+with changing blows.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The next morning, though too heavily overcast for
+pictures, was still clear enough to travel. The head
+riffles of the third fall of Surprise Rapids began a
+little below our camp, so that we started lining almost
+immediately. Three or four times we pulled across the
+river, running short stretches and lining now down
+one side and now the other. There was not so great
+a rate of drop as at the first and second falls, but the
+whole stream was choked with barely submerged rocks
+and lining was difficult on account of the frequent
+cliffs.</p>
+
+<p>It was about half way down that I all but messed
+things up by failing to get into action quickly enough<span class="pagenum">[Pg 128]</span>
+at a crossing. The fault, in a way, was Blackmore&#8217;s,
+because of his failure to tell me in advance what was
+expected, and then&mdash;when the order had to be passed
+instantly&mdash;for standing rather too much on ceremony
+in the manner of passing it. We were about to pull
+to the opposite side to line down past a riffle which
+Blackmore reckoned too rough to risk running.
+There was about a ten-mile current, and it would
+have required the smartest kind of a get-away and
+the hardest kind of pulling to make the other bank
+without being carried down onto the riffle. The boat
+was headed up-stream, and, as Blackmore had not
+told me he intended to cross, I took it for granted he
+was going to run. So, when Roos shoved off and
+jumped in, I rested on my oar in order that Andy
+could bring the boat sharply round and head it down
+stream. Blackmore&#8217;s excited yell was the first intimation
+I had that anything was wrong. &#8220;Pull like
+hell! You!... Mister Freeman!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>That &#8220;Mister,&#8221; and his momentary pause before
+uttering it, defeated the purpose of the order. I
+pulled all right, and so hard that my oar-blade picked
+up a very sizable hunk of river and flung it in Blackmore&#8217;s
+face. That upset my balance, and I could not
+recover quickly enough to keep the boat&#8217;s head to the
+current. With characteristic presence of mind,
+Blackmore changed tactics instantly. &#8220;Got to chance
+it now!&#8221; he shouted, and threw such a pull onto his
+steering paddle that the handle bent to more than
+half a right angle where he laid it over the gunwale.
+There was one jutting rock at the head of the riffle
+that <i>had</i> to be missed; the rest was all a matter of<span class="pagenum">[Pg 129]</span>
+whether or not the next couple of hundred yards of
+submerged boulders were deeply enough covered to
+let us pass <i>over</i> them. There was no way of avoiding
+them, no chance to lay a course <i>between</i> them.</p>
+
+<p>Blackmore was a bit wilder about the eyes than I
+had seen him before; but he had stopped swearing
+and his mouth was set in a hard, determined line.
+Andy, with chesty grunts, was fairly flailing the
+water with swift, short-arm strokes. I did not need
+to be told to refrain from pulling in order that the
+others could swing her head as far toward the west
+bank as possible before the rock was reached. Instead,
+I held ready for the one quick backing stroke
+that would be called for in the event a collision seemed
+imminent at the last moment. It was the wave thrown
+off by the rock itself that helped us most when the
+showdown came. Shooting by the jagged barrier so
+close that Andy could have fended with his hand, the
+boat plunged over a short, sharp pitch and hit the
+white water with a bang.</p>
+
+<p>That was by long odds the roughest stuff we had
+been into so far. The waves were curling up well
+above our heads, and every one we hit left a foot or
+two of its top with us&mdash;solid green water, most of it,
+that began accumulating rather alarmingly in the
+bottom of the boat. There was no regularity in the
+way they ran, either. One would come mushrooming
+fairly over the bows, another would flop aboard over
+the beam, and every now and then a wild side-winder,
+missing its spring at the forward part of the boat,
+would dash a shower of spray over the quarter. From
+the bank she must have been pretty well out of sight<span class="pagenum">[Pg 130]</span>
+most of the time, for I often saw spray thrown ten
+or fifteen feet to either side and twice as far astern.
+All hands were drenched from the moment we struck
+the first comber, of course, which was doubtless why
+a wail from Roos that the water was going down his
+neck seemed to strike Blackmore as a bit superfluous.
+&#8220;Inside or outside your neck?&#8221; he roared back, adding
+that if it was the former the flow could be checked by
+the simple and natural expedient of keeping the
+mouth shut. Very properly, our &#8220;skipper&#8221; had the
+feeling that, in a really tight place, all the talking
+necessary for navigation should be done from the
+&#8220;bridge,&#8221; and that &#8220;extraneous&#8221; comment should be
+held over to smooth water.</p>
+
+<p>Before we had run a hundred yards the anxious look
+on Blackmore&#8217;s face had given way to one of relief
+and exultation. &#8220;There&#8217;s more water over the rocks
+than I reckoned,&#8221; he shouted. &#8220;Going to run right
+through.&#8221; And run we did, all of the last mile or
+more of Surprise Rapids and right on through the
+still swift but comparatively quiet water below. Here
+we drifted with the current for a ways, while all hands
+turned to and bailed. I took this, the first occasion
+that had offered, to assure Blackmore that he needn&#8217;t
+go to the length of calling me &#8220;Mister&#8221; in the future
+when he had urgent orders to give, and incidentally
+apologized for getting off on the wrong foot at the
+head of the first rapid. &#8220;Since that worked out to
+save us half a mile of darn dirty lining and two or
+three hours of time,&#8221; he replied with a grin, &#8220;I guess
+we won&#8217;t worry about it this crack, Mister&mdash;I
+mean, Freeman. Mebbe I better get used to saying<span class="pagenum">[Pg 131]</span>
+it that way &#8217;gainst when I&#8217;ll need to spit it out
+quick.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It was a pleasant run from the foot of Surprise
+Rapids down to Kinbasket Lake, or at least it was
+pleasant until the rain set in again. There is a fall
+of sixty-four feet in the sixteen miles&mdash;most of it in
+the first ten. It was a fine swift current, with a
+number of riffles but no bad water at any point. It
+was good to be free for a while from the tension which
+is never absent when working in really rough water,
+and I have no doubt that Blackmore felt better about
+it than any of the rest of us. Surprise was his especial
+<i>bete noir</i>, and he assured me that he had never
+come safely through it without swearing never to
+tackle it again. Roos, drying out in the bow like a
+tabby licking her wet coat smooth after being rained
+on, sang &#8220;Green River&#8221; all the way, and I tried to
+train Andy to pull in time to the rhythm and join in
+the chorus. As the chorus had much about drink in
+it, it seemed only fitting&mdash;considering what was waiting
+for us at Canoe River&mdash;that we <i>should</i> sing it.
+And we did. &#8220;Floating Down the Old Green River&#8221;
+became the &#8220;official song&#8221; of that particular part of
+the voyage. Later ... but why anticipate?</p>
+
+<p>We landed for lunch about where the water began
+to slacken above the lake. The water of the little
+stream at the mouth of which we tied up the boat was
+of a bright transparent amber in colour. Andy,
+sapient of the woods, thought it must flow from a lake
+impounded behind a beaver-dam in the high mountains,
+and that the stain was that of rotting wood.
+Beaver signs were certainly much in evidence all over<span class="pagenum">[Pg 132]</span>
+the little bench where we lunched. Several large cottonwood
+trunks&mdash;one of them all of two feet in diameter&mdash;had
+been felled by the tireless little engineers,
+and we found a pile of tooth-torn chips large enough
+to kindle our fire with. While tea was boiling Blackmore
+pulled a couple of three-pound Dolly Varden
+out of the mouth of the creek, only to lose his hooks
+and line when a still larger one connected up with
+them. Roos, who was under orders to get an effective
+fishing picture, was unable to go into action with his
+camera on account of the poor light.</p>
+
+<p>It had begun to rain hard by the time we had
+shoved back into the river after lunch. There were
+still five miles to go to reach the camping ground
+Blackmore had decided upon, half way down the east
+side of Kinbasket Lake, just below Middle River&mdash;slack
+water all the way. Andy and I pulled it in a
+slushy half-snow-half-rain that was a lot wetter and
+unpleasanter than the straight article of either variety.
+Of a lake which is one of the loveliest in all the
+world in the sunlight, nothing was to be seen save a
+stretch of grey-white, wind-whipped waters beating
+upon grey-brown rocky shores. That the wind and
+waves headed us did not make the pulling any lighter,
+for the boat&#8217;s considerable freeboard gave both a lot
+of surface to play upon. The exertion of rowing kept
+Andy and me warm, however, which gave us at least
+that advantage over Roos and Blackmore. The latter
+had to face it out at his paddle, but Roos, a bedraggled
+lump of sodden despair, finally gave up and
+crawled under the tarpaulin with the bags of beans
+and bacon, remaining there until we reached port.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 133]</span></p>
+
+<p>All in all, I think that was the most miserable camp
+I ever helped to pitch. The snow, refusing persistently
+either to harden or to soften, adhered clingingly
+to everything it touched. We were two hours clearing
+a space for the tent, setting it up and collecting
+enough boughs to cushion the floor. By that time
+pretty nearly everything not hermetically sealed was
+wet, including the blankets and the &#8220;dry&#8221; clothes. No
+one but Andy could have started a camp-fire under
+such conditions, and no one but Blackmore could have
+cooked a piping hot dinner on it. I forget whether
+it was Roos or myself who contributed further to save
+the day. Anyhow, it was one of the two of us that
+suggested cooking a can of plum-pudding in about its
+own bulk of &#8220;thirty per over-proof&#8221; rum. That lent
+the saving touch. In spite of a leaking tent and wet
+blankets, the whole four of us turned in singing &#8220;End
+of a Perfect Day&#8221; and &#8220;Old Green River.&#8221; The
+latter was prophetic. A miniature one&mdash;coming
+through the roof of the tent&mdash;had the range of the
+back of my neck for most of the night.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page134" name="page134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VII<br />
+<br />
+II. RUNNING THE BEND</h2>
+
+<p class="title"><i>Kinbasket Lake and Rapids</i></p>
+
+<p>It continued slushing all night and most of the next
+day, keeping us pretty close to camp. Andy, like the
+good housewife he was, kept snugging up every time
+he got a chance, so that things assumed a homelier
+and cheerier aspect as the day wore on. I clambered
+for a couple of miles down the rocky eastern bank of
+the lake in the forenoon. The low-hanging clouds
+still obscured the mountains, but underfoot I found
+unending interest in the astonishing variety of drift
+corralled by this remarkable catch-all of the upper
+Columbia. The main accumulation of flotsam and
+jetsam was above our camp, but even among the rocks
+I chanced onto almost everything one can imagine,
+from a steel rail&mdash;with the ties that had served to
+float it down still spiked to it&mdash;to a fragment of a
+vacuum-cleaner. What Roos called &#8220;the human
+touch&#8221; was furnished by an enormous uprooted
+spruce, on which some amorous lumber-jack had
+been pouring out his love through the blade of his
+axe. This had taken the form of a two-feet-in-diameter
+&#8220;bleeding heart&#8221; pierced by an arrow. Inside
+the roughly hewn &#8220;pericardium&#8221; were the initials &#8220;K.
+N.&#8221; and &#8220;P. R.,&#8221; with the date &#8220;July 4, 1910.&#8221; One
+couldn&#8217;t be quite sure whether the arrow stood for<span class="pagenum">[Pg 135]</span>
+a heart quake or a heart break. Andy, who was sentimental
+and inclined to put woman in the abstract on
+a pedestal, thought it was merely a heart quake; but
+Blackmore, who had been something of a gallant in
+his day, and therefore inclined to cynicism as he
+neared the sear and yellow leaf, was sure it was heart
+break&mdash;that the honest lumber-jack had hacked in the
+arrow and the drops of blood after he had been jilted
+by some jade. Roos wanted to make a movie of this
+simple fragment of rustic art, with me standing by
+and registering &#8220;pensive memories,&#8221; or something of
+the kind; but I managed to discourage him by the
+highly technical argument that it would impair the
+&#8220;continuity&#8221; of the &#8220;sportsmanship&#8221; which was the
+prime <i>motif</i> of the present picture.</p>
+
+<p>Blackmore piloted me up to the main area of drift
+in the afternoon. It occupied a hundred acres or more
+of sand and mud flats which constituted the lower part
+of the extensive delta deposited on the edge of the
+lake by the waters of the good-sized stream of Middle
+River. At a first glance it seemed nothing more than
+a great wilderness of tree trunks&mdash;prostrate, upended,
+woven and packed together&mdash;extending for
+hundreds of yards below high-water-mark. It was between
+these logs that the smaller things had lodged.
+There were a number of boats, not greatly damaged,
+and fragments enough to have reconstructed a dozen
+more. I am convinced that a half day&#8217;s search would
+have discovered the material for building and furnishing
+a house, though carpets and wall paper would
+hardly have been all one could desire. I even found
+a curling iron&mdash;closely clasped by the bent nail upon<span class="pagenum">[Pg 136]</span>
+which it had been hung on the log of a cabin&mdash;and
+a corset. The latter seemed hardly worth salving, as
+it appeared&mdash;according to Blackmore&mdash;to be a &#8220;military
+model&#8221; of a decade or so back, and the steel-work
+was badly rusted.</p>
+
+<p>However, it was not gewgaws or house-furnishing
+we were after. One could hardly be expected to
+slither about in soft slush for second-hand things of
+that kind. I gave a great glad whoop at my first
+sight of a silt-submerged cask, only to find the head
+missing and nothing but mud in it. So, too, my second
+and third. Then it was Blackmore who gave the
+&#8220;View Halloo,&#8221; and my heart gave a mighty leap.
+<i>His</i> treasure trove had the head intact, and even the
+bung <i>in situ</i>. But alas! the latter had become slightly
+started, and although the contents had both smell and
+colour they were so heavily impregnated with river
+mud that they would hardly have been deemed fit for
+consumption except in New York and California, and
+not worth the risk of smuggling even there. That
+cask was the high-water-mark of our luck. Several
+others had the old familiar smell, and that was all.
+But there is no doubt in the world that there is whisky
+in that drift pile&mdash;hundreds of gallons of it, and some
+very old. Blackmore swears to that, and I never
+knew him to lie&mdash;about serious matters, I mean. In
+hunting and trapping yarns a man is expected to draw
+a long bead. I pass on this undeniably valuable information
+to any one that cares to profit by it. There
+are no strings attached. But of course ... in the
+event of success ... Pasadena always finds
+me!...<span class="pagenum">[Pg 137]</span></p>
+
+<p>We did have one find, though, that was so remarkable
+as to be worth all the trouble and disappointment
+of our otherwise futile search. This was a road-bridge,
+with <i>instinct</i>. The manner in which this had
+been displayed was so astonishing as to be almost
+beyond belief; indeed, I would hesitate about setting
+down the facts had I not a photograph to prove them.
+This bridge was perhaps sixty feet in length, and had
+doubtless been carried away by a freshet from some
+tributary of the upper river which it had spanned.
+This was probably somewhere between Golden and
+Windermere, so that it had run a hundred miles or
+more of swift water, including the falls of Surprise
+Rapids, without losing more than a few planks. This
+in itself was remarkable enough, but nothing at all
+to the fact that, when it finally decided it had come
+far enough, the sagacious structure had gone and
+planked itself down squarely across another stream.
+It was still a bridge in fact as well as in form. It had
+actually saved my feet from getting wet when I
+rushed to Blackmore&#8217;s aid in up-ending the cask of
+mud-diluted whisky. My photograph plainly shows
+Blackmore standing on the bridge, with the water
+flowing directly beneath him. It would have been a
+more comprehensive and convincing picture if there
+had been light enough for a snapshot. As it was, I
+had to set up on a stump, and in a position which
+showed less of both stream and bridge than I might
+have had from a better place. I swear (and so does
+Blackmore) that we didn&#8217;t place the bridge where it
+was. It was much too large for that. Roos wanted
+to shoot the whole three of us standing on it and<span class="pagenum">[Pg 138]</span>
+registering &#8220;unbounded wonderment,&#8221; but the light
+was never right for it up to the morning of our departure,
+and then there wasn&#8217;t time.</p>
+
+<p>It rained and snowed all that night and most of the
+following day. During the afternoon of the latter the
+clouds broke up twice or thrice, and through rifts in
+the drifting wracks we had transient glimpses of the
+peaks and glaciers of the Selkirks gleaming above
+the precipitous western walls of the lake. The most
+conspicuous feature of the sky-line was the three-peaked
+&#8220;Trident,&#8221; rising almost perpendicularly
+from a glittering field of glacial ice and impaling
+great masses of pendant <i>cumulo-nimbi</i> on its splintered
+prongs. Strings of lofty glacier-set summits
+marked the line of the back-bone of the Selkirks to
+southeast and northwest, each of them sending down
+rain-swollen torrents to tumble into the lake in
+cataracts and cascades. Behind, or east of us, we
+knew the Rockies reared a similar barrier of snow
+and ice, but this was cut off from our vision by the
+more imminent lake-wall under which we were
+camped. If Kinbasket Lake is ever made accessible
+to the tourist its fame will reach to the end of the
+earth. This is a consummation which may be effected
+in the event the Canadian Pacific wipes out Surprise
+Rapids with its hydro-electric project dam and backs
+up a lake to Beavermouth. The journey to this spot
+of incomparable beauty could then be made soft
+enough to suit all but the most effete.</p>
+
+<p>A torrential rain, following a warm southerly
+breeze which sprang up in the middle of the afternoon,
+lowered the dense cloud-curtain again, and shortly,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 139]</span>
+from somewhere behind the scenes, came the raucous
+rumble and roar of a great avalanche. Blackmore&#8217;s
+practised ear led him to pronounce it a slide of both
+earth and snow, and to locate it somewhere on Trident
+Creek, straight across the lake from our camp. He
+proved to be right on both counts. When the clouds
+lifted again at sunset, a long yellow scar gashed the
+shoulder of the mountain half way up Trident Creek
+to the glacier, and the clear stream from the latter
+had completely disappeared. Blackmore said it had
+been dammed up by the slide, and that there would
+be all hell popping when it broke through.</p>
+
+<p>Scouting around for more boughs to soften his bed,
+Roos, just before supper, chanced upon Steinhoff&#8217;s
+grave. It was under a small pine, not fifty feet from
+our tent, but so hidden by the dense undergrowth
+that it had escaped our notice for two days. It was
+marked only by a fragment split from the stern of
+a white-painted boat nailed horizontally on the pine
+trunk and with the single word &#8220;<span class="smcap">Steinhoff</span>&#8221; carved
+in rude capitals. At one corner, in pencil, was an
+inscription stating that the board had been put up
+in May, 1920, by Joe French and Leo Tennis. With
+the golden sunset light streaming through the trees,
+Roos, always strong for &#8220;pathetic human touches&#8221; to
+serve as a sombre background for his Mack Sennett
+stuff, could not resist the opportunity for a picture.
+Andy and Blackmore and I were to come climbing
+up to the grave from the lake, read the inscription,
+and then look at each other and shake our heads
+ominously, as though it was simply a matter of time
+until we, too, should fall prey to the implacable river.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 140]</span>
+I refused straightaway, on the ground that I had
+signed up to act the part of a light comedy sportsman
+and not a heavy mourner. Blackmore and Andy
+were more amenable. In rehearsal, however, the expressions
+on their honest faces were so wooden and
+embarrassed that Roos finally called me up to stand
+out of range and &#8220;say something to make &#8217;em look
+natural.&#8221; I refrain from recording what I said; but
+I still maintain that shot was an interruption of the
+&#8220;continuity&#8221; of my &#8220;gentleman-sportsman&#8221; picture.
+I have not yet heard if it survived the studio surgery.</p>
+
+<p>Shortly before dark, Andy, going down to look at
+his set-line, found a three-foot ling or fresh-water cod
+floundering on the end of it. Roos persuaded him to
+keep it over night so that the elusive &#8220;fishing picture&#8221;
+might be made the following morning in case the light
+was good. As there were five or six inches of water
+in the bottom of the boat, Andy threw the ling in there
+for the night in preference to picketing him out on a
+line. There was plenty of water to have given the
+husky shovel-nose ample room to circulate with comfort
+if only he had been content to take it easy and
+not wax temperamental. Doubtless it was his imminent
+movie engagement that brought on his attack of
+flightiness. At any rate, he tried to burrow under a
+collapsible sheet-iron stove (which, preferring to do
+with a camp-fire, we had left in the boat) and got
+stuck. The forward five pounds of him had water
+enough to keep alive in, but in the night&mdash;when it
+cleared off and turned cold&mdash;his tail, which was bent
+up sharply under a thwart, froze stiff at almost right
+angles. But I am getting ahead of my story.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 141]</span></p>
+
+<p>The next morning, the sixth of October, broke brilliantly
+clear, with the sun gilding the prongs of the
+&#8220;Trident&#8221; and throwing the whole snowy line of the
+Selkirks in dazzling relief against a deep turquoise
+sky. Blackmore, keen for an early start, so as not
+to be rushed in working down through the dreaded
+&#8220;Twenty-One-Mile&#8221; Rapids to Canoe River, rooted
+us out at daybreak and began breaking camp before
+breakfast. He had reckoned without the &#8220;fishing picture,&#8221;
+however. Roos wanted bright sunlight for it,
+claiming he was under special instructions to make
+something sparkling and snappy. All through breakfast
+he coached me on the intricate details of the action.
+&#8220;Make him put up a stiff fight,&#8221; he admonished
+through a mouthful of flapjack. &#8220;Of course he won&#8217;t
+fight, &#8217;cause he ain&#8217;t that kind; but if you jerk and
+wiggle your pole just right it&#8217;ll make it look like he
+was. That&#8217;s what a real actor&#8217;s for&mdash;making things
+look like they is when they ain&#8217;t. Got me?&#8221; Then
+we went down and discovered that poor half-frozen
+fish with the eight-point alteration of the continuity
+of his back-bone.</p>
+
+<p>The ling or fresh-water cod has an underhung,
+somewhat shark-like mouth, not unsuggestive of the
+new moon with its points turned downward. Roos&#8217;
+mouth took on a similarly dejected droop when he
+found the condition the principal animal actor in his
+fish picture was in. But it was too late to give up
+now. Never might we have so husky a fighting fish
+ready to hand, and with a bright sun shining on it.
+Roos tried osteopathy, applied chiropractics and
+Christian Science without much effect. Our &#8220;lead&#8221;<span class="pagenum">[Pg 142]</span>
+continued as rigid and unrelaxing as the bushman&#8217;s
+boomerang, whose shape he so nearly approximated.
+Then Andy wrought the miracle with a simple &#8220;laying
+on of hands.&#8221; What he really did was to thaw
+out the frozen rear end of the fish by holding it
+between his big, warm red Celtic paws; but the effect
+was as magical as a cure at Lourdes. The big ling
+was shortly flopping vigorously, and when Andy
+dropped him into a bit of a boulder-locked pool he
+went charging back and forth at the rocky barriers
+like a bull at a gate. Roos almost wept in his thankfulness,
+and forthwith promised the restorer an extra
+rum ration that night. Andy grinned his thanks, but
+reminded him that we ought to be at the old ferry by
+night, where something even better than &#8220;thirty per
+over-proof&#8221; rum would be on tap. It was indeed the
+morning of our great day. Stimulated by that inspiring
+thought, I prepared to outdo myself in the &#8220;fish
+picture,&#8221; the &#8220;set&#8221; for which was now ready.</p>
+
+<p><a id="page142" name="page142"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/illo_192.jpg" width="600" height="459" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">BLACKMORE AND THE LING THAT
+REFUSED TO &#8220;REGISTER&#8221; (<i>left</i>)<br />
+THE WRITER, WITH PIKE-POLE JUST
+BEFORE LINING DEATH RAPIDS (<i>right</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><a id="page143" name="page143"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 399px;">
+<img src="images/illo_193.jpg" width="399" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">ANDY AND I PULLING DOWN KINBASKET LAKE</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Standing on the stern of the beached boat, I made
+a long cast, registering &#8220;concentrated eagerness.&#8221;
+Then Roos stopped cranking, and Andy brought the
+ling out and fastened it to the end of my line with a
+snug but comfortable hitch through the gills. (We
+were careful not to hurt him, for Chester&#8217;s directions
+had admonished especially against &#8220;showing brutality&#8221;.)
+When I had nursed him out to about where
+my opening cast had landed, Roos called &#8220;Action!&#8221;
+and started cranking again. Back and forth in wide
+sweeps he dashed, while I registered blended &#8220;eagerness&#8221;
+and &#8220;determination,&#8221; with frequent interpolations
+of &#8220;consternation&#8221; as carefully timed tugs (by
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 143]</span>myself) bent my shivering pole down to the water.
+When Roos had enough footage of &#8220;fighting,&#8221; I
+brought my catch in close to the boat and leered down
+at him, registering &#8220;near triumph.&#8221; Then I towed
+him ashore and Andy and Blackmore rushed in to
+help me land him. After much struggling (by ourselves)
+we brought him out on the beach. At this
+juncture I was supposed to grab the ling by the gills
+and hold him proudly aloft, registering &#8220;full triumph&#8221;
+the while. Andy and Blackmore were to crowd in,
+pat me on the back and beam congratulations. Blackmore
+was then to assume an expression intended to
+convey the impression that this was the hardest fighting
+ling he had ever seen caught. All three of us
+were action perfect in our parts; but that miserable
+turn-tail of a ling&mdash;who had nothing to do but flop
+and register &#8220;indignant protest&#8221;&mdash;spoiled it all at
+the last. As I flung my prize on high, a shrill scream
+of &#8220;Rotten!&#8221; from Roos froze the action where it was.
+Then I noticed that what was supposed to be a gamy
+denizen of the swift-flowing Columbia was hanging
+from my hand as rigid as a coupling-pin&mdash;a bent
+coupling-pin at that, for he had resumed his former
+cold-storage curl.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Rotten!&#8221; shrieked Roos in a frenzy; &#8220;do it again!&#8221;
+But that was not to be. For the &#8220;chief actor&#8221; the curtain
+had rung down for good. &#8220;You must have
+played him too fierce,&#8221; said Andy sympathetically.
+Blackmore was inclined to be frivolous. &#8220;P&#8217;raps he
+was trying to register &#8216;Big Bend,&#8217;&#8221; said he.</p>
+
+<p>Just after we had pushed off there came a heavy
+and increasing roar from across the lake. Presently<span class="pagenum">[Pg 144]</span>
+the cascade of Trident Creek sprang into life again,
+but now a squirt of yellow ochre where before it was a
+flutter of white satin. Rapidly augmenting, it spread
+from wall to wall of the rocky gorge, discharging to
+the bosky depths of the delta with a prodigious rumbling
+that reverberated up and down the lake like
+heavy thunder. A moment later the flood had reached
+the shore, and out across the lucent green waters of
+the lake spread a broadening fan of yellow-brown.
+&#8220;I told you hell would be popping after that big
+slide,&#8221; said Blackmore, resting on his paddle. &#8220;That&#8217;s
+the backed-up stream breaking through.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Kinbasket Lake is a broadening and slackening of
+the Columbia, backed up behind the obstructions
+which cause the long series of rapids between its outlet
+and the mouth of Canoe River. It is six or seven
+miles long, according to the stage of water, and from
+one to two miles wide. Its downward set of current
+is slight but perceptible. The outlet, as we approached
+it after a three-mile pull from our camp at
+Middle River, appeared strikingly similar to the
+head of Surprise Rapids. Here, however, the transition
+from quiet to swift water was even more abrupt.</p>
+
+<p>The surface of the lake was a-dance with the ripples
+kicked up by the crisp morning breeze, and blindingly
+bright where the facets of the tiny wavelets
+reflected the sunlight like shaken diamonds. The
+shadowed depths of the narrow gorge ahead was
+Stygian by contrast. Blackmore called my attention
+to the way the crests of the pines rimming the river a
+few hundred yards inside the gorge appeared just
+about on the level with the surface of the lake. &#8220;When<span class="pagenum">[Pg 145]</span>
+you see the tree-tops fall away like that,&#8221; he said,
+standing up to take his final bearings for the opening
+run, &#8220;look out. It means there&#8217;s water running down
+hill right ahead faster&#8217;n any boat wants to put its nose
+in.&#8221; The roar rolling up to us was not quite so deep-toned
+or thunderous as the challenging bellow of the
+first fall of Surprise; but it was more &#8220;permeative,&#8221;
+as though the sources from which it came ran on without
+end. And that was just about the situation. We
+were sliding down to the intake of Kinbasket or &#8220;The
+Twenty-One-Mile&#8221; Rapids, one of the longest, if not
+<i>the</i> longest, succession of practically unbroken riffles
+on any of the great rivers of the world.</p>
+
+<p>From the outlet of Kinbasket Lake to the mouth of
+Canoe River is twenty-one miles. For the sixteen
+miles the tail of one rapid generally runs right into
+the head of the next, and there is a fall of two hundred
+and sixty feet, or more than sixteen feet to the mile.
+For the last five miles there is less white water, but
+the current runs from eight to twelve miles an hour,
+with many swirls and whirlpools. The river is closely
+canyoned all the way. This compels one to make the
+whole run through in a single day, as there is no camping
+place at any point. Cliffs and sharply-sloping
+boulder banks greatly complicate lining down and
+compel frequent crossings at points where a failure to
+land just right is pretty likely to leave things in a
+good deal of a mess.</p>
+
+<p>Blackmore ran us down through a couple of hundred
+yards of slap-banging white water, before coming
+to bank above a steep pitch where the river tore
+itself to rags and tatters across a patch of rocks that<span class="pagenum">[Pg 146]</span>
+seemed to block the whole channel. From Captain
+Armstrong&#8217;s description, this was the exact point
+where the trouble with his tipsy bow-paddler had
+occurred, the little difficulty which had been the cause
+of his leaving the salvaged cask of Scotch at his next
+camp. Like pious pilgrims approaching the gateway
+of some long-laboured-toward shrine, therefore,
+we looked at the place with much interest, not to say
+reverence. Blackmore was perhaps the least sentimental
+of us. &#8220;I wouldn&#8217;t try to run that next fall
+for all the whisky ever lost in the old Columbia,&#8221; he
+said decisively, beginning to re-coil his long line.
+Then we turned to on lining down the most accursed
+stretch of river boulders I ever had to do with.</p>
+
+<p>Barely submerged rocks crowding the bank compelled
+us to wade in and lift the boat ahead even
+oftener than in Surprise Rapids. Andy always took
+the lead in this, but time after time my help was necessary
+to throw her clear. For the first time since I
+had boated in Alaska a good many years previously,
+I began to know the numbing effects of icy water.
+The heavy exertion did a lot to keep the blood moving,
+but three or four minutes standing with the water
+up to mid-thigh sent the chill right in to the marrow
+of the bones, even when sweat was running off the
+face in streams. That started a sort of dull ache in
+the leg bones that kept creeping higher and higher
+the longer one remained in the water. That ache was
+the worst part of it; the flesh became dead to sensation
+very quickly, but that penetrating inward pain
+had more hurt in it every minute it was prolonged.
+It was bad enough in the legs, but when, submerged<span class="pagenum">[Pg 147]</span>
+to the waist, as happened every now and then, the chill
+began to penetrate to the back-bone and stab the
+digestive organs, it became pretty trying. One realized
+then what really short shrift a man would have
+trying to swim for more than four or five minutes
+even in calm water of this temperature. That was
+about the limit for heart action to continue with the
+cold striking in and numbing the veins and arteries, a
+doctor had told Blackmore, and this seemed reasonable.
+Andy was repeatedly sick at the stomach after
+he had been wet for long above the waist. My own
+qualms were rather less severe (doubtless because I
+was exposed rather less), but I found myself very
+weak and unsteady after every immersion. A liberal
+use of rum would undoubtedly have been of some help
+for a while, but Blackmore was adamant against starting
+in on it as long as there was any bad water ahead.
+And as there was nothing but bad water ahead,
+this meant that&mdash;in one sense at least&mdash;we were a &#8220;dry
+ship.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I shall not endeavour to trace in detail our painful
+progress down &#8220;Twenty-One-Mile.&#8221; Indeed, I could
+not do so even if I wanted, for the very good reason
+that my hands were so full helping with the boat all
+the way that I had no time to make notes, and even
+my mental record&mdash;usually fairly dependable&mdash;is
+hopelessly jumbled. Even Blackmore became considerably
+mixed at times. At the first four or five
+riffles below the lake he called the turn correctly,
+landing, lining, crossing and running just where he
+should have done so. Then his mind-map became
+less clear. Twice he lined riffles which it presently<span class="pagenum">[Pg 148]</span>
+became plain we could have run, and then he all but
+failed to land above one where a well-masked &#8220;souse-hole&#8221;
+would have gulped the boat in one mouthful.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this juncture that I asked him why he had
+never taken the trouble of making a rough chart of
+this portion of the river, so that he could be quite
+sure what was ahead. He said that the idea was a
+good one, and that it had often occurred to him.
+There were several reasons why he had never carried
+it out. One was, that he was always so mad when he
+was going down &#8220;Twenty-One-Mile&#8221; that he couldn&#8217;t
+see straight, let alone write and draw straight. This
+meant that the chart would be of no use to him, even
+if some one else made it&mdash;unless, of course, he brought
+the maker along to interpret it. The main deterrent,
+however, had been the fact that he had always sworn
+each passage should be his last, so that (according to
+his frame of mind of the moment) there would be no
+use for the chart even if he could have seen straight
+enough to make it, and to read it after it had been
+made.</p>
+
+<p>The scenery&mdash;so far as I recall it&mdash;was grand beyond
+words to describe. Cliff fronted cliff, with a
+jagged ribbon of violet-purple sky between. Every
+few hundred yards creeks broke through the mountain
+walls and came cascading into the river over their
+spreading boulder &#8220;fans.&#8221; Framed in the narrow
+notches from which they sprang appeared transient
+visions of sun-dazzled peaks and glaciers towering
+above wedge-shaped valleys swimming full of lilac
+mist. I saw these things, floating by like double
+strips of movie film, only when we were running in<span class="pagenum">[Pg 149]</span>
+the current; when lining I was aware of little beyond
+the red line of the gunwale which I grasped, the imminent
+loom of Andy&#8217;s grey-shirted shoulder next
+me, and the foam-flecked swirl of liquefied glacier
+enfolding my legs and swiftly converting them to
+stumpy icicles.</p>
+
+<p>There was one comfort, though. The farther down
+river we worked away from the lake, the shorter became
+the stretches of lining and the longer the rapids
+that were runnable. That accelerated our progress
+materially, but even so Blackmore did not reckon that
+there was time to stop for pictures, or even for lunch.
+We were still well up to schedule, but he was anxious
+to work on a good margin in the event of the always-to-be-expected
+&#8220;unexpected.&#8221; It was along toward
+three in the afternoon that, after completing a particularly
+nasty bit of lining a mile or two above the
+mouth of Yellow Creek, he came over and slapped
+me on the back. &#8220;That finishes it for the day, young
+man,&#8221; he cried gaily. &#8220;We can turn loose and run the
+rest of it now, and we&#8217;ll do it hell sizzling fast. It may
+also rejoice you to know that all the lining left for
+the whole trip is a couple of hundred yards at &#8216;Rock
+Slide&#8217; and Death Rapids. All aboard for the Ferry!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>All of a sudden life had become a blessed thing
+again. For the first time I became aware that there
+were birds singing in the trees, flowers blooming in
+the protected shelves above high-water-mark, and
+maiden-hair ferns festooning the dripping grottoes of
+the cliffs. Dumping the water from our boots, Andy
+and I resumed our oars and swung the boat right out
+into the middle of the current. The first rapid we hit<span class="pagenum">[Pg 150]</span>
+was a vicious side-winder, shaped like a letter &#8220;S,&#8221;
+with overhanging cliffs playing battledore-and-shuttlecock
+with the river at the bends. Blackmore said
+he would have lined it if the water had been two feet
+lower; as it was now we would get wetter trying to
+worry a boat round the cliffs than in slashing through.
+We got quite wet enough as it was. The rocks were
+not hard to avoid, but banging almost side-on into the
+great back-curving combers thrown off by the cliffs
+was just a bit terrifying. Slammed back and forth
+at express-train speed, with nothing but those roaring
+open-faced waves buffeting against the cliffs, was
+somewhat suggestive of the sensation you get from a
+quick double-bank in a big biplane. Only it was
+wetter&mdash;much wetter. It took Blackmore ten minutes
+of hard bailing to get rid of the splashage.</p>
+
+<p>The succeeding rapids, though no less swift, were
+straighter, and easier&mdash;and dryer. Roos, perched up
+in the bow, announced that all was over but the digging,
+and started to sing &#8220;Old Green River.&#8221; Andy
+and I joined in lustily, and even Blackmore (though
+a lip-reader would have sworn he was mumbling over
+a rosary) claimed to be singing. Exultant as we all
+were over the prize so nearly within our grasp, we
+must have put a world of feeling into that heart-stirring
+chorus.</p>
+
+<div class="poem" style="width: 28em;"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&#8220;I was drifting down the old Green River</span>
+<span class="i2">On the good ship <i>Rock-and-Rye</i>&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i1">I drifted too far;</span>
+<span class="i1">I got stuck on the bar;</span>
+<span class="i1">I was out there alone,</span>
+<span class="i1">Wishing that I were home&mdash;</span>
+</div>
+<div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><span class="pagenum">[Pg 151]</span>The Captain was lost, with all of the crew,</span>
+<span class="i0">So that there was nothing left to do;</span>
+<span class="i1">And I had to drink the whole Green River dry-igh</span>
+<span class="i1">To get back ho-ohm to you-oo-ou!&#8221;</span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Smoother and smoother became the going, and
+then&mdash;rather unexpectedly, it seemed to me&mdash;the
+water began to slacken its dizzy speed. Blackmore
+appeared considerably puzzled over it, I thought.
+Roos, turning sentimental, had started singing a song
+that he had learned from a phonograph, and in which,
+therefore, appeared numerous hiati.</p>
+
+<div class="poem" style="width: 28em;">
+<span class="i0">&#8220;Now I know da-da-da-da-da&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i1">Now I know the reason why&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i0">Da-da-da-da&mdash;&mdash;da-da-da-daah&mdash;</span>
+<span class="i1">Now I know, yes, now I know!</span>
+<span class="i0">Da-da-da, my heart....&#8221;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Blackmore frowned more deeply as the treble wail
+floated back to him, and then broke into the next
+&#8220;da-da&#8221; with a sudden growl. &#8220;I say, young feller,&#8221;
+he roared, slapping sharply into the quieting water
+with his paddle blade; &#8220;if you know so <i>geesly</i> much,
+I&#8217;m wondering if you&#8217;d mind loosening up on one or
+two things that have got <i>me</i> buffaloed. First place,
+do I look like a man that had took a shot of hop?&#8221;
+&#8220;Not at all, sir,&#8221; quavered Roos, who seemed rather
+fearful of an impending call-down. &#8220;I don&#8217;t, huh?&#8221;
+went on the growl. &#8220;Then please tell me why what
+I knows is a ten-mile-an-hour current looks to me like
+slack water, and why I think I hear a roar coming
+round the next bend.&#8221; &#8220;But the water <i>is</i> slack,&#8221; pro<span class="pagenum">[Pg 152]</span>tested
+Roos, &#8220;and I&#8217;ve heard that roar for five minutes
+<i>myself</i>. Just another rapid, isn&#8217;t it? The water
+always....&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Rot!&#8221; roared the veteran. &#8220;There ain&#8217;t no fall
+with a rip-raring thunder like that &#8217;tween Yellow
+Creek and Death Rapids. Rot, I tell you! I must ha&#8217;
+been doped after all.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, when that ground-shaking rumble
+assailed us in a raw, rough wave of savage sound as
+we pulled round the bend, Blackmore was not sufficiently
+confident of his &#8220;dope theory&#8221; to care to get
+any nearer to it without a preliminary reconnaissance.
+Landing a hundred yards above where a white &#8220;eyelash&#8221;
+of up-flipped water showed above a line of big
+rocks, we clambered down along the right bank on
+foot. Presently all that had occurred was written
+clear for one who knew the way of a slide with a
+river, and the way of a river with a slide, to read as
+on the page of a book.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A new rapid, and a whale at that!&#8221; gasped Blackmore
+in astonishment; &#8220;the first one that&#8217;s ever formed
+on the Columbia in my time!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The amazing thing that had happened was this:
+Sometime in the spring, a landslide of enormous size,
+doubtless started by an avalanche of snow far up in
+the Selkirks, had ripped the whole side of a mountain
+out and come down all the way across the river. As
+the pines were hurled <i>backward</i> for a couple of hundred
+feet above the river on the right or Rocky Mountain
+bank, it seemed reasonable to believe that the dam
+formed had averaged considerably more than that in
+height. As this would have backed up the river for<span class="pagenum">[Pg 153]</span>
+at least ten or twelve miles, it is probable that the lake
+formed must have been rising for a number of days
+before it flowed over the top of the barrier and began
+to sluice it away. On an incalculably larger scale, it
+was just the sort of thing we had heard and seen happening
+on Trident Creek, opposite our Kinbasket
+Lake camp. Not the least remarkable thing in connection
+with the stupendous convulsion was the fact
+that a large creek was flowing directly down the great
+gash torn out by the slide and emptying right into the
+rapid which was left when the dam had been washed
+away. Blackmore was quite positive that there had
+been no creek at this point the last time he was there.
+It seemed reasonable to suppose, therefore, that the
+slide, in removing a considerable section of mountain
+wall, had opened a new line of drainage for some little
+valley in the high Selkirks.</p>
+
+<p>It was the great, rough fragments of cliff and native
+rock left after the earth had been sluiced out of the
+dam that remained to form the unexpected rapid
+which now confronted us. They had not yet been
+worn smooth like the rest of the river boulders, and
+it was this fact, doubtless, that gave the cascade tumbling
+through and over them such a raw, raucous
+roar.</p>
+
+<p>The solution of the mystery of the appearance of
+the rapid was only an incident compared with the
+problem of how to pass it. There was a comparatively
+straight channel, but there was no possibility
+that the boat could live in the huge rollers that billowed
+down the middle of it. Just to the right of the
+middle there was a smoother chute which looked bet<span class="pagenum">[Pg 154]</span>ter&mdash;provided
+the boat could be kept to it. Blackmore
+said that it looked like too much of a risk, and
+decided to try to line down the right bank&mdash;the one
+on which we had landed. As the river walls were too
+steep and broken to allow any of the outfit to be portaged,
+the boat would have to go through loaded.</p>
+
+<p>A big uprooted pine tree, extending out fifty feet
+over the river and with its under limbs swept by the
+water, seemed likely to prove our worst difficulty, and
+I am inclined to believe it would have held us up in
+the end, even after we reached it. As things turned
+out, however, it troubled us not a whit, for the boat
+never got down that far. Right at the head of the
+rapid her bows jammed between two submerged
+boulders about ten feet from the bank, and there she
+stuck. As it was quickly evident that it was out of the
+question to lift her on through, it now became a problem
+of working her back up-stream out of the jaws
+that held her. But with the full force of the current
+driving her tighter between the rocks, she now refused
+to budge even in the direction from which she had
+come.</p>
+
+<p>As I look back on it now, the fifteen minutes Andy
+and I, mid-waist deep in the icy water, spent trying to
+work that hulking red boat loose so that Blackmore
+could haul her back into quiet water for a fresh start
+takes pride of place as the most miserable interval of
+the whole trip. After Andy&#8217;s experience in Surprise
+Rapids, neither of us was inclined to throw his whole
+weight into a lift that might leave him overbalanced
+when the boat was swept out of his reach. And so we
+pulled and hauled and cursed (I should hate to have<span class="pagenum">[Pg 155]</span>
+to record all we said about the ancestry of the
+river, the boat, and the two rocks that held the boat),
+while the tentacles of the cold clutched deeper with
+every passing minute. Roos, sitting on a pine stump
+and whittling, furnished no help but some slight diversion.
+When he started singing &#8220;Old Green River&#8221;
+just after I had slipped and soused my head in the
+current, I stopped tugging at the boat for long
+enough to wade out and shy a stone at him. &#8220;Green
+River&#8221;<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> was all right in its place, but its place was
+swirling against the <i>inside</i> of the ribs, not the <i>outside</i>.
+Roos had the cheek to pick the rock up out of his lap
+and heave it back at me&mdash;but with an aim less certain
+than my own. A few minutes later he called out to
+Blackmore to ask if this new rapid had a name, adding
+that if it had not, he would like to do his employer,
+Mr. Chester, the honour of naming it after
+him. Blackmore relaxed his strain on the line for a
+moment to roar back that no rapid was ever named
+after a man unless he had been &#8220;drownded&#8221; in it.
+&#8220;We&#8217;ll name this one after you if you&#8217;ll do the needful,&#8221;
+he growled as an afterthought, throwing his
+weight again onto his line. That tickled Andy and
+me so mightily that we gave a prodigious heave in
+all recklessness of consequences, and off she came.
+Gaining the bank with little trouble, we joined Blackmore
+and helped him haul her up by line into slower
+water.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> For the benefit of those who have forgotten, or may never have
+known, I will state that &#8220;Green River&#8221; was the name of a brand
+of whisky consumed by ancient Americans with considerable gusto.
+L. R. F.</p></div>
+
+<p>&#8220;No good lining,&#8221; the &#8220;Skipper&#8221; announced decid<span class="pagenum">[Pg 156]</span>edly,
+as we sat down to rest for a spell; &#8220;I&#8217;m going to
+drive her straight through.&#8221; Chilled, weary and
+dead-beat generally, I was in a state of mind that
+would have welcomed jumping into the rapid with a
+stone tied to my neck rather than go back to the half-submerged
+wading and lifting. Roos said he hated
+to risk his camera, and so would try to crawl with it
+over the cliff and rejoin us below the rapid. Andy
+said he was quite game to pull his oar for a run if we
+had to, but that he would first like to try lining down
+the opposite bank. He thought we could make it
+<i>there</i>, and he had just a bit of a doubt about what
+might happen in mid-river. That was reasonable
+enough, and Blackmore readily consented to try the
+other side.</p>
+
+<p><a id="page156" name="page156"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 462px;">
+<img src="images/illo_208.jpg" width="462" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">OUR WETTEST CAMP AT KINBASKET LAKE (<i>above</i>)<br />
+THE OLD FERRY TOWER ABOVE CANOE RIVER (<i>below</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><a id="page157" name="page157"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 406px;">
+<img src="images/illo_209.jpg" width="406" height="700" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">WHERE WE TIED UP AT KINBASKET LAKE (<i>above</i>)<br />
+THE BRIDGE WHICH THE COLUMBIA CARRIED A HUNDRED MILES
+AND PLACED ACROSS ANOTHER STREAM (<i>center</i>)<br />
+LINING DOWN TO THE HEAD OF DEATH RAPIDS (<i>below</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Almost at once it appeared that we had landed in
+the same trouble as on the right bank. Directly off
+the mouth of the stream that came down from the
+slide the bow of the boat was caught and held between
+two submerged rocks, defying our every attempt to
+lift it over. Blackmore was becoming impatient
+again, and was just ready to give up and run, when
+Andy, with the aid of a young tree-trunk used as a
+lever, rolled one of the boulders aside and cleared the
+way. Five minutes later we had completed lining
+down and were pushing off for the final run to the
+Ferry. No more &#8220;mystery rapids&#8221; cropped up to
+disturb our voyage, and, pulling in deep, swift water,
+we made the next five miles in twenty-five minutes.
+A part of the distance was through the rocky-walled
+Red Canyon, one of the grandest scenic bits of the
+Bend. At one point Blackmore showed us a sheer<span class="pagenum">[Pg 157]</span>-sided
+rock island, on which he said he had once found
+the graves of two white men, with an inscription so
+worn as to be indecipherable. He thought they were
+probably those of miners lost during the Cariboo
+gold-field excitement of the middle of the last century,
+or perhaps even those of Hudson Bay <i>voyageurs</i> of a
+century or more back. There were many unidentified
+graves all the way round the Bend, he said.</p>
+
+<p>The river walls fell back a bit on both sides as we
+neared our destination, and the low-hanging western
+sun had found a gap in the Selkirks through which it
+was pouring its level rays to flood with a rich amber
+light the low wooded benches at the abandoned crossing.
+The old Ferry-tower reared itself upward like
+the Statue of Liberty, bathing its head in the golden
+light of the expiring day. Steering for it as to a beacon,
+Blackmore beached the boat on a gravel bar
+flanking an eddy almost directly under the rusting
+cable. We would cross later to spend the night in a
+trapper&#8217;s cabin on the opposite bank, he said; as there
+was sure to be a shovel or two in the old ferry shacks,
+he had come there at once so as to get down to business
+without delay.</p>
+
+<p>Right then and there, before we left the boat, I did
+a thing which I have been greatly gratified that I did
+do&mdash;right then and there. I drew my companions
+close to me and assured them that I had made up my
+mind to divide the spoils with them. Blackmore and
+Andy should have a gallon apiece, and Roos a quart.
+(I scaled down the latter&#8217;s share sharply, partly because
+he had thrown that stone back at me, and the
+nerve of it rankled, and partly&mdash;I must confess&mdash;out<span class="pagenum">[Pg 158]</span>
+of &#8220;professional jealousy.&#8221; &#8220;Stars&#8221; and &#8220;Directors&#8221;
+never do hit off.) The rest I would retain and divide
+with Captain Armstrong as agreed. I did not tell
+them that I had high hopes that Armstrong would
+soften in the end and let me keep it all to take home.
+After all of them (including Roos) had wrung my
+hand with gratitude, we set to work, each in his own
+way.</p>
+
+<p>The spot was readily located the moment we took
+the compass bearing. Pacing off was quite unnecessary.
+It was in the angle of a V-shaped outcrop of
+bedrock, where a man who knew about what was
+there could feel his way and claw up the treasure in
+the dark. It was an &#8220;inevitable&#8221; hiding place, just as
+Gibraltar is an inevitable fortress and Manhattan an
+inevitable metropolis. Yes, we each went to work in
+our own way. Blackmore and Andy found a couple
+of rusty shovels and went to digging; Roos climbed
+up into the old ferry basket to take a picture of them
+digging; I climbed up on the old shack to take a picture
+of Roos taking a picture of them digging. Nothing
+was omitted calculated to preserve historical
+accuracy. I had been in Baalbek just before the war
+when a German archćological mission had inaugurated
+excavation for Ph&#339;nician antiquities, and so
+was sapient in all that an occasion of the kind required.</p>
+
+<p>The picture cycle complete, I strolled over to where
+Andy and Blackmore were making the dirt fly like a
+pair of Airedales digging out a badger. The ground
+was soft, they said, leaning on their shovels; it ought
+to be only the matter of minutes now. The &#8220;showings&#8221;
+were good. They had already unearthed a<span class="pagenum">[Pg 159]</span>
+glove, a tin cup and a fragment of barrel iron. &#8220;Gorgeous
+stroke of luck for us that chap, K&mdash;&mdash;, hit the
+stuff so hard up at Kinbasket,&#8221; I murmured ecstatically.
+Blackmore started and straightened up like a
+man hit with a steel bullet. &#8220;What was that name
+again?&#8221; he gasped. &#8220;K&mdash;&mdash;,&#8221; I replied wonderingly;
+&#8220;some kind of a Swede, I believe Armstrong said.
+But what difference does his name make as long
+as....&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Blackmore tossed his shovel out of the hole and
+climbed stiffly up after it before he replied. When he
+spoke it was in a voice thin and trailing, as though
+draggled by the Weariness of the Ages. &#8220;Difference,
+boy! All the difference between hell and happiness.
+About two years ago K&mdash;&mdash; dropped out of sight
+from Revelstoke, and it was only known he had gone
+somewhere on the Bend. A week after he returned he
+died in the hospital of the &#8216;D. T&#8217;s.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Roos (perhaps because he had the least to lose by
+the disaster) was the only one who had the strength
+to speak. It seemed that he had studied Latin in the
+high school. &#8220;<i>Sic transit gloria spiritum frumenti</i>,&#8221;
+was what he said. Never in all the voyage did he
+speak so much to the point.</p>
+
+<p>Blackmore frowned at him gloomily as the mystic
+words were solemnly pronounced. &#8220;Young feller,&#8221;
+he growled, &#8220;I don&#8217;t savvy what the last part of that
+drug-store lingo you&#8217;re spitting means; but you&#8217;re
+dead right about the first part. <i>Sick</i> is sure the word.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>We spent the night in an empty trapper&#8217;s cabin
+across the river. Charity forbids that I lift the curtain
+of the house of mourning.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page160" name="page160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII<br />
+<br />
+III. RUNNING THE BEND</h2>
+
+<p class="title"><i>Boat Encampment to Revelstoke</i></p>
+
+<p>We were now close to the historic Boat Encampment,
+where at last our course would join with that
+followed by the early <i>voyageurs</i> and explorers. No
+point in the whole length of the Columbia, not even
+Astoria, has associations more calculated to stir the
+imagination than this tiny patch of silt-covered overflow
+flat which has been formed by the erosive action
+of three torrential rivers tearing at the hearts of three
+great mountain ranges. Sand and soil of the Rockies,
+Selkirks and the Gold Range, carried by the Columbia,
+Canoe and Wood rivers, meet and mingle to form
+the remarkable halting place, where the east and westbound
+pioneering traffic of a century stopped to
+gather breath for the next stage of its journey.</p>
+
+<p>Before pushing off from the Ferry on the morning
+of October seventh I dug out from my luggage a copy
+of a report written in 1881 by Lieutenant Thomas W.
+Symons, U. S. A., on the navigation of the Upper
+Columbia. This was chiefly concerned with that part
+of the river between the International Boundary and
+the mouth of the Snake, but Lieutenant Symons had
+made a long and exhaustive study of the whole Columbia
+Basin, and his geographical description of the
+three rivers which unite at Boat Encampment is so<span class="pagenum">[Pg 161]</span>
+succinct and yet so comprehensive that I am impelled
+to make a liberal quotation from it here. Of the great
+assistance I had from Lieutenant Symons&#8217; invaluable
+report when I came to the passage of that part of the
+river covered by his remarkable voyage of forty years
+ago I shall write later.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&#8220;Amid the universal gloom and midnight silence of the
+north, a little above the fifty-second parallel of latitude,
+seemingly surrounded on all sides by cloud-piercing snow-clad
+mountains, and nestled down among the lower and
+nearer cedar-mantled hills, there lies a narrow valley where
+three streams meet and blend their waters, one coming from
+the southeast, one from the northwest, and one from the
+east. The principal one of these streams is the one from the
+southeast ... and is the headwater stream, and bears the
+name of the Columbia.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The northwestern stream is the extreme northern branch
+of the Columbia, rising beyond the fifty-third parallel of
+latitude, and is known among the traders and <i>voyageurs</i> as
+Canoe River, from the excellence of the barks obtained on
+its banks for canoe building. This is a small river, forty
+yards wide at its mouth, flowing through a densely timbered
+valley in which the trees overhang the stream to such an
+extent as almost to shut it out from the light of heaven....</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Portage River, the third of the trio of streams, the
+smallest and the most remarkable of them, is the one which
+enters from the east. It has its source in the very heart of
+the Rocky Mountains and flows through a tremendous cleft
+in the main range between two of its loftiest peaks, Mounts
+Brown and Hooker. Just underneath these giant mountains,
+on the divide known as &#8216;The Height of Land,&#8217; lie two small
+lakes, each about thirty yards in diameter, and which are
+only a few yards from each other. One has its outlet to the
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 162]</span>west, Portage River, flowing to the Columbia; the other has
+its outlet to the east, Whirlpool River, a branch of the
+Athabaska, which joins the Mackenzie and flows to the
+Arctic Ocean.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The elevated valley in which these lakes are situated is
+called &#8216;The Committee&#8217;s Punchbowl,&#8217; and the nabobs of the
+fur trade always treated their companions to a bucket of
+punch when this point was reached, if they had the ingredients
+from which to make it, and they usually had.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The pass across the mountains by the Portage River,
+&#8216;The Committee&#8217;s Punchbowl&#8217; and Whirlpool River, known
+as the Athabaska Pass, was for many years the route of the
+British fur traders in going from one side of the Rocky
+Mountains to the other. This route is far from being an
+easy one, and a description of the difficulties, dangers and
+discomforts of a trip over it will certainly deter any one from
+making the journey for pleasure. A great part of the way
+the traveller has to wade up to his middle in the icy waters
+of Portage River. The journey had to be made in the spring
+before the summer thaws and rains set in, or in the autumn
+after severe cold weather had locked up the mountain drainage.
+During the summer the stream becomes an impetuous
+impassable mountain torrent.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Considering that Lieutenant Symons had never
+traversed the Big Bend nor the Athabaska Pass, this
+description (which must have been written from his
+careful readings of the diaries of the old <i>voyageurs</i>)
+is a remarkable one. It is not only accurate topographically
+and geographically, but it has an &#8220;atmosphere&#8221;
+which one who <i>does</i> know this region at first
+hand will be quick to appreciate. How and when the
+stream which he and the men before him called Por<span class="pagenum">[Pg 163]</span>tage
+River came to have its name changed to Wood,
+I have not been able to learn.</p>
+
+<p>A mile below the Ferry Blackmore called my attention
+to a sharp wedge of brown-black mountain which
+appeared to form the left wall of the river a short way
+ahead. That lofty out-thrust of rock, he said, was the
+extreme northern end of the Selkirk Range. The
+Columbia, after receiving the waters of Wood and
+Canoe rivers, looped right round this cape and started
+flowing south, but with the <i>massif</i> of the Selkirks still
+forming its left bank. But the Rockies, which had
+formed its right bank all the way from its source,
+were now left behind, and their place was taken by
+the almost equally lofty Gold Range, which drained
+east to the Columbia and west to the Thompson.</p>
+
+<p>The Columbia doubles back from north to south at
+an astonishingly sharp angle,&mdash;as river bends go, that
+is. Picture mentally Madison Square, New York.
+Now suppose the Columbia to flow north on Broadway,
+bend round the Flatiron Building (which represents
+the Selkirks), and then flow south down Fifth
+Avenue. Then East Twenty-Third Street would
+represent Wood River, and North Broadway, Canoe
+River. Now forget all the other streets and imagine
+the buildings of Madison Square as ten to twelve
+thousand-feet-high mountains. And there you have
+a model of the apex of the Big Bend of the Columbia.</p>
+
+<p>A milky grey-green flood&mdash;straight glacier water if
+there ever was such&mdash;staining the clear stream of the
+Columbia marked the mouth of Wood River, and we
+pulled in for a brief glimpse in passing of what had
+once been Boat Encampment. I had broken my ther<span class="pagenum">[Pg 164]</span>mometer
+at Kinbasket Lake, so I could not take the
+temperatures here; but Wood River was beyond all
+doubt the coldest stream I had ever dabbled a finger-tip
+in. What the ascent to Athabaska Pass must
+have been may be judged from this description by
+Alexander Ross&mdash;one of the original Astoria party&mdash;written
+over a hundred years ago.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&#8220;Picture in the mind a dark, narrow defile, skirted on one
+side by a chain of inaccessible mountains rising to a great
+height, covered with snow, and slippery with ice from their
+tops down to the water&#8217;s edge; and on the other a beach
+comparatively low, but studded in an irregular manner with
+standing and fallen trees, rocks and ice, and full of driftwood,
+over which the torrent everywhere rushes with such
+irresistible impetuosity that very few would dare to adventure
+themselves in the stream. Let him again imagine a
+rapid river descending from some great height, filling up the
+whole channel between the rocky precipices on the south, and
+the no less dangerous barrier on the north; and, lastly, let
+him suppose that we were obliged to make our way on foot
+against such a torrent, by crossing and recrossing it in all
+its turns and windings, from morning till night, up to the
+middle in water, and he will understand the difficulties to be
+overcome in crossing the Rocky Mountains.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>I have been able to learn nothing of records which
+would indicate that any of the early explorers or <i>voyageurs</i>
+traversed that portion of the Columbia down
+which we had just come. David Thompson, who is
+credited with being the first man to travel the Columbia
+to the sea, although he spent one winter at the foot
+of Lake Windermere, appears to have made his down-<span class="pagenum">[Pg 165]</span>river
+push-off from Boat Encampment. Mr. Basil
+G. Hamilton, of Invermere, sends me an authoritative
+note on this point, based on Thompson&#8217;s own journal.
+From this it appears that the great astronomer-explorer
+crossed the Rockies by Athabaska Pass and
+came down to what has since been known by the name
+of Boat Encampment in March, 1811. Having built
+himself a hut, he made preparation for a trip down the
+Columbia, by which he hoped to reach the mouth in
+advance of either of the Astor parties, and thus be able
+to lay claim to the whole region traversed in the name
+of the Northwest Company. He writes: &#8220;We first
+tried to get birch rind wherewith to make our trip to
+the Pacific Ocean, but without finding any even thick
+enough to make a dish. So we split out thin boards
+of cedar wood, about six inches in breadth, and built
+a canoe twenty-five feet in length and fifty inches in
+breadth, of the same form as a common canoe. As
+we had no nails we sewed the boards to each other
+round the timbers, making use of the fine roots of the
+pine which we split.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This ingeniously constructed but precarious craft
+was finished on the sixteenth of April, and Thompson&#8217;s
+party embarked in it on the seventeenth. Mr.
+Hamilton doubts if this was the same craft in which
+they finally reached Astoria. From my own knowledge
+of what lies between I am very much inclined to
+agree with him. Certainly no boat of the construction
+described could have lasted even to the Arrow
+Lakes without much patching, and if a boat seeming
+on the lines of the original really reached the Pacific,
+it must have been many times renewed in the course of<span class="pagenum">[Pg 166]</span>
+the voyage. I shall hardly need to add that Thompson&#8217;s
+remarkable journey, so far as its original object
+was concerned, was a failure. He reached the mouth
+of the Columbia well in advance of Astor&#8217;s land party,
+but only to find the New Yorker fur-trader&#8217;s expedition
+by way of Cape Horn and Hawaii already in
+occupation.</p>
+
+<p>Boat Encampment of to-day is neither picturesque
+nor interesting; indeed, there are several camp-sites
+at the Bend that one would choose in preference to
+that rather damp patch of brush-covered, treeless
+clearing. All that I found in the way of relics of the
+past were some huge cedar stumps, almost covered
+with silt, and the remains of a demolished <i>batteau</i>. I
+salved a crude oar-lock from the latter to carry as a
+mascot for my down-river trip. As a mascot it served
+me very well, everything considered; though it <i>did</i>
+get me in rather bad once when I tried to use it for an
+oar-lock.</p>
+
+<p>Before the sparkling jade-green stream of the
+Columbia had entirely quenched the milky flow of
+Wood River, the chocolate-brown torrent of Canoe
+River came pouring in to mess things up anew. The
+swift northern affluent, greatly swelled by the recent
+rains, was in flood, and at the moment appeared to be
+discharging a flow almost if not quite equal to that
+of the main river. For a considerable distance the
+waters of the right side of the augmented river retained
+their rich cinnamon tint, and it was not until
+a brisk stretch of rapid a mile below the Bend got in
+its cocktail-shaker action that the two streams
+became thoroughly blended. Then the former crys<span class="pagenum">[Pg 167]</span>talline
+clearness of the Columbia was a thing of the
+past. It was still far from being a muddy river.
+There was still more of green than of brown in its
+waters, but they were dully translucent where they
+had been brilliantly transparent. Not until the hundred-mile-long
+settling-basin of the Arrow Lakes
+allowed the sediment to deposit did the old emerald-bright
+sparkle come back again.</p>
+
+<p>A couple of quick rifle shots from the left bank set
+the echoes ringing just after we had passed Canoe
+River, and Blackmore turned in to where a man and
+dog were standing in front of an extremely picturesquely
+located log cabin. It proved to be a French-Canadian
+half-breed trapper called Alphonse Edmunds.
+His interest in us was purely social, and
+after a five minutes&#8217; yarn we pulled on. Blackmore
+said the chap lived in Golden, and that to avoid the
+dreaded run down through Surprise and Kinbasket
+rapids, he was in the habit of going a couple of hundred
+miles by the C. P. R. to Kamloops, thence north
+for a hundred miles or more by the Canadian Northern,
+thence by packtrain a considerable distance over
+the divide to the head of Canoe River, and finally
+down the latter by boat to the Bend, where he did his
+winter trapping. This was about four times the distance
+as by the direct route down the Columbia, and
+probably at least quadrupled time and expense. It
+threw an illuminative side-light on the way some of the
+natives regarded the upper half of the Big Bend.</p>
+
+<p>The river was deeper now, but still plugged along
+at near to the ten-miles-an-hour it had averaged from
+the foot of Kinbasket Rapids. As the western slopes<span class="pagenum">[Pg 168]</span>
+of the Selkirks were considerably more extensive than
+the eastern, the drainage to the Columbia from that
+side was proportionately greater. Cascades and cataracts
+came tumbling in every few hundred yards, and
+every mile or two, from one side or the other, a considerable
+creek would pour down over its spreading
+boulder &#8220;fan.&#8221; We landed at twelve-thirty and
+cooked our lunch on the stove of a perfect beauty of a
+trapper&#8217;s cabin near the mouth of Mica Creek. The
+trapper had already begun getting in his winter grub,
+but was away at the moment. The whole place was as
+clean as a Dutch kitchen. A recent shift of channel
+by the fickle-minded Mica Creek had undermined
+almost to the door of this snug little home, and Andy
+reckoned it would go down river on the next spring
+rise.</p>
+
+<p><a id="page168" name="page168"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/illo_222.jpg" width="600" height="453" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">TRAPPER&#8217;S CABIN BEING UNDERMINED BY STREAM (<i>left</i>)<br />
+THE CAMP ABOVE TWELVE-MILE (<i>right</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><a id="page169" name="page169"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 320px;">
+<img src="images/illo_223.jpg" width="320" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">LANDING AT SUNSET ABOVE CANOE RIVER (<i>above</i>)<br />
+ANDY AND BLACKMORE SWINGING THE BOAT INTO THE HEAD OF
+ROCK SLIDE RAPIDS (<i>centre</i>)<br />
+THE BIG ROLLERS, FROM 15 TO 20 FEET FROM HOLLOW TO CREST,
+AT HEAD OF DEATH RAPIDS (<i>below</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>We ran the next eighteen miles in less than two
+hours, tying up for the night at a well-built Government
+cabin three miles below Big Mouth Creek. It
+was occupied for the winter by a Swede trapper
+named Johnston. He was out running his trap-lines
+when we arrived, but came back in time to be our
+guest for dinner. He made one rather important contribution
+to the menu&mdash;a &#8220;mulligan,&#8221; the <i>pičce de
+résistance</i> of which, so he claimed, was a mud-hen he
+had winged with his revolver that morning. There
+were six or seven ingredients in that confounded Irish
+stew already, and&mdash;much to the disgust of Roos and
+myself, who didn&#8217;t fancy eating mud-hen&mdash;Andy
+dumped into it just about everything he had been
+cooking except the prunes. That&#8217;s the proper caper
+with &#8220;mulligans,&#8221; and they are very good, too, unless
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 169]</span>some one of the makings chances to be out of your
+line. And such most decidedly was mud-hen&mdash;fish-eating
+mud-hen! As we were sort of company, Roos
+and I put on the best faces we could and filled up on
+prunes and marmalade. It was only after the other
+three had cleaned out the &#8220;mulligan&#8221; can that Andy
+chanced to mention that &#8220;mud-hen&#8221; was the popularly
+accepted euphemism for grouse shot out of season!</p>
+
+<p>Andy and Blackmore and Johnston talked &#8220;trapper
+stuff&#8221; all evening&mdash;tricks for tempting marten,
+how to prevent the pesky wolverine from robbing
+traps, &#8220;stink-baits,&#8221; prices, and the prospects for
+beaver when it again became lawful to take them.
+Johnston was a typical Swede, with little apparent
+regard for his physical strength if money could be
+made by drawing upon it. The previous season he
+had had to sleep out in his blankets many nights while
+covering his lines, and he counted himself lucky that
+this year he had two or three rough cabins for shelter.
+He was a terrific worker and ate sparingly of the
+grub that cost him twenty cents a pound to bring in.
+He was already looking a bit drawn, and Blackmore
+said the next morning that he would be more or less
+of a physical wreck by spring, just as he had been the
+previous season. The hardships these trappers endure
+is something quite beyond the comprehension
+of any one who has not been with them. A city man,
+a farmer, even a sailor, knows nothing to compare
+with it.</p>
+
+<p>We were a mile down stream the next morning
+before Blackmore discovered that his rifle had been
+left in Johnston&#8217;s cabin, and it took him an hour of<span class="pagenum">[Pg 170]</span>
+hard breaking through the wet underbrush to recover
+it. The river was still rising from the rains, and the
+current swift with occasional rapids. Blackmore
+approached the head of Gordon Rapids (named, of
+course, from a man of that name who had lost his life
+there) with considerable caution. He intended to
+run them, he said, but the convergence of currents
+threw a nasty cross-riffle that was not to be taken
+liberties with. He appeared considerably relieved
+when he found that the high water made it
+possible to avoid the main rapid by a swift but comparatively
+clear back-channel. We had a good view
+of the riffle from below when we swung back into the
+main channel. It was certainly a vicious tumble of
+wild white water, and even with our considerable freeboard
+it would have been a sloppy run. I should
+have been very reluctant to go into it all with a smaller
+boat.</p>
+
+<p>Still deeply canyoned between lofty mountains, the
+scenery in this part of the Bend was quite equal to
+the finest through which we had passed above Canoe
+River. The steady drizzle which had now set in,
+however, made pictures out of the question. This did
+not deter Roos from looking for &#8220;location.&#8221; He was
+under special instructions to make some effective
+camp shots, and had been on the lookout for a suitable
+place ever since we started. This day he found
+what he wanted. Shooting down a swift, rough rapid
+shortly after noon, we rounded a sharp bend and shot
+past the mouth of a deep black gorge with the white
+shimmer of a big waterfall just discernible in its
+dusky depths. Almost immediately opposite a rocky<span class="pagenum">[Pg 171]</span>
+point jutted out into the eddy. It was thickly carpeted
+with moss and grass, and bright with the reds
+and yellows of patches of late flowers. At its base
+was an almost perfect circle of towering cedars and
+sugar pines, their dark green foliage standing out in
+fret-work against the pale purple mists filling the
+depths of a wedge-shaped bit of mountain valley behind.
+There were glaciers and peaks hanging giddily
+above, but these were obscured by the rain clouds.</p>
+
+<p>In response to Roos&#8217; glad &#8220;Eureka!&#8221; Blackmore
+threw the boat&#8217;s head sharply toward the left bank,
+and hard pulling just won us the edge of the eddy.
+Missing that, we would have run on into the rough-and-tumble
+of Twelve-Mile Rapids, where (as we
+found the next day) there was no landing for another
+half mile. The place looked even lovelier at close
+range than from the river, and Roos announced decisively
+that we were not going to stir from there until
+the sun came to give him light for his camp shots.
+Fortunately, this befell the next morning. After
+that, to the best of my recollection, we did not see the
+sun again until we crossed over to the U. S. A. many
+days later.</p>
+
+<p>Roos took a lot of trouble with his camp picture,
+and I have since heard that it was most favourably
+reported upon from the studio. Setting up on the
+end of the point, he made his opening shot as the boat
+ran down the rapid (we had had to line back above
+for this, of course) and floundered through the swirls
+and whirlpools past the mouth of the gloomy gorge
+and its half-guessed waterfall. After landing and
+packing our outfit up the bank, trees were felled,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 172]</span>
+boughs cut and spread and the tent set up. Finally,
+we fried bacon, tossed flapjacks and baked bannocks.
+I could tell by his expression that Roos dearly wanted
+to lend a Mack Sennett &#8220;custard-pie&#8221; touch by having
+some one smear some one else in the face with a
+mushy half-baked bannock, but discretion prevailed.
+Qualified &#8220;smearers&#8221; there were in plenty&mdash;Andy and
+Blackmore were wood-choppers and I was an ex-pitcher
+and shot-putter,&mdash;but the designation of a
+&#8220;smear-ee&#8221; was quite another matter. Roos did well
+to stop where he did.</p>
+
+<p>Pushing off about noon, we dropped down to near
+the head of &#8220;Twelve-Mile,&#8221; and put Roos ashore on
+the right bank for a shot as we ran through. We had
+expected to land to pick him up at the foot of the
+rapid, but Blackmore, in order to make the picture as
+spectacular as possible, threw the boat right into the
+midst of the white stuff. There was a good deal of
+soft fluff flying in the air, but nothing with much
+weight in it. We ran through easily, but got so far
+over toward the left bank that it was impossible to
+pull into the eddy we had hoped to make. Andy and
+I pulled our heads off for five minutes before we
+could reach slack water near the left bank, and by
+then we were a quarter of a mile below the foot of the
+rapid. Andy had to go back to help Roos down over
+the boulders with his machine and tripod. Another
+mile in fast water brought us to the head of Rock
+Slide Rapids, and we landed on the right bank for
+our last stretch of lining on the Big Bend.</p>
+
+<p>The Rock Slide is the narrowest point on the whole
+Columbia between Lake Windermere and the Pacific.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 173]</span>
+An almost perpendicular mountainside has been encroaching
+on the river here for many years, possibly
+damming it all the way across at times. From the
+Slide to the precipitous left bank there is an average
+channel seventy feet in width, through which the
+river rushes with tremendous velocity over and between
+enormous sharp-edged boulders. This pours
+into a cauldron-like eddy at a right-angled bend, and
+over the lower end of that swirling maelstrom the
+river spills into another narrow chute to form the
+<i>Dalles des Morts</i> of accursed memory. I know of no
+place on the upper half of the Bend where the river
+is less than a hundred feet wide. The Little Dalles,
+just below the American line, are about a hundred
+and forty feet across in their narrowest part, and the
+Great Dalles below Celilo Falls are slightly wider.
+Kettle Falls, Hell-Gate and Rock Island Rapids
+have side channels of less than a hundred feet, but the
+main channels are much broader. Save only the
+<i>Dalles des Morts</i> (which are really its continuation)
+the Rock Slide has no near rival anywhere on the
+river.</p>
+
+<p>It has struck me as quite probable that the Rock
+Slide, and the consequent constriction of the river at
+that point, are of comparatively recent occurrence,
+almost certainly of the last hundred years. In the
+diaries of Ross, Cox and Franchiere, on which most
+of the earlier Columbian history is based, I can find
+no mention of anything of the kind at this point, a
+location readily identifiable because of its proximity
+to the <i>Dalles des Morts</i>, which they all mention. But
+in Ross&#8217; record I <i>do</i> find this significant passage:<span class="pagenum">[Pg 174]</span></p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&#8220;A little after starting (<i>from the Dalles des Morts</i>) we
+backed our paddles and stood still for some minutes admiring
+a striking curiosity. The water of a cataract creek, after
+shooting over the brink of a bold precipice, falls in a white
+sheet onto a broad, flat rock, smooth as glass, which forms
+the first step; then upon a second, some ten feet lower down,
+and lastly, on a third, somewhat lower. It then enters a
+subterranean vault, formed at the mouth like a funnel, and
+after passing through this funnel it again issues forth with
+a noise like distant thunder. After falling over another step
+it meets the front of a bold rock, which repulses back the
+water with such violence as to keep it whirling around in
+a large basin. Opposite to this rises the wing of a shelving
+cliff, which overhangs the basin and forces back the rising
+spray, refracting in the sunshine all the colours of the rainbow.
+The creek then enters the Columbia.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>On the left bank, immediately above the <i>Dalles des
+Morts</i>, an extremely beautiful little waterfall leaps
+into the river from the cliffs, but neither this (as will
+readily be seen from my photograph of it) nor any
+other similar fall I saw in the whole length of the
+Columbia, bears the least suggestion of a resemblance
+to the remarkable cataract Ross so strikingly
+describes. But I <i>did</i> see a very sizable stream of
+water cascading right down the middle of the great
+rock slide, and at a point which might very well coincide
+with that at which Ross saw his &#8220;stairway-and-tunnel&#8221;
+phenomenon. Does it not seem quite possible
+that the latter should have undermined the cliff
+over and through which it was tumbling, precipitating
+it into the river and forming the Rock Slide of the
+present day?<span class="pagenum">[Pg 175]</span></p>
+
+<p>The middle of the channel at Rock Slide was a
+rough, smashing cascade that looked quite capable
+of grinding a boat to kindling wood in a hundred
+feet; but to the right of it the water was considerably
+better. Blackmore said the chances would be all in
+favour of running it safely, <i>but</i>, if anything at all
+went wrong (such as the unshipping of an oar, for
+instance), it might make it hard to get into the eddy
+at the bend; and if we missed the eddy&mdash;Death Rapids!
+He didn&#8217;t seem to think any further elucidation
+was necessary. It would be best to line the whole way
+down, he said.</p>
+
+<p>On account of the considerable depth of water
+right up to the banks, the boat struck on the rocks
+rather less than usual; but the clamber over the
+jagged, fresh-fallen granite was the worst thing of
+the kind we encountered. I <i>did</i> get a bit of a duck
+here, though, but it was not near to being anything
+serious, and the sequel was rather amusing. Losing
+my footing for a moment on the only occasion I had
+to give Andy a lift with the boat, I floundered for a
+few strokes, kicked into an eddy and climbed out.</p>
+
+<p>Ever since Andy had his souse and came out with
+empty pockets, I had taken the precaution of buttoning
+mine securely down before starting in to line.
+The buttons had resisted the best efforts of the kleptomaniacal
+river current, and I came out with the
+contents of my pocket wet but intact. But there was
+a trifling casualty even thus. A leg of my riding
+breeches was missing from the knee down. It was an
+ancient pair of East Indian <i>jodpurs</i> I was wearing
+(without leggings, of course), and age and rough<span class="pagenum">[Pg 176]</span>
+usage had opened a slit at the knee. Possibly I
+caught this somewhere on the boat without noting it
+in my excitement; or it is even possible the current
+<i>did</i> tear it off. There was nothing especially remarkable
+about it in any case. All the same, Blackmore
+and Andy always solemnly declared that the <i>geesly</i>
+river, baulked by my buttons of its designs on the
+contents of my pockets, had tried to get away with
+my whole pair of pants! If that was so, it had its way
+in the end. Before I set out on the second leg of my
+voyage from the foot of the Arrow Lakes, I threw
+the river god all that was left of that bedraggled pair
+of <i>jodpurs</i> as a propitiatory offering.</p>
+
+<p>The deeper rumble of Death Rapids became audible
+above the higher-keyed grind of Rock Slide as
+we worked down toward the head of the intervening
+eddy. Of all the cataracts and cascades with sinister
+records on the Columbia this Dalles of the Dead has
+undoubtedly been the one to draw to itself the
+greatest share of execration. The terrific toll of lives
+they have claimed is unquestionably traceable to the
+fact that this swift, narrow chute of round-topped
+rollers is many times worse than it looks, especially to
+a comparatively inexperienced river man, and there
+have been many such numbered among its victims.
+There are two or three places in Surprise Rapids, and
+one or two even in Kinbasket, that the veriest greenhorn
+would know better than to try to run; Death
+Rapids it is conceivable that a novice might try, just
+as many of them have, and to their cost. However, it
+is probable that the greatest number that have died
+here were comparatively experienced men who were<span class="pagenum">[Pg 177]</span>
+sucked into the death-chute in spite of themselves.
+Of such was made up the party whose tragic fate
+gave the rapid its sinister name. Ross Cox, of the
+original Astorians, tells the story, and the account of
+it I am setting down here is slightly abridged from his
+original narrative.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>On the sixteenth of April, 1817, Ross Cox&#8217;s party of
+twenty-three left Fort George (originally and subsequently
+Astoria) to ascend the Columbia and cross the Rockies by
+the Athabaska Pass, en route Montreal. On the twenty-seventh
+of May they arrived at Boat Encampment after the
+most severe labours in dragging their boats up the rapids and
+making their way along the rocky shores. Seven men of the
+party were so weak, sick and worn out that they were unable
+to proceed across the mountains, so they were given the
+best of the canoes and provisions, and were to attempt to
+return down river to Spokane House, a Hudson Bay post
+near the mouth of the river of that name. They reached
+the place which has since borne the name of <i>Dalles des Morts</i>
+without trouble. There, in passing their canoe down over the
+rapids with a light cod line, it was caught in a whirlpool.
+The line snapped, and the canoe, with all the provisions and
+blankets, was lost.</p>
+
+<p>The men found themselves utterly destitute, and at a
+time of year when it was impossible to procure any wild
+fruit or roots. The continual rising of the water completely
+inundated the beach, which compelled them to force their
+way through a dense forest, rendered almost impervious by a
+thick growth of prickly underbrush. Their only nourishment
+was water. On the third day a man named Macon died, and
+his surviving comrades, though unconscious of how soon they
+might be called on to follow him, divided his remains into equal
+parts, on which they subsisted for several days. From the
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 178]</span>sore and swollen state of their feet, their daily progress did
+not exceed two or three miles. A tailor named Holmes was
+the next to die, and the others subsisted for some days on his
+emaciated remains. In a little while, of the seven men, only
+two remained alive&mdash;Dubois and La Pierre. La Pierre was
+subsequently found on the upper Arrow Lake by two Indians
+who were coasting it in a canoe. They took him to Kettle
+Falls, from where he was carried to Spokane House.</p>
+
+<p>He stated that after the death of the fifth man of the
+party, Dubois and he remained for some days at the spot,
+living on the remains. When they felt strong enough to
+continue, they loaded themselves with as much of the flesh
+as they could carry; that with this they succeeded in reaching
+the Upper Lake, around the shores of which they wandered
+for some time in search of Indians; that their food at
+length became exhausted, and they were again reduced to the
+prospects of starvation. On the second night after their last
+meal La Pierre observed something suspicious in the conduct
+of Dubois, which induced him to be on his guard; and that
+shortly after they had lain down for the night, and while
+he feigned sleep, he observed Dubois cautiously opening his
+clasp-knife, with which he sprang at La Pierre, inflicting on
+the hand the blow evidently intended for the neck. A silent
+and desperate conflict followed, in which, after severe struggling,
+La Pierre succeeded in wresting the knife from his
+antagonist, and, having no other resource left, was finally
+obliged to cut Dubois&#8217; throat. It was several days after
+this that he was discovered by the Indians.</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>This was one of the earliest, and certainly the most
+terrible, of all the tragedies originating at the <i>Dalles
+des Morts</i>. There are a number of graves in the
+vicinity, but more numerous still are the inscriptions<span class="pagenum">[Pg 179]</span>
+on the cliffs in memory of the victims whose bodies
+were never recovered for burial.</p>
+
+<p>Compared to what we had been having, lining down
+Death Rapids was comparatively simple. It was only
+when one got right down beside them that the terrible
+power of the great rolling waves became evident.
+From crest to trough they must have been from twelve
+to fifteen feet high, with the water&mdash;on account of the
+steep declivity and the lack of resistance from rocks&mdash;running
+at race-horse speed. We had become so used
+to expecting big boulders to underlie heavy waves that
+it was difficult to realize that there was all of a hundred
+feet of green water between these giant rollers
+and the great reefs of bedrock which were responsible
+for them.</p>
+
+<p>For a quarter of a mile below where the rolling
+waves ceased to comb there was a green-white chaos
+of whirlpools and the great geyser-like up-boils where
+the sucked-down water was ejected again to the surface.
+This was another of the places where the river
+was said to &#8220;eat up&#8221; whole pine trees at high water,
+and it was not hard to believe. Even now the voracious
+vortices were wolfing very considerable pieces
+of driftwood, and one had to keep a very sharp
+lookout to see the spewed-forth fragments reappear
+at all. This was no water for a small boat or canoe.
+It would, for instance, have engulfed the sixteen-foot
+skiff which I used on the lower river as an
+elephant gulps a tossed peanut. But our big double-ended
+thirty-footer was more of a mouthful. Blackmore
+pushed off without hesitation as soon as we had<span class="pagenum">[Pg 180]</span>
+lined below the rollers, but <i>not</i> without reiterating the
+old warning about not dipping too deep, and being
+quick about throwing the oar free from its oar-lock
+if a whirlpool started to drag down the blade. We
+had a lively five minutes of it, what with the whirlpools
+trying to suck her stern under and the geysers
+trying to toss her bow on high; but they never had us
+in serious trouble. They did spin her all the way
+round, though, in spite of all the three of us could do
+to hold her, and as for our course&mdash;a chart of it would
+make the track of an earthquake on a seismograph
+look as if drawn with a straight-edge!</p>
+
+<p>Another mile took us to the head of Priest Rapids,
+so named because two French-Canadian priests had
+been drowned there. This was to be our great rapid-running
+picture. Bad light had prevented our getting
+anything of the kind in Surprise and Kinbasket
+rapids, and &#8220;Twelve-Mile,&#8221; though white and fast,
+was hardly the real thing. But Priest Rapids was
+reputed the fastest on the whole river&mdash;certainly over
+twenty miles an hour, Blackmore reckoned. It had
+almost as much of a pitch as the upper part of the
+first drop of Surprise Rapids down to the abrupt
+fall. But, being straight as a city street and with
+plenty of water over the rocks, running it was simply
+a matter of having a large enough boat and being
+willing to take the soaking. Blackmore had the boat,
+and, for the sake of a real rip-snorting picture, he
+said he was willing to take the soaking. So were
+Andy and I.</p>
+
+<p><a id="page180" name="page180"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 448px;">
+<img src="images/illo_236.jpg" width="448" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">LOOKING ACROSS TO BOAT ENCAMPMENT (<i>above</i>)<br />
+&#8220;WOOD SMOKE AT TWILIGHT&#8221; ABOVE TWELVE-MILE (<i>below</i>)</span>
+</div>
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><a id="page181" name="page181"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 464px;">
+<img src="images/illo_237.jpg" width="464" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">LINING DOWN ROCK SLIDE RAPIDS (<i>above</i>)<br />
+WHEN THE COLUMBIA TOOK HALF OF MY RIDING
+BREECHES (<i>below</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>We dropped Roos at the head of the rumbling
+&#8220;intake,&#8221; and while Andy went down to help him set
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 181]</span>up in a favourable position, Blackmore and I lined
+back up-stream a hundred yards so as to have a good
+jump on when we started. Andy joined us presently,
+to report that Roos appraised the &#8220;back-lighting&#8221;
+effect across the white caps as &#8220;cheap at a million
+dollars.&#8221; He was going to make the shot of his life.
+Pushing off we laid on our oars, floating down until
+we caught Roos&#8217; signal to come on. Then Andy and
+I swung into it with all of the something like four
+hundred and fifty pounds of beef we scaled between
+us. Blackmore headed her straight down the &#8220;V&#8221;
+into the swiftest and roughest part of the rapid. It
+was a bit less tempestuous toward the right bank, but
+a quiet passage was not what he was looking for this
+trip.</p>
+
+<p>The boat must have had half her length out of
+water when she hurdled off the top of that first wave.
+I couldn&#8217;t see, of course, but I judged it must have
+been that way from the manner in which she slapped
+down and buried her nose under the next comber.
+That brought over the water in a solid green flood.
+Andy and I only caught it on our hunched backs, but
+Blackmore, on his feet and facing forward, had to
+withstand a full frontal attack. My one recollection
+of him during that mad run is that of a freshly
+emerged Neptune shaking his grizzly locks and trying
+to blink the water out of his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Our team-work, as usual, went to sixes-and-sevens
+the moment we hit the rough water, but neither Andy
+nor I stopped pulling on that account. Yelling like
+a couple of <i>locoed</i> Apaches, we kept slapping out with
+our oar-blades into every hump of water within reach,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 182]</span>
+and I have an idea that we managed to keep a considerable
+way even over the speeding current right
+to the finish. It was quite the wettest river run I
+ever made. A number of times during the war I was
+in a destroyer when something turned up to send it
+driving with all the speed it had&mdash;or all its plates
+would stand, rather&mdash;into a head sea. That meant
+that it made most of the run tunnelling under water.
+And that was the way it seemed going down Priest
+Rapids, only not so bad, of course. We were only
+about a quarter full of water when we finally pulled
+up to the bank in an eddy to wait for the movie
+man.</p>
+
+<p>I could see that something had upset Roos by the
+droop of his shoulders, even when he was a long way
+off; the droop of his mouth confirmed the first impression
+on closer view. &#8220;You couldn&#8217;t do that again,
+could you?&#8221; he asked Blackmore, with a furtive look
+in his eyes. The &#8220;Skipper&#8221; stopped bailing with a
+snort. &#8220;Sure I&#8217;ll do it again,&#8221; he growled sarcastically.
+&#8220;Just line the boat back where she was and
+I&#8217;ll bring her down again&mdash;only not to-night. I&#8217;ll
+want to get dried out first. But what&#8217;s the matter
+anyhow? Didn&#8217;t we run fast enough to suit you?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Guess <i>you</i> ran fast enough,&#8221; was the reply; &#8220;but
+the film didn&#8217;t. Buckled in camera. Oil-can! Washout!
+Out of luck!&#8221; Engulfed in a deep purple aura
+of gloom, Roos climbed back into the boat and asked
+how far it was to camp and dinner.</p>
+
+<p>For a couple of miles we had a fast current with
+us, but by the time we reached the mouth of Downie
+Creek&mdash;the centre of a great gold rush half a century<span class="pagenum">[Pg 183]</span>
+ago&mdash;the river was broadening and deepening and
+slowing down. A half hour more of sharp pulling
+brought us to Keystone Creek and Boyd&#8217;s Ranch,
+where we tied up for the night. This place had the
+distinction of being the only ranch on the Big Bend,
+but it was really little more than a clearing with a
+house and barn. Boyd had given his name to a rapid
+at the head of Revelstoke Canyon&mdash;drowned while
+trying to line by at high water, Blackmore said&mdash;and
+the present owner was an American Civil War Pensioner
+named Wilcox. He was wintering in California
+for his health, but Andy, being a friend of his,
+knew where to look for the key. Hardly had the
+frying bacon started its sizzling prelude than there
+came a joyous yowl at the door, and as it was opened
+an enormous tiger-striped tomcat bounded into the
+kitchen. Straight for Andy&#8217;s shoulder he leaped, and
+the trapper&#8217;s happy howl of recognition must have
+met him somewhere in the air. Andy hugged the
+ecstatically purring bundle to his breast as if it were
+a long-lost child, telling us between nuzzles into the
+arched furry back that this was &#8220;Tommy&#8221; (that was
+his name, of course), with whom he had spent two
+winters alone in his trapper&#8217;s cabin. It was hard to
+tell which was the more delighted over this unexpected
+reunion, man or cat.</p>
+
+<p>He had little difficulty in accounting for &#8220;Tommy&#8217;s&#8221;
+presence at Boyd&#8217;s. He had given the cat to
+Wilcox a season or two back, and Wilcox, when he
+left for California, had given him to &#8220;Wild Bill,&#8221;
+who had a cabin ten miles farther down the river.
+&#8220;Bill&#8221; already had a brother of &#8220;Tommy,&#8221; but a cat<span class="pagenum">[Pg 184]</span>
+of much less character. As &#8220;Bill&#8221; was much given
+to periodic sprees, Andy was satisfied that &#8220;Tommy,&#8221;
+who was a great sizer-up of personality, had left him
+in disgust and returned to his former deserted home to
+shift for himself. As he would pull down rabbits as
+readily as an ordinary cat caught mice, this was an
+easy matter as long as the snow did not get too deep.
+Of what might happen after that Andy did not like to
+think. He would have to make some provision for his
+pet before full winter set in.</p>
+
+<p>That evening we sat around the kitchen fire, telling
+all the cat stories we knew and quarrelling over whose
+turn it was to hold &#8220;Tommy&#8221; and put him through
+his tricks. The latter were of considerable variety.
+There was all the usual &#8220;sit-up,&#8221; &#8220;jump-through&#8221;
+and &#8220;roll-over&#8221; stuff, but with such &#8220;variations&#8221; as
+only a trapper, snow-bound for days with nothing
+else to do, would have the time to conceive and perfect.
+For instance, if you only waved your hand in
+an airy spiral, &#8220;Tommy&#8221; would respond with no more
+than the conventional &#8220;once-over;&#8221; but a gentle tweak
+of the tail following the spiral, brought a roll to the
+left, while two tweaks directed him to the right.
+Similarly with his &#8220;front&#8221; and &#8220;back&#8221; somersaults,
+which took their inspiration from a slightly modified
+form of aerial spiral. Of course only Andy could get
+the fine work out of him, but the ordinary &#8220;jump-through&#8221;
+stuff he would do for any of us.</p>
+
+<p>I am afraid the cat stories we told awakened, temporarily
+at least, a good deal of mutual distrust. Roos
+didn&#8217;t figure greatly, but Andy and Blackmore and
+I were glowering back and forth at each other with<span class="pagenum">[Pg 185]</span>
+&#8220;I-suppose-you-don&#8217;t-believe-<i>that</i>&#8221; expressions all
+evening. The two woodsmen, &#8220;hunting in couples&#8221;
+for the occasion, displayed considerable team-work.
+One of their best was of a trapper of their acquaintance&mdash;name
+and present address mentioned with
+scrupulous particularity&mdash;who had broken his leg one
+winter on Maloney Creek, just as he was at the end
+of his provisions. Dragging himself to his cabin, he
+lay down to die of starvation. The next morning his
+cat jumped in through the window with a rabbit in his
+mouth. Then the trapper had his great idea. Leaving
+the cat just enough to keep him alive, he took
+the rest for himself. That made the cat go on hunting,
+and each morning he came back with a rabbit.
+And so it went on until springtime brought in his
+partner and relief. I asked them why, if the cat was
+so hungry, he didn&#8217;t eat the rabbit up in the woods;
+but they said that wasn&#8217;t the way of a cat, or at least
+of this particular cat.</p>
+
+<p>Then I told them of a night, not long before the
+war, that I spent with the German archćologists excavating
+at Babylon. Hearing a scratching on my
+door, I got up and found a tabby cat there. Entering
+the room, she nosed about under my mosquito netting
+for a few moments with ingratiating mewings
+and purrings, finally to trot out through the open
+door with an &#8220;I&#8217;ll-see-you-again-in-a-moment&#8221; air.
+Presently she returned with a new-born kitten in her
+mouth. Nuzzling under the net and coverlets, she
+deposited the mewing atom in my bed, and then trotted
+off after another. When the whole litter of five
+was there, she crawled in herself and started nursing<span class="pagenum">[Pg 186]</span>
+them. I spent the night on the couch, and without
+a net.</p>
+
+<p>According to the best of my judgment, that story
+of mine was the only true one told that night. And
+yet&mdash;confound them&mdash;they wouldn&#8217;t believe it&mdash;any
+more than I would theirs!</p>
+
+<p>Considerable feeling arose along toward bed-time
+as to who was going to have &#8220;Tommy&#8221; to sleep with.
+Roos&mdash;who hadn&#8217;t cut much ice in the story-telling&mdash;came
+strong at this juncture by adopting cave-man
+tactics and simply picking &#8220;Tommy&#8221; up and walking
+off with him. Waiting until Roos was asleep, I crept
+over and, gently extricating the furry pillow from
+under his downy cheek, carried it off to snuggle
+against my own ear. Whether Andy adopted the
+same Sabine methods himself, I never quite made
+sure. Anyhow, it was out of his blankets that
+&#8220;Tommy&#8221; came crawling in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>As we made ready to pack off, Andy was in considerable
+doubt as to whether it would be best to
+leave his pet where he was or to take him down to
+&#8220;Wild Bill&#8221; again. &#8220;Tommy&#8221; cut the Gordian Knot
+himself by following us down to the boat like a dog
+and leaping aboard. He was horribly upset for a
+while when he saw the bank slide away from him and
+felt the motion of the boat, but Roos, muffling the dismal
+yowls under his coat, kept him fairly quiet until
+&#8220;Wild Bill&#8217;s&#8221; landing was reached. Here he became
+his old self again, following us with his quick little
+canine trot up to the cabin. Outside the door he met
+his twin brother, and the two, after a swift sniff of<span class="pagenum">[Pg 187]</span>
+identification, slipped away across the clearing to
+stalk rabbits.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Wild Bill,&#8221; as Andy had anticipated, was still in
+bed, but got up and welcomed us warmly as soon as
+he found who it was. He was a small man&mdash;much
+to my surprise, and looked more like a French-Canadian
+gentleman in reduced circumstances than the
+most tumultuous booze-fighter on the upper Columbia.
+I had heard scores of stories of his escapades in
+the days when Golden and Revelstoke were wide-open
+frontier towns and life was really worth living.
+But most of them just miss being &#8220;drawing-room,&#8221;
+however, and I refrain from setting them down.
+There was one comparatively polite one, though, of
+the time he started the biggest free-for-all fight Revelstoke
+ever knew by using the white, woolly, cheek-cuddling
+poodle of a dance-hall girl to wipe the mud
+off his boots with. And another&mdash;but no, that one
+wouldn&#8217;t quite pass censor.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Bill&#8221; had shot a number of bear in the spring,
+and now asked Andy to take the unusually fine skins
+to Revelstoke and sell them for him. He also asked
+if we could let him have any spare provisions, as he
+was running very short. He was jubilant when I
+told him he could take everything we had left for
+what it had cost in Golden. That was like finding
+money, he said, for packing in his stuff cost him close
+to ten cents a pound. But it wasn&#8217;t the few dollars
+he saved on the grub that etched a silver&mdash;nay, a roseate&mdash;lining
+on the sodden rain clouds for &#8220;Wild
+Bill&#8221; that day; rather it was the sequel to the conse<span class="pagenum">[Pg 188]</span>quences
+of a kindly thought I had when he came down
+to the boat to see us off.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Bill,&#8217;&#8221; I said, as he started to wring our hands
+in parting, &#8220;they tell me you&#8217;ve become a comparative
+teetotaler these last few years. But we have a little
+&#8216;thirty per over-proof&#8217; left&mdash;just a swallow. Perhaps&mdash;for
+the sake of the old days....&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>That quick, chesty cough, rumbling right from the
+diaphragm, was the one deepest sound of emotion I
+ever heard&mdash;and I&#8217;ve heard a fair amount of &#8220;emoting,&#8221;
+too. &#8220;Don&#8217;t mind&mdash;if I do,&#8221; he mumbled
+brokenly, with a long intake of breath that was almost
+a sob. I handed him a mug&mdash;a hulking big
+half-pint coffee mug, it was&mdash;and uncorked the bottle.
+&#8220;Say when....&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Thanks&mdash;won&#8217;t trouble you,&#8221; he muttered,
+snatching the bottle from me with a hand whose fingers
+crooked like claws. Then he inhaled another
+deep breath, took out his handkerchief, brushed off a
+place on one of the thwarts, sat down, and, pouring
+very deliberately, emptied the contents of the bottle
+to the last drop into the big mug. The bottle&mdash;a
+British Imperial quart&mdash;had been a little less than a
+quarter full; the mug was just short of brimming.
+&#8220;Earzow!&#8221; he mumbled, with a sweepingly comprehensive
+gesture with the mug. Then, crooking his
+elbow, he dumped the whole half pint down his throat.
+Diluted four-to-one, that liquid fire would have made
+an ordinary man wince; and &#8220;Wild Bill&#8221; downed it
+without a blink. Then he wiped his lips with his
+sleeve, set mug and bottle carefully down on the
+thwart, bowed low to each of us, and stepped ashore<span class="pagenum">[Pg 189]</span>
+with dignified tread. Blackmore, checking Roos&#8217;
+hysterical giggle with a prod of his paddle handle,
+pushed off into the current. &#8220;Wait!&#8221; he admonished,
+eyeing the still figure on the bank with the fascinated
+glance of a man watching a short length of fuse sputter
+down toward the end of a stick of dynamite.</p>
+
+<p>We had not long to wait. The detonation of the
+dynamite was almost instantaneous. The mounting
+fumes of that &#8220;thirty per&#8221; fired the slumbering volcano
+of the old trapper as a dash of kerosene fires a
+bed of dormant coals. And so &#8220;Wild Bill&#8221; went wild.
+Dancing and whooping like an Indian, he shouted
+for us to come back&mdash;that he would give us his furs,
+his cabin, the Columbia, the Selkirks, Canada....
+What he was going to offer next we never learned,
+for just then a very sobering thing occurred&mdash;&#8220;Tommy&#8221;
+and his twin brother, attracted by the
+noise, came trotting down the path from the cabin to
+learn what it was all about.</p>
+
+<p>Andy swore that he had told &#8220;Bill&#8221; that we had
+brought &#8220;Tommy&#8221; back, and that &#8220;Bill&#8221; had heard
+him, and replied that he hoped the cat would stay this
+time. But even if this was true, it no longer signified.
+&#8220;Bill&#8221; had forgotten all about it, and <i>knew</i> that there
+ought to be only one tiger-striped tomcat about the
+place, whereas his eyes told him there were two. So
+he kept counting them, and stopping every now and
+then to hold up two fingers at us in pathetic puzzlement.
+Finally he began to chase them&mdash;or rather
+&#8220;it&#8221;&mdash;now one of &#8220;it&#8221; and now the other. The last
+we saw of him, as the current swept the boat round
+a point, he had caught &#8220;Tommy&#8217;s&#8221; twin brother and<span class="pagenum">[Pg 190]</span>
+was still trying to enumerate &#8220;Tommy.&#8221; Very likely
+by that time there were two of him in fancy as well
+as in fact&mdash;possibly mauve and pink ones.</p>
+
+<p>Blackmore took a last whiff at the neck of the rum
+bottle and then tossed it gloomily into the river.
+&#8220;The next time you ask a man to take a &#8216;swallow,&#8217;&#8221; he
+said, &#8220;probably you&#8217;ll know enough to find out how
+big his &#8216;swallow&#8217; is in advance.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>We pulled hard against a head wind all morning,
+and with not much help from the current. The latter
+began to speed up at Rocky Point Rapids, and from
+there the going was lively right on through Revelstoke
+Canyon. Sand Slide Rapid, a fast-rolling serpentine
+cascade near the head of the Canyon, gave us
+a good wetting as Blackmore slashed down the middle
+of it, and he was still bailing when we ran in between
+the sides of the great red-and-black-walled gorge.
+Between cliffs not over a hundred feet apart for a
+considerable distance, the river rushes with great velocity,
+throwing itself in a roaring wave now against
+one side, now against the other. As the depth is very
+great (Blackmore said he had failed to get bottom
+with a hundred-and-fifty-foot line), the only things to
+watch out for were the cliffs and the whirlpools.
+Neither was a serious menace to a boat of our size
+at that stage of water, but the swirls would have made
+the run very dangerous for a skiff or canoe at any
+time. Unfortunately, the drizzling rain and lowering
+clouds made pictures of what is one of the very finest
+scenic stretches of the Big Bend quite out of the question.
+If it had been the matter of a day or two, we
+would gladly have gone into camp and waited for the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 191]</span>
+light; but Blackmore was inclined to think the spell
+of bad weather that had now set in was the beginning
+of an early winter, in which event we might stand-by
+for weeks without seeing the sky. It was just as
+well we did not wait. As I have already mentioned,
+we did not feel the touch of sunlight again until we
+were on the American side of the border.</p>
+
+<p>From the foot of the Canyon to Blackmore&#8217;s boat-house
+was four miles. Pulling down a broadening and
+slackening river flanked by ever receding mountains,
+we passed under the big C. P. R. bridge and tied up at
+four o&#8217;clock. In spite of taking it easy all the time,
+the last twenty miles had been run in quite a bit under
+two hours.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page192" name="page192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IX<br />
+<br />
+REVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE</h2>
+
+<p>The voyage round the Big Bend, in spite of the
+atrocious weather, had gone so well that I had just
+about made up my mind to continue on down river
+by the time we reached Revelstoke. A letter which
+awaited me at the hotel there from Captain Armstrong,
+stating that he would be free to join me for
+my first week or ten days south from the foot of the
+lakes, was all that was needed to bring me to a decision.
+I wired him that I would pick him up in Nelson
+as soon as I had cleaned up a pile of correspondence
+which had pursued me in spite of all directions
+to the contrary, and in the meantime for him to endeavour
+to find a suitable boat. Nelson, as the metropolis
+of western British Columbia, appeared to be
+the only place where we would have a chance of finding
+what was needed in the boat line on short notice.
+While I wrote letters, Roos got his exposed film off
+to Los Angeles, laid in a new stock, and received
+additional instructions from Chester in connection
+with the new picture&mdash;the one for which the opening
+shots had already been made at Windermere, and
+which we called &#8220;The Farmer Who Would See the
+Sea.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As there was no swift water whatever between Revelstoke
+and Kootenay Rapids, I had no hesitation in<span class="pagenum">[Pg 193]</span>
+deciding to make the voyage down the Arrow Lakes
+by steamer. Both on the score of water-stage and
+weather, it was now a good month to six weeks later
+than the most favourable time for a through down-river
+voyage. Any time saved now, therefore, might
+be the means of avoiding so many days of winter further
+along. I was hoping that, with decreasing altitude
+and a less humid region ahead, I would at least
+be keeping ahead of the snows nearly if not quite all
+the way to Portland. I may mention here that, all
+in all, I played in very good luck on the score of
+weather. There were to be, however, a few <i>geesly</i>
+cold days on the river along about Wenatchee, and
+two or three mighty blustery blows in the Cascades.</p>
+
+<p>The Arrow Lakes are merely enlargements of the
+Columbia, keeping throughout their lengths the same
+general north-to-south direction of this part of the
+river. The upper lake is thirty-three miles in length,
+and has an average width of about three miles. Sixteen
+miles of comparatively swift river runs from the
+upper to the lower lake. The latter, which is forty-two
+miles long and two and a half wide, is somewhat
+less precipitously walled than the upper lake, and
+there are considerable patches of cultivation here and
+there along its banks&mdash;mostly apple orchards. There
+is a steamer channel all the way up the Columbia to
+Revelstoke, but the present service, maintained by
+the Canadian Pacific at its usual high standard, starts
+at the head of the upper lake and finishes at West
+Robson, some miles down the Columbia from the foot
+of the lower lake. This is one of the very finest lake
+trips anywhere in the world; I found it an unending<span class="pagenum">[Pg 194]</span>
+source of delight, even after a fortnight of the superlative
+scenery of the Big Bend.</p>
+
+<p>There is a stock story they tell of the Arrow Lakes,
+and which appears intended to convey to the simple
+tourist a graphic idea of the precipitousness of their
+rocky walls. The skipper of my steamer told it while
+we were ploughing down the upper lake. Seeing a
+man struggling in the water near the bank one day,
+he ran some distance off his course to throw the chap
+a line. Disdaining all aid, the fellow kept right on
+swimming toward the shore. &#8220;Don&#8217;t worry about
+me,&#8221; he shouted back; &#8220;this is only the third time
+I&#8217;ve fallen off my ranch to-day.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I told the Captain that the story sounded all right
+to me except in one particular&mdash;that even my glass
+failed to reveal any ranches for a man to fall off of.
+&#8220;Oh, that&#8217;s all right,&#8221; was the unperturbed reply;
+&#8220;there <i>was</i> one when that yarn was started, but I
+guess it fell into the lake too. But mebbe I <i>had</i> ought
+to keep it for the lower lake, though,&#8221; he added;
+&#8220;there is still some un-slid ranches down there.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Nelson is a fine little city that hangs to a rocky
+mountainside right at the point where Kootenay Lake
+spills over and discharges its surplus water into a
+wild, white torrent that seems to be trying to atone
+at the last for its long delay in making up its mind
+to join the Columbia. Nelson was made by the rich
+silver-lead mines of the Kootenay district, but it was
+so well made that, even now with the first fine frenzy
+of the mining excitement over, it is still able to carry
+on strongly as a commercial distributing and fruit
+shipping centre. It is peopled by the same fine, out-<span class="pagenum">[Pg 195]</span>door
+loving folk that one finds through all of western
+Canada, and is especially noted for its aquatic sports.
+I am only sorry that I was not able to see more of
+both Nelson and its people.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as I saw Captain Armstrong I made a
+clean breast to him about my failure to unearth the
+treasure at the Bend. He was a good sport and bore
+up better than one would expect a man to under the
+circumstances. &#8220;I wish that matter of K&mdash;&mdash; and
+his D. T.&#8217;s had come up before you left,&#8221; was his only
+comment.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Why?&#8221; I asked. &#8220;I can&#8217;t see what difference that
+would have made. We didn&#8217;t waste a lot of time
+digging.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s just it,&#8221; said the Captain with a wry grin.
+&#8220;Wouldn&#8217;t you have gone right on digging if you
+had known that the spell of jim-jams that finished
+K&mdash;&mdash; came from some stuff he got from a section-hand
+at Beavermouth? Now I suppose I&#8217;ll have to
+watch my chance and run down and salvage that keg
+of old Scotch myself.&#8221; It shows the stuff that Armstrong
+was made of when I say that, even after the
+way I had betrayed the trust he had reposed in me,
+he was still game to go on with the Columbia trip.
+That&#8217;s the sort of man he was.</p>
+
+<p>Boats of anywhere near the design we would need
+for the river were scarce, the Captain reported, but
+there was one which he thought might do. This
+proved to be a sixteen-foot, clinker-built skiff that had
+been constructed especially to carry an out-board
+motor. She had ample beam, a fair freeboard and a
+considerable sheer. The principal thing against her<span class="pagenum">[Pg 196]</span>
+was the square stern, and that was of less moment
+running down river than if we had been working up.
+It <i>did</i> seem just a bit like asking for trouble, tackling
+the Columbia in a boat built entirely for lake use;
+but Captain Armstrong&#8217;s approval of her was quite
+good enough for me. Save for her amiable weakness
+of yielding somewhat overreadily to the seductive embraces
+of whirlpools&mdash;a trait common to all square-sterned
+craft of inconsiderable length&mdash;she proved
+more than equal to the task set for her. We paid
+fifty-five dollars for her&mdash;about half what she had
+cost&mdash;and there was a charge of ten dollars for expressing
+her to West Robson, on the Columbia.</p>
+
+<p>We left Nelson by train for Castlegar, on the Columbia
+just below West Robson, the afternoon of
+October nineteenth. The track runs in sight of the
+Kootenay practically all of the way. There is a drop
+of three hundred and fifty feet in the twenty-eight
+miles of river between the outlet of the lake and the
+Columbia, with no considerable stretch that it would
+be safe to run with a boat. A large part of the drop
+occurs in two fine cataracts called Bonnington Falls,
+where there is an important hydro-electric plant, serving
+Nelson and Trail with power; but most of the
+rest of the way the river is one continuous series of
+foam-white cascades with short quiet stretches between.
+The last two or three miles to the river the
+railway runs through the remarkable colony of Russian
+Doukobours, with a station at Brilliant, where
+their big co-operative jam factory and administrative
+offices are located. We had a more intimate glimpse<span class="pagenum">[Pg 197]</span>
+of this interesting colony from the river the following
+day.</p>
+
+<p>We found the express car with the boat on the siding
+at West Robson, and the three of us&mdash;Armstrong,
+Roos and myself&mdash;had little difficulty in sliding
+her down the quay and launching her in the Columbia.
+Pulling a mile down the quiet current, we
+tied her up for the night at the Castlegar Ferry.
+Then we cut across the bend through the woods for a
+look at Kootenay Rapids, the first stretch of fast
+water we were to encounter. After the rough-and-rowdy
+rapids of the Big Bend, this quarter-mile of
+white riffle looked like comparatively easy running.
+It was a very different sort of a craft we had now,
+however, and Armstrong took the occasion to give the
+channel a careful study. There were a lot of big black
+rocks cropping up all the way across, but he thought
+that, by keeping well in toward the right bank, we
+could make it without much trouble.</p>
+
+<p>On the way back to the hotel at Castlegar, the
+Captain was hailed from the doorway of a cabin set
+in the midst of a fresh bit of clearing. It turned out
+to be a boatman who had accompanied him and Mr.
+Forde, of the Canadian Department of Public
+Works, on a part of their voyage down the Columbia
+in 1915. They reminisced for half an hour in the
+gathering twilight, talking mostly of the occasion
+when a whirlpool had stood their Peterboro on end
+in the Little Dalles. I found this just a bit disturbing,
+for Armstrong had already confided to me that
+he intended running the Little Dalles.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 198]</span></p>
+
+<p>The boat trimmed well when we came to stow the
+load the next morning, but when the three of us took
+our places she was rather lower in the water than we
+had expected she was going to be. She seemed very
+small after Blackmore&#8217;s big thirty-footer, and the
+water uncomfortably close at hand. She was buoyant
+enough out in the current, however, and responded
+very smartly to paddle and oars when Armstrong and
+I tried a few practice man&#339;uvres. The Captain sat
+on his bedding roll in the stern, plying his long paddle,
+and I pulled a pair of oars from the forward
+thwart. Roos sat on the after thwart, facing Armstrong,
+with his tripod, camera and most of the luggage
+stowed between them. She was loaded to ride
+high by the head, as it was white water rather than
+whirlpools that was in immediate prospect. With a
+small boat and a consequent comparatively small
+margin of safety, one has to make his trim a sort of a
+compromise. For rough, sloppy rapids it is well to
+have the bows just about as high in the air as you can
+get them. On the other hand, it is likely to be fatal
+to get into a bad whirlpool with her too much down
+by the stern. As the one succeeds the other as a general
+rule, about the best you can do is to strike a comfortable
+mean based on what you know of the water
+ahead.</p>
+
+<p><a id="page198" name="page198"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 448px;">
+<img src="images/illo_256.jpg" width="448" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">BONNINGTON FALLS OF THE KOOTENAY (<i>above</i>)<br />
+PLASTERED LOG CABIN IN THE DOUKHOBOR VILLAGE (<i>below</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><a id="page199" name="page199"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/illo_257.jpg" width="600" height="465" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">TRUCKING THE SKIFF THROUGH KETTLE FALLS (<i>left</i>)<br />
+TWILIGHT IN THE GORGE AT KETTLE FALLS (<i>right</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>I found it very awkward for a while pulling with
+two oars after having worked for so long with one,
+and this difficulty&mdash;especially in bad water&mdash;I never
+quite overcame. In a really rough rapid one oar is
+all a man can handle properly, and he does well if he
+manages that. Your stroke is largely determined by
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 199]</span>the sort of stuff the blade is going into, and&mdash;as on
+the verge of an eddy&mdash;with the water to port running
+in one direction, and that to starboard running
+another, it is obviously impossible for a man handling
+two oars to do full justice to the situation. He simply
+has to do the best he can and leave the rest to the
+man with the paddle in the stern. When the latter
+is an expert with the experience of Captain Armstrong
+there is little likelihood of serious trouble.</p>
+
+<p>The matter of keeping a lookout is also much more
+difficult in a small boat. In a craft with only a few
+inches of freeboard it is obviously out of the question
+for a steersman to keep his feet through a rapid, as
+he may do without risk in a <i>batteau</i> or canoe large
+enough to give him a chance to brace his knees against
+the sides. Armstrong effected the best compromise
+possible by standing and getting a good &#8220;look-see&#8221;
+while he could, and then settling back into a securer
+position when the boat struck the rough water. The
+three or four feet less of vantage from which to con
+the channel imposes a good deal of a handicap, but
+there is no help for it.</p>
+
+<p>We ran both pitches of Kootenay Rapids easily
+and smartly. Her bows slapped down pretty hard
+when she tumbled off the tops of some of the bigger
+rollers, but into not the softest of the souse-holes
+would she put her high-held head. We took in plenty
+of spray, but nothing green&mdash;nothing that couldn&#8217;t
+be bailed without stopping. It was a lot better performance
+than one was entitled to expect of a lake
+boat running her maiden rapid.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;ll do!&#8221; chuckled the Captain with a satisfied<span class="pagenum">[Pg 200]</span>
+grin, resting on his paddle as we slid easily out of the
+final run of swirls; &#8220;you ought to take her right
+through without a lot of trouble.&#8221; &#8220;<i>Imshallah!</i>&#8221; I
+interjected piously, anxious not to offend the River
+God with a display of overmuch confidence. I began
+to call her &#8220;<i>Imshallah</i>&#8221; in my mind from that time on,
+and &#8220;<i>Imshallah</i>&#8221;&mdash;&#8220;God willing&#8221;&mdash;she remained
+until I tied her up for her well-earned rest in a Portland
+boat-house. It was in the course of the next day
+or two that I made a propitiatory offering to the
+River God in the form of the remnants of the <i>jodpurs</i>
+he had tried so hard to snatch from me at Rock Slide
+Rapids. I&#8217;ve always had a sneaking feeling offerings
+of that kind are &#8220;good medicine;&#8221; that the old Greeks
+knew what they were doing when they squared things
+with the Gods in advance on venturing forth into unknown
+waters.</p>
+
+<p>Big and Little Tin Cup Rapids, which are due to
+the obstruction caused by boulders washed down by
+the torrential Kootenay River, gave us little trouble.
+There is a channel of good depth right down the middle
+of both, and we splashed through this without
+getting into much besides flying foam. Just below
+we pulled up to the left bank and landed for a look at
+one of the Doukobour villages.</p>
+
+<p>The Doukobours are a strange Russian religious
+sect, with beliefs and observances quite at variance
+with those of the Greek Church. Indeed, it was the
+persecutions of the Orthodox Russians that were responsible
+for driving considerable numbers of them to
+Canada. They are best known in America, not for
+their indefatigable industry and many other good<span class="pagenum">[Pg 201]</span>
+traits, but for their highly original form of protesting
+when they have fancied that certain of their rights
+were being restricted by Canadian law. On repeated
+occasions of this kind whole colonies of them&mdash;men,
+women and children&mdash;have thrown aside their every
+rag of clothing and started off marching about the
+country. Perhaps it is not strange that more has
+been written about these strange pilgrimages than of
+the fact that the Doukobours have cleared and
+brought to a high state of productivity many square
+miles of land that, but for their unflagging energy,
+would still be worthless. In spite of their somewhat
+unconventional habits, these simple people have been
+an incalculably valuable economic asset to western
+Canada.</p>
+
+<p>On the off chance that there might be an incipient
+&#8220;protest&#8221; brewing, Roos took his movie outfit ashore
+with him. He met with no luck. Indeed, we found
+the women of the astonishingly clean little village of
+plastered and whitewashed cabins extremely shy of
+even our hand cameras. The Captain thought that
+this was probably due to the fact that they had been
+a good deal pestered by kodak fiends while Godivaing
+round the country on some of their protest
+marches. &#8220;The people were very indignant about it,&#8221;
+he said; &#8220;but I never heard of any one pulling
+down their blinds.&#8221; Coventry was really very &#8220;Victorian&#8221;
+in its attitude toward Lady Godiva&#8217;s &#8220;protest.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There was good swift water all the way from Castlegar
+to Trail, and we averaged close to nine miles an
+hour during the time we were on the river. At China<span class="pagenum">[Pg 202]</span>
+Bar the river was a good deal spread out, running in
+channels between low gravel islands. Any one of
+these was runnable for a small boat, and we did not
+need to keep to the main channel that had once been
+maintained for steamers. Sixteen miles below Castlegar,
+and about half a mile below the mouth of Sullivan
+Creek, there was a long black reef of basaltic
+rock stretching a third of the way across the river.
+We shot past it without difficulty by keeping near the
+left bank. The sulphurous fumes of the big smelter
+blotching the southern sky with saffron and coppery
+red clouds indicated that we were nearing Trail. The
+stacks, with the town below and beyond, came into
+view just as we hit the head of a fast-running riffle.
+We ran the last half mile at a swift clip, pulling up
+into about the only place that looked like an eddy on
+the Trail side of the river. That this proved to be the
+slack water behind the crumbling city dump could not
+be helped. He who rides the running road cannot be
+too particular about his landing places.</p>
+
+<p>We reached Trail before noon, and, so far as time
+was concerned, could just as well have run right on
+across the American line to Northport that afternoon.
+However, October twenty-first turned out to be a
+date of considerable importance to British Columbians,
+for it was the day of the election to determine
+whether that province should continue dry or, as the
+proponents of wetness euphemized it, return to
+&#8220;moderation.&#8221; As there was a special provision by
+which voters absent from their place of registration
+could cast their ballots wherever they chanced to be,
+Captain Armstrong was anxious to stop over and do<span class="pagenum">[Pg 203]</span>
+his bit for &#8220;moderation.&#8221; Indeed, I was a bit worried
+at first for fear, by way of compensating in a measure
+for the injury we had done him in failing to come
+through with the treasure from the Big Bend, he
+would expect Roos and me to put in a few absentee
+ballots for &#8220;moderation.&#8221; There was a rumour about
+that a vote for &#8220;moderation&#8221; would be later redeemable&mdash;in
+case &#8220;moderation&#8221; carried, of course&mdash;in the
+voter&#8217;s weight of the old familiar juice. I never got
+further than a pencilled computation on the &#8220;temperance&#8221;
+bar of the Crown Point Hotel that two hundred
+and thirty-five pounds (I was down to that by now)
+would work out to something like one hundred seventeen
+and a half quarts. This on the rule that &#8220;A
+pint&#8217;s a pound, the world round.&#8221; That was as far
+as I got, I say, for there seemed rather too much of a
+chance of international complications sooner or later.
+But I am still wondering just what <i>is</i> the law covering
+the case of a man who sells his vote in a foreign
+country&mdash;and for his weight in whisky that he would
+probably never have delivered to him. I doubt very
+much if there is any precedent to go by.</p>
+
+<p>Between votes&mdash;or rather before Captain Armstrong
+voted&mdash;we took the occasion to go over the
+smelter of the Consolidated Mining and Smelting
+Company. It is one of the most modern plants of its
+kind in the world, and treats ore from all over western
+Canada. We were greatly interested in the recently
+installed zinc-leaching plant for the handling of an
+especially refractory ore from the company&#8217;s own
+mine in the Kootenays. This ore had resisted for
+years every attempt to extract its zinc at a profit,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 204]</span>
+and the perfection of the intricate process through
+which it is now put at Trail has made a mine, which
+would otherwise have remained practically valueless,
+worth untold millions. The two thousand and more
+employés of the smelter are the main factor in the
+prosperity of this live and by no means unattractive
+little town.</p>
+
+<p>We had two very emphatic warnings before leaving
+Trail the next morning&mdash;one was on no account to
+attempt to take any drinkables across the line by the
+river, and the other was to keep a weather eye lifting
+in running the rapids at the Rock Islands, two miles
+below town. As we reached the latter before we did
+the International Boundary Line, we started &#8217;wareing
+the rapids first. This was by no means as empty
+a warning as many I was to have later. The islands
+proved to be two enormous granite rocks, between
+which the river rushed with great velocity. The Captain
+headed the boat into the deep, swift channel to
+the right, avoiding by a couple of yards a walloping
+whale of a whirlpool that came spinning right past
+the bow. I didn&#8217;t see it, of course, until it passed
+astern; but it looked to me then as though its whirling
+centre was depressed a good three feet below the
+surface of the river, and with a black, bottomless funnel
+opening out of that. I was just about to register
+&#8220;nonchalance&#8221; by getting off my &#8220;all-day-sucker&#8221;
+joke, when I suddenly felt the thwart beneath me
+begin to push upwards like the floor of a jerkily-started
+elevator, only with a rotary action. Fanning
+empty air with both oars, I was saved from falling
+backwards by the forty-five degree up-tilt of the boat.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 205]</span>
+Way beneath me&mdash;down below the surface of the river&mdash;Armstrong,
+pop-eyed, was leaning sharply forward
+to keep from being dumped out over the stern.
+Roos, with a death-grip on either gunwale, was trying
+to keep from falling into the Captain&#8217;s lap. Round
+we went like a prancing horse, and just as the boat
+had completed the hundred and eighty degrees that
+headed her momentarily up-river, something seemed
+to drop away beneath her bottom, and as she sunk
+into the hole there came a great snorting &#8220;ku-whouf!&#8221;
+and about a barrel of water came pouring its solid
+green flood over the stern and, incidentally, the Captain.
+A couple of seconds later the boat had completed
+her round and settled back on a comparatively
+even keel as hard-plied oars and paddle wrenched
+her out of the grip of the Thing that had held her in
+its clutch. I saw it plainly as it did its dervish dance
+of disappointment as we drew away. It looked to
+me not over half as large as that first one which the
+Captain had so cleverly avoided.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;That was about the way we got caught in the
+Little Dalles,&#8221; observed Armstrong when we were in
+quieter water again. &#8220;Only it was a worse whirlpool
+than that one that did it. This square stern gives the
+water more of a grip than it can get on a canoe. We&#8217;ll
+have to watch out for it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Save over a broad, shallow bar across the current at
+the mouth of the Salmon, there was deep, swift water
+all the way to Waneta, the Canadian Customs station.
+Here we landed Roos to await the morning
+train from Nelson to Spokane and go through to
+Northport to arrange the American Customs formal<span class="pagenum">[Pg 206]</span>ities.
+At a final conference we decided to heed the
+warning about not attempting to carry any drinkables
+openly into the United States. Stowing what little
+there was left where not the most lynx-eyed or ferret-nosed
+Customs Officer could ever get at it, we pushed
+off.</p>
+
+<p>There is a fairly fast current all the way to Northport,
+but from the fact that we made the eleven miles
+in about three-quarters of an hour, it seems likely
+that, between paddle and oars, the boat was driven
+somewhat faster than the Columbia. Just below
+Waneta and immediately above the International
+Boundary Line, the Pend d&#8217;Oreille or Clark&#8217;s Fork
+flows, or rather falls into the Columbia. This really
+magnificent stream comes tumbling down a sheer-walled
+gorge in fall after fall, several of which can
+be seen in narrowing perspective from the Columbia
+itself. Its final leap is over a ten-feet-high ledge
+which extends all the way across its two-hundred-feet-wide
+mouth. Above this fine cataract it is the Pend
+d&#8217;Oreille, below it, the Columbia. I know of no place
+where two such rivers come together with such fine
+spectacular effect, in a way so fitting to the character
+of each.</p>
+
+<p>The Pend d&#8217;Oreille is generally rated as the principal
+tributary of the upper Columbia. Although the
+Kootenay&mdash;because it flows through a region of considerably
+greater annual rainfall&mdash;carries rather the
+more water of the two, the Pend d&#8217;Oreille is longer
+and drains a far more extensive watershed&mdash;that lying
+between the main chain of the Rockies and the Bitter
+Root and C&#339;ur d&#8217;Alene ranges. Great as is the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 207]</span>
+combined discharge of these two fine rivers, their
+effect on the Columbia is not apparent to the eye. If
+anything, the latter looks a bigger stream where it
+flows out of the lower Arrow Lake, above the Kootenay,
+than it does where it crosses the American Line
+below the Pend d&#8217;Oreille. As a matter of fact, its
+flow must be nearly doubled at the latter point, but
+the swifter current reduces its apparent volume.
+Nothing but the most careful computations, based
+on speed of current and area of cross-section, will give
+anything approximating the real discharge of a river.</p>
+
+<p>I was a good deal interested in the Pend d&#8217;Oreille,
+because it was on one of its upper tributaries, the
+Flathead in Montana, that I had made my first timid
+effort at rapid-running a good many years previously.
+It hadn&#8217;t been a brilliant success&mdash;for two logs tied
+together with ropes hardly make the ideal of a raft;
+but the glamour of the hare-brained stunt had survived
+the wetting. I should dearly have loved to explore
+that wonderful black-walled canyon, with its
+unending succession of cataracts and cascades, but
+lack of time forbade. The drizzling rain made it impossible
+even to get a good photograph of the fine
+frenzy of that final mad leap into the Columbia.</p>
+
+<p>It was funny the way that rain acted. For something
+like a month now there had been only two or
+three days of reasonably fair weather, and for the last
+fortnight the sun had hardly been glimpsed at all.
+Pulling up to Waneta in a clammy drizzle, Captain
+Armstrong remarked, as he drew the collar of his
+waterproof closer to decrease the drainage down the
+back of his neck, that he reckoned they wouldn&#8217;t stand<span class="pagenum">[Pg 208]</span>
+for weather of that kind over in &#8220;God&#8217;s Country.&#8221; As
+there was nothing but sodden clouds to the southward,
+I didn&#8217;t feel like giving him any definite assurance
+on the point at the moment. However, when we
+crossed the Line an hour later the rain had ceased. A
+couple of miles farther down the clouds were breaking
+up, and at Northport the sun was shining. I did
+not have another rainy day, nor even one more than
+slightly overcast, until I was almost at the Cascades.
+I trust my good Canadian friend was as deeply impressed
+as he claimed to be.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond a sharp riffle between jagged rock islands
+above Deadman&#8217;s Eddy, and one or two shallow boulder
+bars where the channels were a bit obscure, it was
+good open-and-above-board water all the way to
+Northport. The &#8220;Eddy&#8221; is a whirling back-sweep
+of water at a bend of the river, and is supposed to hold
+up for inspection everything floatable that the Columbia
+brings down from Canada. &#8220;Funny they never
+thought of calling it &#8216;Customs Eddy,&#8217;&#8221; Armstrong
+said. From the condition of its littered banks, it
+looked to be almost as prolific of &#8220;pickings&#8221; as the
+great drift pile of Kinbasket Lake. Being near a
+town, however, it is doubtless much more thoroughly
+gone over.</p>
+
+<p>We tied up below the Ferry at Northport, which
+was the rendezvous to which Roos was to bring the
+Customs Inspector. The ferry-man, who had once
+seen Captain Armstrong run the rapids of the upper
+Kootenay with one of his steamers, was greatly elated
+over having such a notable walking the quarterdeck
+of his own humble craft. Armstrong, in turn, was<span class="pagenum">[Pg 209]</span>
+scarcely less excited over an automatic pumping contrivance
+which the ferry-man had rigged up to keep
+his pontoons dry. After waiting for an hour, we took
+our bags and walked up to the hotel on the main
+street at the top of the bluff. We found Roos in the
+office reading a last year&#8217;s haberdashery catalogue.
+He said he had not expected us for a couple of hours
+yet, and that he had arranged for inspection at three
+o&#8217;clock. That gave us time for a bath and lunch ourselves.
+As our bags were now well beyond the tentacles
+of the Customs, we did a little figuring on the
+table-cloth between courses. By this we proved that,
+had we had the nerve to disregard the warnings of
+well-meaning friends in Trail and filled our hand-bags
+with Scotch instead of personal effects, Armstrong
+would now have had fourteen quarts up in his
+room, and I eighteen quarts. Then the waitress gave
+us current local quotations, and we started to figure
+values. I shall never know whether or not there would
+have been room on the corner of that gravy and egg
+broidered napery for my stupendous total. Just as
+I was beginning to run over the edge, the Inspector
+came in and asked if we would mind letting him see
+those two suit-cases we had brought to the hotel with
+us! Many and various are the joys of virtue, but none
+of the others comparable to that one which sets you
+aglow as you say &#8220;Search me!&#8221; when, by the special
+intervention of the providence which watches over
+fools and drunks, you haven&#8217;t got goods.</p>
+
+<p>The inspection, both at the hotel and at the ferry,
+was <i>fairly</i> perfunctory, though I did notice that the
+Customs man assumed a rather springy step when he<span class="pagenum">[Pg 210]</span>
+trod the light inner bottom of the skiff. Roos filmed
+the operation as a part of the picture, I acting as
+much as I could like I thought a farmer would act at
+his first Customs inspection. Roos, complaining that
+I didn&#8217;t &#8220;do it natural,&#8221; wanted to shoot over again.
+The Customs man was willing, but Armstrong and I,
+trudging purposefully off up the road, refused to
+return. Roos followed us to the hotel in considerable
+dudgeon. &#8220;Why wouldn&#8217;t you let me make that shot
+over?&#8221; he asked. &#8220;It was an &#8216;oil-can&#8217;&mdash;rotten!&#8221; &#8220;Because,&#8221;
+I replied evenly, looking him straight in the
+eye, &#8220;I was afraid the Inspector might try that jig-a-jig
+step of his on the false bottom in the bow if we put
+him through the show a second time. I don&#8217;t believe
+in tempting providence. We can get a street-car
+conductor and make that Inspection shot again in
+Portland. This isn&#8217;t....&#8221; &#8220;You&#8217;re right,&#8221; cut in
+Roos, with a dawning grin of comprehension. &#8220;I beg
+your pardon. You&#8217;re a deeper bird than I gave you
+credit for. Or perhaps it was the Captain....&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><a id="page210" name="page210"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/illo_270.jpg" width="600" height="461" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">WAITING FOR THE FOG TO LIFT ABOVE BISHOP&#8217;S RAPID (<i>left</i>)<br />
+ROSS AND ARMSTRONG REGISTERING "GLOOM" (<i>right</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><a id="page211" name="page211"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 435px;">
+<img src="images/illo_271.jpg" width="435" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">THE &#8220;INTAKE&#8221; AT THE LITTLE DALLES (<i>above</i>)<br />
+WHERE WE STARTED TO LINE THE LITTLE DALLES (<i>below</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>A heavy fog filled the river gorge from bank to
+bank when we pushed off the following morning, and
+we had to nose down carefully to avoid the piers of
+the bridge of the Great Northern branch line to Rossland.
+A quarter of a mile farther down the river
+began shoaling over gravel bars, and out of the mist
+ahead came the rumble of water tumbling over boulders.
+This was an inconsiderable riffle called Bishop&#8217;s
+Rapid, but the Captain was too old a river man to
+care to go into it without light to choose his channel.
+A half hour&#8217;s wait on a gravel bar in mid-stream
+brought a lifting of the fog, and we ran through by
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 211]</span>the right hand of the two shallow channels without
+difficulty. In brilliant sunshine we pulled down a
+broad stretch of deep and rapidly slackening water to
+the gleaming white lime-stone barrier at the head of
+the Little Dalles.</p>
+
+<p>All of Northport had been a unit in warning us not
+to attempt to run the Little Dalles. Nearly every
+one, as far as I could judge, had lost some relative
+there, and one man gave a very circumstantial description
+of how he had seen a big <i>batteau</i>, with six
+Swede lumbermen, sucked out of sight there, never
+to reappear. On cross-questioning, he admitted that
+this was at high water, and that there was nothing
+like so much &#8220;suck&#8221; in the whirlpools at the present
+stage. The Captain, however, having just received
+telephonic word from Nelson that &#8220;moderation&#8221; had
+carried in B. C. by a decisive majority, felt that nothing
+short of running the Little Dalles would be adequate
+celebration. He had managed to come through
+right-side-up in a Peterboro once, and he thought our
+skiff ought to be equal to the stunt. He held that
+opinion just long enough for him to climb to the top
+of the cliff that forms the left wall of river at the
+gorge and take one good, long, comprehensive look
+into the depths.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nothing doing,&#8221; he said, with a decisive shake of
+his broad-brimmed Stetson. &#8220;The river&#8217;s four or five
+feet higher than when we ran through here in &#8217;fifteen,
+and that makes all the difference. It was touch-and-go
+for a minute then, and now it&#8217;s out of the question
+for a small boat. If we can&#8217;t line, we&#8217;ll have to find
+some way to portage.&#8221;<span class="pagenum">[Pg 212]</span></p>
+
+<p>The Little Dalles are formed by a great reef of
+lime-stone which, at one time, probably made a dam all
+the way across the river. The narrow channel which
+the Columbia has worn through the stone is less than
+two hundred feet in width for a considerable distance,
+and has lofty perpendicular walls. The river is divided
+by a small rock island into two channels at the
+head, the main one, to the right, being about two hundred
+feet in width, and the narrow left-hand one not
+over forty feet. The depth of the main channel is
+very great&mdash;probably much greater than its narrowest
+width; so that here, as also at Tumwater and &#8220;Five-Mile&#8221;
+in the Great Dalles, it may be truly said that
+the Columbia &#8220;has to turn on its side to wriggle
+through.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It is that little rock island at the head of the gorge,
+extending, as it does, almost longitudinally <i>across</i> the
+current that makes all the trouble. It starts one set
+of whirlpools running down the right-hand channel
+and another set down the left-hand. Every one of
+the vortices in this dual series of spinning &#8220;suckers&#8221;
+is more than one would care to take any liberties
+with if it could be avoided; and either line of whirlpools,
+taken alone, probably <i>could</i> be avoided. The
+impassable barrage comes a hundred feet below the
+point where the left-hand torrent precipitates itself
+at right-angles into the current of the right-hand one,
+and the two lines of whirlpools converge in a &#8220;V&#8221; and
+form one big walloping sockdolager. Him there
+would still be room to run by if he were &#8220;whouf-ing&#8221;
+there alone; but his satellites won&#8217;t have it. Their
+accursed team-work is such that the spreading &#8220;V&#8221;<span class="pagenum">[Pg 213]</span>
+above catches everything that comes down stream
+and feeds it into the maw of the big whirlpool as into
+a hopper. Logs, ties, shingle-bolts, fence-posts&mdash;all
+the refuse of sawmills and the flotsam and jetsam of
+farms and towns&mdash;are gulped with a &#8220;whouf!&#8221; and
+when they reappear again, a mile or two down river,
+they are all scoured smooth and round-cornered by
+their passage through the monster&#8217;s alimentary canal.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m sorry not to celebrate the victory of &#8216;moderation,&#8217;&#8221;
+said the Captain finally, with another regretful
+shake of his head; &#8220;but &#8216;moderation&#8217; begins at
+home. It would be immoderately foolish to put the
+skiff into that line of whirlpools, the way they&#8217;re running
+now.&#8221; Roos was the only one who was inclined
+to dispute that decision, and as his part would have
+been to stand out on the brink of the cliff and turn the
+crank, it was only natural that he should take the
+&#8220;artistic&#8221; rather than the &#8220;humanitarian&#8221; view.</p>
+
+<p>As a last resort before portaging, we tried lining
+down, starting at the head of the narrow left-hand
+channel. We gave it up at the end of a hundred
+feet. A monkey at one end of the line and a log of
+wood at the other would have made the only combination
+calculated to get by that way. It was no job
+for a shaky-kneed man and a sinkable boat. There
+was nothing to do but look up a team or truck. What
+appeared to be the remains of the ancient portage
+road ran down from an abandoned farm to the river,
+and it seemed likely some kind of vehicle could be
+brought over it.</p>
+
+<p>As the highway ran along the bench, four or five
+hundred feet above the river, I set off by the railroad<span class="pagenum">[Pg 214]</span>
+track, which was comparatively close at hand. At the
+end of a couple of miles I reached a small station
+called Marble, the shipping point for a large apple
+orchard project financed by the J. G. White Company
+of New York. Mr. Reed, the resident manager,
+immediately ordered a powerful team and wagon
+placed at my disposal, and with that I returned northward
+over the highway. We had a rough time getting
+down through brush and dead-falls to the river,
+but finally made it without an upset. Roos having
+finished what pictures he wanted&mdash;including one of
+the Captain standing on the brink of the cliff and registering
+&#8220;surprise-cum-disappointment-cum-disgust,&#8221;&mdash;we
+loaded the skiff and our outfit onto the wagon
+and started the long climb up to the top of the bench.
+The discovery of an overgrown but still passable road
+offered a better route than that followed in coming
+down, and we made the highway, and on to the village,
+in good time. Mr. Reed dangled the bait of a
+French <i>chef</i> and rooms in the company&#8217;s hotel as an
+inducement to spend the night with him, but we had
+not the time to accept the kind invitation. His ready
+courtesy was of the kind which I learned later I
+could expect as a matter of course all along the river.
+Never did I have trouble in getting help when I
+needed it, and when it was charged for, it was almost
+invariably an under rather than an over-charge. The
+running road is the one place left where the people
+have not been spoiled as have those on the highways
+frequented by motor tourists.</p>
+
+<p>Launching the boat from the Marble Ferry at four
+o&#8217;clock, we pulled off in a good current in the hope<span class="pagenum">[Pg 215]</span>
+of reaching Bossburg before dark. Between the
+windings of the river and several considerable
+stretches of slack water, however, our progress was
+less than anticipated. Shut in by high hills on both
+sides, night descended early upon the river, and at
+five-thirty I found myself pulling in Stygian blackness.
+Knowing there was no really bad water ahead,
+the Captain let her slide through a couple of easy
+riffles, the white-topped waves barely guessed as they
+flagged us with ghostly signals. But a deepening
+growl, borne on the wings of the slight up-river night-breeze,
+demanded more consideration. No one but a
+lunatic goes into a strange rapid in a poor light, to
+say nothing of complete darkness. Pulling into an
+eddy by the left bank, we stopped and listened. The
+roar, though distant, was unmistakable. Water was
+tumbling among rocks at a fairly good rate, certainly
+too fast to warrant going into it in the dark.</p>
+
+<p>While we were debating what to do, a black figure
+silhouetted itself against the star-gleams at the top
+of the low bank. &#8220;Hello, there!&#8221; hailed the Captain.
+&#8220;Can you tell us how far it is to Bossburg?&#8221; &#8220;<i>This</i>
+is Bossburg,&#8221; was the surprising but gratifying response.
+&#8220;You&#8217;re there&mdash;that is, you&#8217;re here.&#8221; It
+proved to be the local ferry-man, and Columbia ferry-men
+are always obliging and always intelligent, at
+least in matters relating to the river. Tying up the
+boat, we left our stuff in his nearby house and sought
+the hotel with our hand-bags. It was not a promising
+looking hotel when we found it, for Bossburg was that
+saddest of living things, an all-but-extinguished
+boom-town; but the very kindly old couple who lived<span class="pagenum">[Pg 216]</span>
+there and catered to the occasional wayfarer bustled
+about and got us a corking good meal&mdash;fried chicken
+and biscuits as light as the whipped cream we had on
+the candied peaches&mdash;and our beds were clean and
+comfortable.</p>
+
+<p>As we were now but a few miles above Kettle Falls,
+the most complete obstruction in the whole length of
+the Columbia, I took the occasion to telephone ahead
+for a truck with which to make the very considerable
+portage. There would be two or three miles at the
+falls in any case, Captain Armstrong said, and he was
+also inclined to think it would be advisable to extend
+the portage to the foot of Grand Rapids, and thus
+save a day&#8217;s hard lining. It was arranged that the
+truck should meet us at the ruins of the old Hudson
+Bay post, on the east bank some distance above the
+upper fall.</p>
+
+<p>We pushed off from Bossburg at eight o&#8217;clock on
+the morning of October twenty-third. The water was
+slack for several hundred yards, which was found to
+be due to a reef extending all of the way across the
+river and forming the rapid which we had heard
+growling in the dark. This was called &#8220;Six Mile,&#8221; and
+while it would have been an uncomfortable place to
+tangle up with in the night, it was simple running
+with the light of day. &#8220;Five Mile,&#8221; a bit farther
+down, was studded with big black rocks, but none of
+them hard to avoid. As we were running rather
+ahead of the time of our rendezvous with the truck,
+we stretched our legs the length and back of the main
+street of Marcus, a growing little town which is the
+junction point for the Boundary Branch of the Great<span class="pagenum">[Pg 217]</span>
+Northern. We passed the mouth of the Kettle River
+shortly after running under the railway bridge, and a
+pull across a big eddy carried us to the lake-like
+stretch of water backed up by the rocky obstructions
+responsible for Kettle Falls. The roar of the latter
+filled the air as we headed into a shallow, mud-bottomed
+lagoon widening riverward from the mouth
+of a small creek and beached the skiff under a yellowing
+fringe of willows. The site of the historic post
+was in an extremely aged apple orchard immediately
+above. It was one of those &#8220;inevitable&#8221; spots, where
+the <i>voyageurs</i> of all time passing up or down the river
+must have begun or ended their portages. I was trying
+to conjure up pictures of a few of these in my
+mind, when the chug-chugging of an engine somewhere
+among the pines of the distant hillside recalled
+me to a realization of the fact that it was time to get
+ready for my own portage. Before we had our stuff
+out of the boat the truck had come to a throbbing
+standstill beyond the fringe of the willows. It promised
+to be an easier portage than some of our predecessors
+had had, in any event.</p>
+
+<p>To maintain his &#8220;continuity,&#8221; Roos filmed the skiff
+being taken out of the water and loaded upon the
+truck, the truck passing down the main street of the
+town of Kettle Falls, and a final launching in the
+river seven miles below. Half way into town we
+passed an old Indian mission that must have been
+about contemporaneous with Hudson Bay operations.
+Although no nails had been used in its construction,
+the ancient building, with its high-pitched roof, still
+survived in a comparatively good state of preserva<span class="pagenum">[Pg 218]</span>tion.
+The town is some little distance below the Falls,
+and quite out of sight of the river, which flows here
+between very high banks. We stopped at the hotel
+for lunch before completing the portage.</p>
+
+<p>After talking the situation over with Captain Armstrong,
+I decided to fall in with his suggestion to pass
+Grand Rapids as well as Kettle Falls in the portage.
+There were only about five miles of boatable water
+between the foot of the latter and the head of the
+former, and then an arduous three-quarters of a mile
+of lining that would have entailed the loss of another
+day. There is a drop of twelve feet in about twelve
+hundred yards in Grand Rapids, with nothing approaching
+a clear channel among the huge black basaltic
+rocks that have been scattered about through
+them as from a big pepper shaker. As far as I could
+learn, there is no record of any kind of a man-propelled
+craft of whatever size ever having run through
+and survived, but a small stern-wheeler, the <i>Shoshone</i>,
+was run down several years ago at high water.
+She reached the foot a good deal of a hulk, but still
+right side up. This is rated as one of the maddest
+things ever done with a steamer on the Columbia, and
+the fact that it did not end in complete disaster is
+reckoned by old river men as having been due in about
+equal parts to the inflexible nerve of her skipper and
+the intervention of the special providence that makes
+a point of watching over mortals who do things like
+that. I met Captain McDermid a fortnight later in
+Potaris. He told me then, what I hadn&#8217;t heard before,
+that he took his wife and children with him.
+&#8220;Nellie thought a lot of both me and the little old<span class="pagenum">[Pg 219]</span>
+<i>Shoshone</i>,&#8221; he said with a wistful smile, &#8220;and she
+reckoned that, if we went, she wouldn&#8217;t exactly like
+to be left here alone. And so&mdash;I never could refuse
+Nellie anything&mdash;I took her along. And now she
+and the <i>Shoshone</i> are both gone.&#8221; He was a wonderful
+chap&mdash;McDermid. All old Columbia River
+skippers are. They wouldn&#8217;t have survived if they
+hadn&#8217;t been.</p>
+
+<p>There was a low bench on the left bank, about a
+mile below the foot of Grand Rapids, which could be
+reached by a rough road, and from which the boat
+could be slid down over the rocks to the river. Running
+to this point with the truck, we left our heavier
+outfit at a road camp and dropped the boat at the
+water&#8217;s edge, ready for launching the following
+morning. Returning to the town, we were driven
+up to the Falls by Dr. Baldwin, a prominent
+member of this live and attractive little community,
+where Roos made a number of shots. The upper
+or main fall has a vertical drop of fifteen feet at low
+water, while the lower fall is really a rough tumbling
+cascade with a drop of ten feet in a quarter of a mile.
+The river is divided at the head of the Falls by an
+arrow-shaped rock island, the main channel being the
+one to the right. The left-hand channel loops in a
+broad &#8220;V&#8221; around the island and, running between
+precipitous walls, accomplishes in a beautiful rapid the
+same drop that the main channel does by the upper
+fall. A rocky peninsula, extending squarely across
+the course of the left-hand channel, forces the rolling
+current of the latter practically to turn a somersault
+before accepting the dictum that it must double back<span class="pagenum">[Pg 220]</span>
+northward for five or six hundred feet before uniting
+with the main river. It was the savage swirling of
+water in that rock-walled elbow where the &#8220;somersault&#8221;
+takes place that prompted the imaginative
+French-Canadian <i>voyageurs</i> to apply the appropriately
+descriptive name of <i>Chaudičre</i> to the boiling
+maelstrom.</p>
+
+<p>Up to the present the development of the enormous
+power running to waste over Kettle Falls has gone little
+further than the dreams of the brave community
+of optimists who have been attracted there in the
+belief that a material asset of such incalculable value
+cannot always be ignored in a growing country like
+our own. And they are right, of course, but a few
+years ahead of time. It is only the children and
+grandchildren of the living pioneers of the Columbia
+who will see more than the beginning of its untold
+millions of horse-power broken to harness. And in
+the meantime the optimists of Kettle Falls are turning
+their attention to agriculture and horticulture. Never
+have I seen finer apple orchards than those through
+which we drove on the way to resume our down-river
+voyage.</p>
+
+<p>The point from which we pushed off at ten o&#8217;clock
+on the morning of October twenty-fourth must have
+been only a little below that at which Lieutenant
+Symons launched the <i>batteau</i> for his historic voyage
+to the mouth of the Snake in 1881. Forty years have
+gone by since that memorable undertaking, yet Symons&#8217;
+report is to-day not only the most accurate
+description of an upper Columbia voyage that has
+ever been written, but also the most readable. During<span class="pagenum">[Pg 221]</span>
+the time I was running the three hundred and fifty
+miles of river surveyed by Lieutenant Symons, I
+found his admirable report only less fascinating on
+the human side than it was of material assistance on
+the practical.</p>
+
+<p>Of his preparations for the voyage Lieutenant
+Symons writes:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&#8220;I was fortunate enough to procure from John Rickey,
+a settler and trader, who lives at the Grand Rapids, a
+strongly built <i>batteau</i>, and had his assistance in selecting a
+crew of Indians for the journey. The <i>batteau</i> was about
+thirty feet long, four feet wide at the gunwales, and two
+feet deep, and is as small a boat as the voyage should ever
+be attempted in, if it is contemplated to go through all the
+rapids. My first lookout had been to secure the services of
+&#8216;Old Pierre Agare&#8217; as steersman, and I had to carry on
+negotiations with him for several days before he finally consented
+to go. Old Pierre is the only one of the old Hudson
+Bay <i>voyageurs</i> now left who knows the river thoroughly at
+all stages of water, from Colville to its mouth.... The
+old man is seventy years of age, and hale and hearty, although
+his eyesight is somewhat defective.... The other
+Indians engaged were Pen-waw, Big Pierre, Little Pierre, and
+Joseph. They had never made the trip all the way down the
+river, and their minds were full of the dangers and terrors of
+the great rapids below, and it was a long time before we could
+prevail upon them to go, by promising them a high price
+and stipulating for their return by rail and stage. Old
+Pierre and John Rickey laboured and talked with them long
+and faithfully, to gain their consent, and I am sure that
+they started off with as many misgivings about getting safely
+through as we did who had to trust our lives to their skill,
+confidence and obedience.&#8221;</p></blockquote><p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 222]</span></p>
+
+<p>Lieutenant Symons does not state whether any confusion
+ever arose as a consequence of the fact that
+three of his five Indians bore the inevitable French-Canadian
+name of &#8220;Pierre.&#8221; Of the method of work
+followed by himself and his topographical assistant,
+Downing, throughout the voyage, he writes:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&#8220;Mr. Downing and myself worked independently in getting
+as thorough knowledge of the river as possible, he taking the
+courses with a prismatic compass, and estimating distances
+by the eye, and sketching in the topographical features of
+the surrounding country, while I estimated also the distances
+to marked points, and paid particular attention to the
+bed of the river, sounding wherever there were any indications
+of shallowness. Each evening we compared notes as
+to distances, and we found them to come out very well together,
+the greatest difference being six and three-fourths
+miles in a day&#8217;s run of sixty-four miles. Some days they
+were identical. The total distance from our starting point
+... to the mouth of the Snake River was estimated by
+Mr. Downing to be three hundred and sixty-three miles, and
+by myself to be three hundred and fifty. His distances were
+obtained by estimating how far it was to some marked point
+ahead, and correcting it when the point was reached; mine
+by the time required to pass over the distances, in which the
+elements considered were the swiftness of the current and
+the labour of the oarsmen.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>I may state that it was only rarely that we found
+the distances arrived at by Lieutenant Symons and
+Mr. Downing to be greatly at variance with those
+established by later surveys. In the matter of bars,
+rapids, currents, channels and similar things, there
+appeared to have been astonishingly little change in<span class="pagenum">[Pg 223]</span>
+the four decades that had elapsed since he had made
+his observations. Where he advised, for instance,
+taking the right-hand in preference to the middle or
+left-hand channels, it was not often that we went far
+wrong in heeding the direction. Bars of gravel, of
+course, shift from season to season, but reefs and
+projections of the native rock are rarely altered by
+more than a negligible erosion. The prominent topographical
+features&mdash;cliffs, headlands, <i>coulees</i>,
+mountains&mdash;are immutable, and for mile after mile,
+bend after bend, we picked them up just as Symons
+reported them.</p>
+
+<p>The river is broad and slow for a few miles below
+Grand Rapids (they are called Rickey&#8217;s Rapids
+locally), with steep-sided benches rising on either
+hand, and the green of apple orchards showing in
+bright fringes along their brinks. There had been
+the usual warnings in Kettle Falls of a bad rapid to
+be encountered &#8220;somewhere below,&#8221; but the data
+available on this part of the river made us practically
+certain that nothing worse than minor riffles existed
+until the swift run of Spokane Rapids was reached.
+Seven miles below Grand Rapids several islands of
+black basalt contracted the river considerably, but
+any one of two or three channels offered an easy way
+through them. The highest of them had a driftwood
+crown that was not less than fifty feet above the present
+stage of the river, showing graphically the great
+rise and fall at this point.</p>
+
+<p>At the shallow San Poil bar we saw some Indians
+from the Colville Reservation fishing for salmon&mdash;the
+crooked-nosed &#8220;dogs&#8221; of the final run. If they<span class="pagenum">[Pg 224]</span>
+were of the tribe from which the bar must have been
+named, civilization had brought them its blessing in
+the form of hair-restorer. They were as hirsute a lot
+of ruffians as one could expect to find out of Bolshevia&mdash;and
+as dirty.</p>
+
+<p>Turtle Rapid was the worst looking place we
+found during the day, but the menace was more apparent
+than real. The riffle took its name from a
+number of turtle-backed outcroppings of bedrock
+pushing up all the way across the river. The current
+was swift and deep, making it just the sort of place
+one would have expected to encounter bad swirls.
+These were, indeed, making a good deal of a stir at
+the foot of several of the narrow side runs, but by
+the broader middle channel which we followed the
+going was comparatively smooth. We finished an
+easy day by tying up at four o&#8217;clock where the road
+to the Colville Reservation comes down to the boulder-bordered
+bank at Hunter&#8217;s Ferry.</p>
+
+<p>Columbia River ferry-men are always kindly and
+hospitable, and this one invited us to sleep on his
+hay and cook our meals in his kitchen. He was an
+amiable &#8220;cracker&#8221; from Kentucky, with a delectable
+drawl, a tired-looking wife and a houseful of children.
+Ferry-men&#8217;s wives always have many children.
+This one was still pretty, though, and her droop&mdash;for
+a few years yet&mdash;would be rather appealing than
+otherwise. I couldn&#8217;t be quite sure&mdash;from a remark
+she made&mdash;whether she had a sense of humor, or
+whether she had not. Seeing her sitting by the kitchen
+stove with a baby crooked into her left arm, a two-year-old
+on her lap, and a three-year-old riding her<span class="pagenum">[Pg 225]</span>
+foot, the while she was trying to fry eggs, bake biscuit
+and boil potatoes, I observed, by way of bringing
+a brighter atmosphere with my presence, that it
+was a pity that the human race hadn&#8217;t been crossed
+with octopi, so that young mothers would have
+enough arms to do their work with. She nodded approvingly
+at first, brightening visibly at the emancipative
+vision conjured up in her tired brain, but
+after five minutes of serious cogitation relapsed into
+gloom. &#8220;I reckon it wouldn&#8217;t be any use, mistah,&#8221;
+she said finally; &#8220;them octupusses would only give the
+young &#8217;uns mo&#8217; ahms to find troubl&#8217; with.&#8221; Now
+<i>did</i> she have a sense of humour, or did she not?</p>
+
+<p>We had a distinctly bad night of it hitting the hay.
+The mow was built with a horseshoe-shaped manger
+running round three sides of it, into which the hay
+was supposed to descend by gravity as the cows devoured
+what was below. As a labour-saving device it
+had a good deal to recommend it, but as a place to
+sleep&mdash;well, it might not have been so bad if each of
+the dozen cows had not been belled, and if the weight
+of our tired bodies on the hay had not kept pressing
+it into the manger all night, and so made a continuous
+performance of feeding and that bovine bell-chorus.
+I dozed off for a spell along toward morning,
+awakening from a Chinese-gong nightmare to
+find my bed tilted down at an angle of forty-five degrees
+and a rough tongue lapping my face. With
+most of my mattress eaten up, I was all but in the
+manger myself. Turning out at daybreak, we
+pushed off at an early hour.</p>
+
+<p>A run of nine miles, made in about an hour, took<span class="pagenum">[Pg 226]</span>
+us to Gerome, where another ferry crossed to the
+west or Colville Reservation bank. A couple of
+swift, shallow rapids above and below Roger&#8217;s Bar
+was the only rough water encountered. We were
+looking for a point from which Spokane could be
+reached by car, as Captain Armstrong, who had originally
+planned to go with us only to Kettle Falls, was
+now quite at the end of the time he was free to remain
+away from Nelson and business. There were two
+reasons for our making a temporary halt at Gerome
+Ferry. One was the fact that Spokane could be
+reached as readily from there as from any point lower
+down, and the other was Ike Emerson. I shall have
+so much to say of Ike a bit further along that I shall
+no more than introduce him for the moment.</p>
+
+<p>As much of the worst water on the American course
+of the Columbia occurs in the two hundred and thirty
+miles between the head of Spokane Rapids and the
+foot of Priest Rapids,<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> I was considerably concerned
+about finding a good river man to take Captain Armstrong&#8217;s
+place and help me with the boat. Roos made
+no pretensions to river usefulness, and I was reluctant
+to go into some of the rapids that I knew were ahead
+of us without a dependable man to handle the steering
+paddle and to help with lining. Men of this kind
+were scarce, it appeared&mdash;even more so than on the
+Big Bend, in Canada, where there was a certain
+amount of logging and trapping going on. Two or
+three ferry-men had shaken their heads when I
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 227]</span>brought the matter up. There was nothing they
+would like better if they were free, they said, but,
+as ferries couldn&#8217;t be expected to run by themselves,
+that was out of the question on such short notice.</p>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Not be confused with the rapids of the same name we had run on
+the Big Bend in Canada.</p>
+<p class="quotsig">L. R. F.</p></div>
+
+<p>It was that genial &#8220;cracker&#8221; at Hunter&#8217;s Ferry
+who was the first to mention Ike Emerson. Ike
+would be just my man, he said, with that unmistakable
+grin that a man grins when the person he speaks
+of is some kind of a &#8220;character.&#8221; Or, leastways, Ike
+would be just my man&mdash;<i>if I could find him</i>. &#8220;And
+where shall I be likely to find him?&#8221; I asked. He
+wasn&#8217;t quite sure about that, but probably &#8220;daun
+rivah sumwhah.&#8221; There was no telling about Ike, it
+appeared. Once he had been seen to sink when his
+raft had gone to pieces in Hell Gate, and he had been
+mourned as dead for a fortnight. At the end of that
+time he had turned up in Kettle Falls, but quite unable&mdash;or
+else unwilling&mdash;to tell why the river had
+carried him eighty-five miles <i>up</i> stream instead of
+down to the Pacific. A keg of moonshine which had
+been Ike&#8217;s fellow passenger on the ill-fated raft <i>may</i>
+have had something to do both with the wreck and
+that long up-stream swim after the wreck. At any
+rate, it had never been explained. However, Gerome
+was Ike&#8217;s headquarters&mdash;if any place might be called
+that for a man who lived on or in the river most of the
+time&mdash;and that would be the place to inquire for him.</p>
+
+<p>When I asked the ferry-man at Gerome if Ike
+Emerson had been seen thereabouts recently, he
+grinned the same sort of grin his colleague at Hunter&#8217;s
+had grinned when the same subject was under
+discussion. Yes, he had seen Ike only the night be<span class="pagenum">[Pg 228]</span>fore.
+He was a real old river rat; just the man I
+wanted&mdash;<i>if I could find him</i>. He was as hard as a
+flea to put your hand on when you <i>did</i> want him,
+though. Well, it took us four hours to run our man
+down, but luck was with us in the end. Every lumber-jack,
+farmer and Indian that we asked about Ike,
+grinned that same grin, dropped whatever he was
+doing and joined in the search. There were a score of
+us when the &#8220;View Halloo&#8221; was finally sounded, and
+we looked more like a lynching party on vengeance
+bent than anything else I can think of. Ike, who was
+digging potatoes (of all the things in the world for a
+river rat to be doing), glowered suspiciously as we
+debouched from a <i>coulee</i> and streamed down toward
+him, but his brow cleared instantly when I hastily
+told him what we had come for.</p>
+
+<p>You bet, he would go with us. But, wait a moment!
+Why should we not go with him? He was
+overdue with a raft of logs and cordwood he had contracted
+to take down below Hell Gate, and was just
+about to get to work building it. We could just
+throw our boat aboard, and off we would go together.
+If he could get enough help, he could have the raft
+ready in two or three days, and, once started, it would
+not be a lot slower than the skiff, especially if we took
+a fast motor-boat he knew of for towing purposes
+and to &#8220;put her into the rapids right.&#8221; It would make
+a lot more of a show for the movies, and he had always
+dreamed of having himself filmed on a big raft running
+Hell Gate and Box Canyon. Just let us leave
+it to him, and he would turn out something that would
+be the real thing.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 229]</span></p>
+
+<p>All of this sounded distinctly good to me, but I
+turned to Roos and Captain Armstrong for confirmation
+before venturing a decision. Roos said it would
+be &#8220;the cat&#8217;s ears&#8221; (late slang meaning <i>au fait</i>, or
+something like that, in English); that a raft would
+photograph like a million dollars. Armstrong&#8217;s face
+was beaming. &#8220;It will be the chance of a lifetime,&#8221;
+he said warmly. &#8220;Go by all means. I&#8217;m only sorry
+I can&#8217;t be with you.&#8221; So we gave Ike <i>carte blanche</i>
+and told him to go ahead; we would arrange the financial
+end when he knew more about what he would be
+spending. I was glad of the wait for one reason; it
+would give us a chance to speed the Captain on his
+way as far as Spokane.</p>
+
+<p>Running over a Spokane paper in the post office
+and general store at Gerome, the program of the
+Chamber of Commerce luncheon for the morrow, October
+the twenty-sixth, recalled to me that I had a
+conditional engagement to perform at that function.
+Major Laird, the Publicity Secretary of the Chamber,
+had phoned me before we left Nelson, asking if
+I would run up to Spokane from some convenient
+point on the river and give them a bit of a yarn about
+our voyage at the next Tuesday luncheon. I had
+replied that, as it was quite out of the question keeping
+to any definite schedule in river travel, I could
+give him no positive assurance of turning up in time,
+but suggested that if he would sign up some one else
+for <i>pičce de résistance</i>, he could be free to use me for
+soup or nuts in the event I put in an appearance. As
+it now appeared that we had arrived within a few
+hours of Spokane, I phoned Major Laird, and he<span class="pagenum">[Pg 230]</span>
+said he would start a car off at once to take us there.</p>
+
+<p>We spent the afternoon helping Roos patch up the
+continuity of his &#8220;farmer&#8221; picture. Although Captain
+Armstrong had appeared in all the scenes shot
+since we started with the skiff, he had never made his
+official entry into the picture. Properly, this should
+have been done in one of the introductory scenes shot
+at the source of the river, near Lake Windermere. It
+will be remembered that, when I leaned on my hay-fork
+and gazed pensively off toward the river, I was
+supposed to see a prospector tinkering with his boat.
+I had walked out of two scenes on my way to
+join that prospector: the first time to ask if
+he would take me with him, and the second time, with
+a blanket-roll on my shoulder (the improvised one
+with the two &#8220;nicht-goons&#8221; and other foreign knick-knacks
+in it), to jump into the boat and push off.
+Obviously, as we had neither prospector nor boat at
+the time, these shots could not be made until later.
+Now, with the &#8220;prospector&#8221; about to leave us, it was
+imperative to continuity that we should get him into
+the picture before we could go ahead getting him out
+of it.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Location&#8221; was our first care, and in this fortune
+favoured us. The mouth of a small creek flowing in
+just below Gerome furnished a &#8220;source of the Columbia&#8221;
+background that would have defied an expert to
+tell from an original. In fact, it looked more like the
+popular idea of a &#8220;source&#8221; than did the real one; and
+that is an important point with the movies. Here we
+made the &#8220;tinkering&#8221; and the &#8220;first push-off&#8221; shots.
+Of course, I had a different blanket-roll on my shoul<span class="pagenum">[Pg 231]</span>der
+this time, but I took great care to make it as close
+an imitation as possible of the one I had so hastily
+flung together out of &#8220;Jock&#8217;s&#8221; bedding. A close imitation
+externally, I mean&mdash;there were no &#8220;frou-frous&#8221;
+in it.</p>
+
+<p>Now that we had the &#8220;prospector&#8221; properly into
+the picture, we were ready for the &#8220;farewell&#8221; shot&mdash;the
+getting him out of it. For this the Captain and I
+were &#8220;picked up&#8221; on a picturesque rocky point, regarding
+with interest something far off down-river.
+Presently he registers &#8220;dawning comprehension,&#8221; and
+tells me in fluent French-Canadian pantomime that it
+is a raft&mdash;a whale of a big one. That will offer a way
+for me to continue my voyage now that he has to leave
+me. Then we go down to the boat, which he presents
+to me with a comprehensive &#8220;it-is-all-yours&#8221; gesture,
+before shouldering his sack of ore (one of our bags of
+canned stuff answered very well for this) and climbing
+off up the bank toward the &#8220;smelter.&#8221; (We had intended
+to make a real smelter scene at Trail or Northport,
+but the light was poor at both places.) Finally
+I pushed off alone, pulling down and across the current
+to throw in my fortunes with the &#8220;raft.&#8221; That
+left the thread of &#8220;continuity&#8221; dangling free, to be
+spliced up as soon as Ike had the raft completed.
+That worthy was losing no time. All afternoon we
+heard the rumble of logs rolling over boulders, and
+every now and then a fan-shaped splash of spray
+would flash up with a spangle of iridescence in the light
+of the declining sun.</p>
+
+<p>The car arrived for us at seven-thirty that evening.
+It was driven by Commissioner Howard, of the Spo<span class="pagenum">[Pg 232]</span>kane
+County Board, who had courteously volunteered
+to come for us when it appeared there would be some
+delay in getting a hired car off for the hundred and
+sixty-mile round trip. He was accompanied by his
+son, a high-school youngster. As they had eaten
+lunch on the way, they announced themselves ready
+to start on the return trip at once. The road turned
+out to be a rough mountain track, and rather muddy.
+Ten miles out from Gerome a suspicious clicking set
+in somewhere under the rear seat, and at twenty miles
+the differential had gone. Mr. Howard finally induced
+an empty truck to take us in tow, and behind
+that lumbering vehicle we did the last sixty miles.
+The tow-chain parted on an average of once a mile
+while we were still in the mountains, but did better
+as the roads improved. The temperature fell as the
+altitude increased, and it must have been well under
+twenty before daylight&mdash;and a mean, marrow-searching
+cold at that. Mr. Howard, refusing every
+offer of relief, stuck it out at the wheel all the way in&mdash;a
+remarkable example of nerve and endurance,
+considering that he had only recently come out of a
+hospital. Armstrong, as always, was indomitable,
+singing French-Canadian boating songs of blood-stirring
+<i>tempo</i> most of the way. I shall ever associate
+his</p>
+
+<div class="poem" style="width: 28em;">
+<span class="i0">&#8220;<i>Rouli, roulant, ma boule roulant,</i></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>En roulant, ma boule roulant!</i>&#8221;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>rather with the chug-chugging of a motor truck than
+with the creak of oars from which it derived its inspiration.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 233]</span>We struck the paved state highway at Davenport
+about four o&#8217;clock, and in the very grey dawn of
+the morning after came rumbling into Spokane.
+Somewhere in the dim shadowy outskirts we stopped
+rumbling. The truck driver reported he had run out
+of gas. Assiduous milking of the Cole&#8217;s tank yielded
+just enough to carry us on to the hotel. The Davenport
+of Spokane is one of the very finest hotels in all
+the world, but if it had been just a cabin with a stove,
+it would still have seemed a rose-sweet paradise after
+those last two nights we had put in&mdash;one on the hay
+with belled cows eating up the beds beneath our backs,
+and the other jerked over a frosty road in the wake of
+a skidding truck. Soaking for an hour in a steaming
+bath, I rolled in between soft sheets, leaving orders
+not to be called until noon.</p>
+
+<p>Spokane is one of the finest, cleanest and most beautiful
+cities of the West, and I have never left it after
+a visit without regret. This time, brief as our stay
+had to be, was no exception. It was an unusually
+keen looking lot of business and professional men that
+turned out for the Chamber luncheon, among whom I
+found not a few old college friends and others I had
+not seen for a number of years. Notable of these
+were Herbert Moore and Samuel Stern, with whom
+I had spent six weeks on a commercial mission in
+China in 1910. I was also greatly interested to meet
+Mr. Turner, the field engineer of the great project
+for reclaiming a million and three-quarters acres of
+land in the Columbia Basin of eastern Washington
+by diverting to it water from the Pend d&#8217;Oreille.
+The incalculable possibilities, as well as the great need<span class="pagenum">[Pg 234]</span>
+of this daring project I was to see much of at firsthand
+during that part of my voyage on which I was
+about to embark.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Armstrong left by train for Nelson the
+evening of the 27th, and the following morning Major
+Laird drove Roos and me back to Gerome. For a
+considerable part of the distance we followed the
+highly picturesque route along the Spokane River,
+stopping for lunch at the hydro-electric plant of the
+Washington Power Company at Long Lake. This
+enterprising corporation has power installations
+already in operation on the Spokane which must make
+that stream pretty nearly the most completely harnessed
+river of its size in America. The lofty concrete
+barrier which backs up Long Lake has the distinction
+of being the highest spillway dam in the world.
+The &#8220;Spokane interval&#8221; proved a highly enjoyable
+spell of relaxation before tackling the rough stretch
+of river ahead. I knew I was going to miss greatly
+the guiding hand and mind of Captain Armstrong,
+but had high hopes of Ike Emerson. I was not to be
+disappointed.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page235" name="page235">[Pg 235]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER X<br />
+<br />
+RAFTING THROUGH HELL GATE</h2>
+
+<p>Ike had been working at high speed during our
+absence, but his imagination appeared rather to have
+run ahead of his powers of execution. The hundred-feet-long,
+thirty-feet-wide raft he had set himself to
+construct (so as to have something that would &#8220;stack
+up big in the movie&#8221;) took another two days to complete,
+and even then was not quite all that critical
+artist wanted to make it. After filling in the raft
+proper with solid logs of spruce and cedar, he began
+heaping cordwood upon it. He was trying
+to make something that would loom up above
+the water, he explained; &#8220;somethin&#8217; tu make a
+showin&#8217; in the pictur&#8217;.&#8221; He had three or four teams
+hauling, and as many men piling, for two days. We
+stopped him at fifty cords in order to get under way
+the second day after our return. There was some
+division of opinion among the &#8217;long shore loafers as to
+whether or not this was the <i>largest</i> raft that had ever
+started down this part of the Columbia, but they
+were a unit in agreeing that it was the <i>highest</i>. Never
+was there a raft with so much &#8220;freeboard.&#8221; The
+trouble was that every foot of that &#8220;freeboard&#8221; was
+cordwood, and then some; for the huge stacks of four-foot
+firewood had weighted down the logs under them
+until those great lengths of spruce and cedar were
+completely submerged. When you walked about &#8220;on<span class="pagenum">[Pg 236]</span>
+deck&#8221; you saw the river flowing right along through
+the loosely stacked cordwood beneath. Roos was exultant
+over the way that mighty mass of rough wood
+charging down a rock-walled canyon was going to
+photograph, and Ike was proud as a peacock over the
+Thing he had brought into being. But Roos was
+going to be cranking on the cliff when we went
+through Hell Gate, and Ike didn&#8217;t care a fig what
+happened to him anyhow. And I <i>did</i> care. There
+were a lot of things that could happen to a crazy contraption
+of that kind, <i>if ever it hit anything solid</i>; and
+I knew that the walls of Hell Gate and Box Canyon
+must be solid or they wouldn&#8217;t have stood as long as
+they had. And as for hitting ... that raft must be
+pretty nearly as long as Hell Gate was wide, and if
+ever it got to swinging.... It&#8217;s funny the things
+a man will think of the night before he is going to
+try out a fool stunt that he doesn&#8217;t know much
+about.</p>
+
+<p><a id="page236" name="page236"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 387px;">
+<img src="images/illo_298.jpg" width="387" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">MAP OF THE UPPER COLUMBIA</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><a id="page237" name="page237"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/illo_299.jpg" width="600" height="446" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">A &#8220;CLOSE-UP&#8221; OF IKE BUILDING HIS RAFT (<i>left</i>)<br />
+MY FIFTY POUND SALMON (<i>right</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>A fine motherly old girl called Mrs. Miller had
+put us up in her big, comfortable farm-house during
+our wait while Ike completed his ship-building operations.
+She must have known all of seven different
+ways of frying chicken, and maybe twice that number
+of putting up apple preserves. We had just about all
+of them for breakfast the morning we started. Jess,
+the ferry-man, treated us to vanilla extract cordials
+and told us the story of a raft that had struck and
+broken up just above his father&#8217;s ranch near Hawk
+Creek. Only guy they fished out was always nutty
+afterward. Cracked on the head with a length of
+cordwood while swimming. Good swimmer, too; but
+a guy had no chance in a swish-swashing bunch of
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 237]</span>broke-loose logs. Thus Jess, and thus&mdash;or in similar
+vein&mdash;about a dozen others who came down to see us
+off from the ferry landing. They all told stories of
+<i>raft</i> disasters, just as they would have enlarged on
+<i>boat</i> disasters if it had been a boat in which we were
+starting to run Hell Gate and Box Canyon.</p>
+
+<p>I pulled across and landed Roos at the raft to make
+an introductory shot or two of Ike before picking up
+the thread of his &#8220;continuity&#8221; with my (pictorial)
+advent. A corner of the raft had been left unfinished
+for this purpose. Ike was discovered boring a log
+with a huge auger, after which he notched and laid a
+stringer, finishing the operation by pegging the latter
+down with a twisted hazel withe. The old river rat
+seemed to know instinctively just what was wanted
+of him, going through the action so snappily that Roos
+clapped him on the back and pronounced him &#8220;the
+cat&#8217;s ears&#8221; as an actor.</p>
+
+<p>Ike showed real quality in the next scene; also the
+single-minded concentration that marks the true
+artist. Looking up from his boring, he sees a boat
+paddling toward him from up-river. The nearing
+craft was <i>Imshallah</i>, with the &#8220;farmer&#8221; at the oars,
+just as he had started (for the still unbuilt raft)
+when the &#8220;prospector&#8221; gave him the boat before disappearing
+up the bank to the &#8220;smelter&#8221; with his sack
+of &#8220;ore&#8221; over his shoulder. Thus &#8220;continuity&#8221; was
+served.</p>
+
+<p>The &#8220;farmer&#8221; pulls smartly alongside, tosses Ike
+the painter and clambers aboard the raft. An animated
+colloquy ensues, in which the &#8220;farmer&#8221; asks
+about the river ahead, and Ike tells him, with dramatic
+gestures, that it will be death to tackle it in so frail<span class="pagenum">[Pg 238]</span>
+a skiff. A raft is the only safe way to make the passage
+and&mdash;here Ike spreads out his hands with the
+manner of a butler announcing that &#8220;dinner is
+served!&#8221;&mdash;the raft is at the &#8220;farmer&#8217;s&#8221; disposal. That
+suits the &#8220;farmer&#8221; to a &#8220;T;&#8221; so the skiff is lifted
+aboard and they are ready to cast off.</p>
+
+<p>Where Ike displayed the concentration of a true artist
+was in the skiff-lifting shot. Just as the green
+bow of <i>Imshallah</i> came over the side, a boy who had
+been stacking cordwood, in rushing forward to clear
+the fouled painter, stepped on an unsecured log and
+went through into the river. By this time, of course,
+I knew better than to spoil a shot by suspending or
+changing action in the middle of it, but that Ike
+should be thus esoterically sapient was rather too
+much to expect. Yet the sequel proved how much
+more consummate an artist of the two of us that untutored
+(even by Roos) old river rat was. When we
+had finished &#8220;Yo-heave-ho-ing&#8221; as the skiff settled into
+place, I (dropping my histrionics like a wet bathing
+suit) shouted to Ike to come and help me fish that kid
+out. &#8220;What kid?&#8221; he drawled in a sort of languid
+surprise. Then, after a kind of dazed once-over of
+the raft, fore-and-aft: &#8220;By cripes, the kid <i>is</i> gone!&#8221;
+Now has that ever been beaten for artistic concentration?</p>
+
+<p>The lad, after bumping down along the bottom to
+the lower end of the raft, had come to the surface no
+whit the worse for his ducking. He was clambering
+up over the logs like a wet cat before either Ike or I,
+teetering across the crooked, wobbly cordwood, had
+stumbled half the distance to the &#8220;stern.&#8221; &#8220;It must<span class="pagenum">[Pg 239]</span>
+be a right sma&#8217;t betta goin&#8217; daun unda than up heah,&#8221;
+was Ike&#8217;s only comment.</p>
+
+<p>The motor-boat which Ike had engaged to tow the
+raft was already on hand. It had been built by a
+Spokane mining magnate for use at his summer home
+on Lake C&#339;ur d&#8217;Alene, and was one of the prettiest
+little craft of the kind I ever saw. With its lines
+streaming gracefully back from its sharp, beautifully-flared
+bow, it showed speed from every angle. Hardwood
+and brass were in bad shape, but the engines
+were resplendent; and the engines were the finest
+thing about it. They had been built to drive it twenty-five
+miles an hour when she was new, the chap running
+it said, and were probably good for all of twenty-two
+yet when he opened up. Except that its hull
+wasn&#8217;t rugged enough to stand the banging, it was an
+ideal river boat, though not necessarily for towing
+rafts. However, it was mighty handy even at that
+ignominious work.</p>
+
+<p>I couldn&#8217;t quite make up my mind about the engineer
+of the motor boat&mdash;not until he settled down
+to work, that is. His eye was quite satisfactory, but
+his habit of hesitating before answering a question,
+and then usually saying &#8220;I dunno,&#8221; conveyed rather
+the impression of torpid mentality if not actual dulness.
+Nothing could have been further from the truth,
+as I realized instantly the moment he started swinging
+the raft into the current. He merely said &#8220;I dunno&#8221;
+because he really didn&#8217;t know, where an ordinary man
+would have felt impelled to make half an answer, or
+at least to say something about the weather or the
+stage of the river. Earl (I never learned his last<span class="pagenum">[Pg 240]</span>
+name) was sparing with his tongue because he was
+unsparing with his brain. His mind was always ready
+to act&mdash;and to react. There were to arise several situations
+well calculated to test the mettle of him, and
+he was always &#8220;there.&#8221; I have never known so thoroughly
+useful and dependable a man for working a
+launch in swift water.</p>
+
+<p>While Ike was completing his final &#8220;snugging
+down&#8221; operations, I chanced to observe a long steel-blue
+and slightly reddish-tinged body working up the
+bottom toward the stern of the raft. It looked like
+a salmon, except that it was larger than any member
+of that family I had ever seen. A blunt-pointed pike-pole
+is about the last thing one would use for a fish-spear,
+but, with nothing better ready to hand, I tried
+it. My first thrust was a bad miss, but, rather
+strangely, I thought&mdash;failed to deflect the loggily
+nosing monster more than a foot or two from his
+course. The next thrust went home, but where I was
+half expecting to have the pole torn from my hands
+by a wild rush, there was only a sluggish, unresentful
+sort of a wriggle. As there was no hook or barb to
+the pike, the best I could do was to worry my prize
+along the bottom to the bank, where a couple of Indians
+lifted it out for me. It was a salmon after all&mdash;a
+vicious looking &#8220;dog,&#8221; with a wicked mouthful of
+curving teeth&mdash;but of extraordinary size. It must
+have weighed between fifty and sixty pounds, for the
+pike-pole all but snapped when I tried to lift the
+monster with it. Indeed, its great bulk was undoubtedly
+responsible for the fact that it was already half-dead
+from battering on the rocks before I speared it.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 241]</span>
+As the flesh was too soft even for the Indians, I gave
+it to a German farmer from a nearby clearing to feed
+to his hogs. Or rather, I traded it. The German had
+a dog which, for the sake of &#8220;human interest,&#8221; Roos
+very much wanted to borrow. (Why, seeing it was a
+dog, he should not have called it &#8220;canine interest,&#8221; I
+never quite understood; but it was the &#8220;heart touch&#8221;
+he wanted, at any rate). So Ike proposed to the
+&#8220;Dutchman&#8221; that we give him fifty pounds of dead
+&#8220;dog&#8221; for half that weight of live dog, the latter to be
+returned when we were through with him. That was
+Ike&#8217;s <i>proposition</i>. As soon as we were under way,
+however, he confided to me that he never was going
+to give that good collie back to a Dutchman. A people
+that had done what the &#8220;Dutchmen&#8221; did to Belgium
+had no right to have a collie anyhow. If they
+must have dogs, let them keep dachshunds&mdash;or pigs.
+And he forthwith began to alienate that particular
+collie&#8217;s affection by feeding him milk chocolate. Poor
+old Ike! Being only a fresh-water sailor, I fear he
+did not have a wife in every port, so that there was an
+empty place in his heart that craved affection.</p>
+
+<p>We cast off at ten o&#8217;clock, Earl swung the raft&#8217;s
+head out by a steady pull with the launch, and the
+current completed the operation of turning. Once
+in mid-stream she made good time, the motor-boat
+maintaining just enough of a tug to keep the towing-line
+taut and give her a mile an hour or so of way over
+the current. That gave Earl a margin to work with,
+and, pulling sharply now to one side, now to the other,
+he kept the great pile of logs headed where the current
+was swiftest and the channel clearest. It was all<span class="pagenum">[Pg 242]</span>
+in using his power at the right time and in the right
+way. A hundred-ton tugboat would have been helpless
+in stopping the raft once it started to go in the
+wrong direction. The trick was to start it right and
+not let it go wrong, Ike explained&mdash;just like raising
+pups or kids. It was certainly no job for a novice,
+and I found constant reassurance in the consummate
+&#8220;raftsmanship&#8221; our taciturn engineer was displaying.</p>
+
+<p>The hills on both sides of the river grew loftier and
+more rugged as we ran to the south, and the trees
+became patchier and scrubbier. The bunch grass on
+the diminishing benches at the bends was withered and
+brown. It was evident from every sign that we were
+nearing the arid belt of eastern Washington, the great
+semi-desert plateau that is looped in the bend of the
+Columbia between the mouth of the Spokane and the
+mouth of the Snake. The towering split crest of
+Mitre Rock marked the approach to the slack stretch
+of water backed up by the boulder barrage over which
+tumbles Spokane Rapids. The run through the latter
+was to be our real baptism; a short rapid passed a
+few miles above proving only rough enough to set the
+raft rolling in fluent undulations and throw a few
+light gobs of spray over her &#8220;bows.&#8221; We were now
+going up against something pretty closely approximating
+the real thing. It wasn&#8217;t Hell Gate or Box
+Canyon by a long way, Ike said, but at the same time
+it wasn&#8217;t any place to risk any slip-up.</p>
+
+<p>Save for two or three of the major riffles on the Big
+Bend of Canada, Spokane Rapids has a stretch of
+water that must go down hill just about as fast as any
+on all the Columbia. The channel&mdash;although running<span class="pagenum">[Pg 243]</span>
+between boulders&mdash;was narrow in the first place, and
+the deepest part of it was still further restricted by
+an attempt to clear a way through for steamer navigation
+in the years when a through service up and
+down the Columbia was still dreamed of. The channel
+was deepened considerably, but the effect of this
+was to divert a still greater flow into it and form a
+sort of a chute down which the water rushed as
+through a flume. Being straight, this channel is not
+very risky to run, even with a small boat&mdash;provided
+one keeps to it. A wild tumble of rollers just to the
+left of the head must be avoided, however, even by a
+raft. That was why we had the motor-boat&mdash;to be
+sure of &#8220;hitting the intake right,&#8221; as Ike put it. And
+the motor-boat ought to be able to handle the job
+without help. He had been working hard ever since
+we started on a gigantic stern-sweep, but that was for
+Hell Gate and Box Canyon. Here, with her nose
+once in right, she should do it on her own.</p>
+
+<p>Mooring the raft against the right bank in the
+quiet water a couple of hundred yards above the &#8220;intake,&#8221;
+Earl ran us down to the mouth of the Spokane
+River in the launch. We were purchasing gasoline
+and provisions in the little village of Lincoln, just
+below the Spokane, and Ike thought that the lower
+end of the rapid would be the best place for Roos to
+set up to command the raft coming through. It was
+indeed terrifically fast water, but&mdash;because the launch
+had the power to pick the very best of the channel&mdash;the
+run down just missed the thrill that would have
+accompanied it had it been up to one&#8217;s oars to keep
+his boat out of trouble. Earl shut off almost com<span class="pagenum">[Pg 244]</span>pletely
+as he slipped into the &#8220;V,&#8221; keeping a bare
+steerage-way over the current. Twenty miles an hour
+was quite fast enough to be going in the event she <i>did</i>
+swerve from the channel and hit a rock; there was no
+point in adding to the potential force of the impact
+with the engine. As there was a heavy wash from the
+rapids in even the quietest eddy he could find opposite
+the town, Earl stayed with the launch, keeping her
+off the rocks with a pole while Ike, Roos and myself
+went foraging. Ike spilled gasoline over his back in
+packing a leaking can down over the boulders, causing
+burns from which he suffered considerable pain
+and annoyance when he came to man the sweep the
+following day.</p>
+
+<p>After dropping Roos on the right bank to set up for
+the picture, Earl drove the launch back up the rapid
+to the raft. I hardly know which was the more impressive,
+the power of the wildly racing rapid or the
+power of the engine of the launch. It was a ding-dong
+fight all the way. Although he nosed at times
+to within a few inches of the overhanging rocks of the
+bank in seeking the quietest water, the launch was
+brought repeatedly to a standstill. There she would
+hang quivering, until the accelerating engine would
+impart just the few added revolutions to the propellers
+that would give her the upper hand again. The
+final struggle at the &#8220;intake&#8221; was the bitterest of all,
+and Earl only won out there by sheering to the right
+across the &#8220;V&#8221;&mdash;at imminent risk of being swung
+round, it seemed to me&mdash;and reaching less impetuous
+water.</p>
+
+<p>Throwing off her mooring lines, Earl towed the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 245]</span>
+raft out into the sluggish current. There was plenty
+of time and plenty of room to man&#339;uvre her into the
+proper position. All he had to do was to bring her
+into the &#8220;intake&#8221; well clear of the rocks and rollers to
+the left, and then keep towing hard enough to hold
+her head down-stream. It was a simple operation&mdash;compared,
+for instance, with what he would have on
+the morrow at Hell Gate&mdash;but still one that had to
+be carried out just so if an awful mess-up was to be
+avoided. Novice as I was with that sort of a raft, I
+could readily see what would happen if she once got
+to swinging and turned broadside to the rapid.</p>
+
+<p>That was about the first major rapid I ever recall
+running when I didn&#8217;t have something to do, and it
+was rather a relief to be able to watch the wheels go
+round and feel that there was nothing to stand-by for.
+Even Ike, with no sweep to swing, was foot-loose, or
+rather hand-free. Knowing Earl&#8217;s complete capability,
+he prepared to cast aside navigational worries
+for the nonce. He had picked up his axe and was about
+to turn to hewing at the blade of his big steering-oar,
+when I reminded him that he was still an actor
+and that he had been ordered to run up and down the
+raft and register &#8220;great anxiety&#8221; while within range
+of the camera.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the outstanding sensation of that wild run
+was the feeling of surprise that swept over me at the
+almost uncanny speed with which that huge unwieldy
+mass of half submerged wood gathered way. In still
+water it would have taken a powerful tug many minutes
+to start it moving; here it picked up and leapt
+ahead like a motor-boat. One moment it was drifting<span class="pagenum">[Pg 246]</span>
+along at three miles an hour; five seconds later, having
+slid over the &#8220;intake,&#8221; it was doing more than
+twenty. The actual slope of that first short pitch
+must have been all of one-in-ten, so that I found myself
+bracing against the incline of the raft, as when
+standing in a wagon that starts over the brow of a
+hill. Then the pitch eased and she hit the rollers,
+grinding right through them like a floating Juggernaut.
+The very worst of them&mdash;haughty-headed
+combers that would have sent the skiff sky-rocketing&mdash;simply
+dissolved against the logs and died in hissing
+anguish in the tangle of cordwood. The motion had
+nothing of the jerkiness of even so large a craft as the
+launch, and one noticed it less under his feet than
+when he looked back and saw the wallowing undulations
+of the &#8220;deck.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>But best of all was the contemptuous might with
+which the raft stamped out, obliterated, abolished the
+accursed whirlpools. Spokane was not deep and
+steep-sided enough to be a dangerous whirlpool rapid,
+like the Dalles or Hell Gate, but there were still a lot
+of mighty mean-mouthed &#8220;suckers&#8221; lying in ambush
+where the rollers began to flatten. There was no
+question of their arrogance and courage. The raft
+might have been the dainty <i>Imshallah</i>, with her
+annoying feminine weakness for clinging embraces,
+for all the hesitancy they displayed in attacking it.
+But, oh, what a difference! Where the susceptible
+<i>Imshallah</i> had edged off in coy dalliance and ended
+by all but surrendering, the raft simply thundered
+ahead. The siren &#8220;whouf!&#8221; of the lurking brigand
+was forced back down its black throat as it was lit<span class="pagenum">[Pg 247]</span>erally
+effaced, smeared from the face of the water.
+Gad, how I loved to see them die, after all <i>Imshallah</i>
+and I had had to endure at their foul hands! <i>Imshallah</i>,
+perched safely aloft on a stack of cordwood,
+took it all with the rather languid interest one would
+expect from a lady of her quality; but I&mdash;well, I fear
+very much that I was leaning out over the &#8220;bows,&#8221; at
+an angle not wholly safe under the circumstances,
+and registering &#8220;ghoulish glee&#8221; at the exact point
+where Roos had told me three times that I must be
+running up and down in the wake of Ike and registering
+&#8220;great anxiety.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As there was no stopping the raft within a mile
+or two of the foot of the rapid, it had been arranged
+that we should launch the skiff as soon as we were
+through the worst water, and pull in to the first favourable
+eddy to await Roos and his camera. It was
+Ike bellowing to me to come and lend him a hand with
+the skiff that compelled me to relinquish my position
+at the &#8220;bow,&#8221; where, &#8220;thumbs down&#8221; at every clash,
+I had been egging on the raft to slaughter whirlpools.
+The current was still very swift, so that Ike was carried
+down a considerable distance before making a
+landing. As it was slow going for Roos, laden with
+camera and tripod, over the boulders, ten or fifteen
+minutes elapsed before they pushed off in pursuit of
+the raft. The latter, in the meantime, had run a
+couple of miles farther down river before Earl found
+a stretch sufficiently quiet to swing her round and
+check her way by towing up against the current.</p>
+
+<p>In running down to this point the raft had splashed
+through a slashing bit of riffle, which I afterwards<span class="pagenum">[Pg 248]</span>
+learned was called Middle Rapid locally. There was
+a short stretch of good rough white water. Offhand,
+it looked to me rather sloppier than anything we had
+put the skiff into so far; but, as it appeared there
+would be no difficulty in steering a course in
+fairly smooth water to the left of the rollers,
+I was not greatly concerned over it. Presently
+Ike came pulling round the bend at a great rate,
+and the next thing I knew <i>Imshallah</i> was floundering
+right down the middle of the frosty-headed combers.
+Twice or thrice I saw the &#8220;V&#8221; of her bow shoot
+skyward, silhouetting like a black wedge against a
+fan of sun-shot spray. Then she began riding more
+evenly, and shortly was in smoother water. It was
+distinctly the kind of thing she did best, and she had
+come through with flying colours. Roos was grinning
+when he climbed aboard, but still showed a tinge of
+green about the gills. &#8220;Why didn&#8217;t you head her into
+that smooth stretch on the left?&#8221; I asked. &#8220;<i>You</i> had
+the steering paddle.&#8221; &#8220;I tried to hard enough,&#8221; he
+replied, still grinning, &#8220;but Ike wouldn&#8217;t have it.
+Said he kinda suspected she&#8217;d go through that white
+stuff all right, and wanted to see if his suspicions
+were correct.&#8221; And that was old Ike Emerson to
+a &#8220;T.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>We wallowed on through French Rapids and
+Hawk Creek Rapids in the next hour, and past the
+little village of Peach, nestling on a broad bench in
+the autumnal red and gold of its clustering orchards.
+Ike, pacing the &#8220;bridge&#8221; with me, said that they used
+to make prime peach brandy at Peach, and reckoned
+that p&#8217;raps.... &#8220;No,&#8221; I cut in decisively; &#8220;<i>I</i> have<span class="pagenum">[Pg 249]</span>
+no desire to return to Kettle Falls.&#8221; I had jumped
+at the chance to draw Ike on that remarkable up-river
+journey of his after the disaster in Hell Gate,
+but he sheered off at once. I have grave doubts as
+to whether that strange phenomenon ever will be
+explained.</p>
+
+<p>We were now threading a great canyon, the rocky
+walls of which reared higher and higher in fantastic
+pinnacles, spires and weird castellations the deeper
+we penetrated its glooming depths. There had been
+painters at work, too, and with colourings brighter and
+more varied than any I had believed to exist outside
+of the canyons of the Colorado and the Yellowstone.
+Saffron melting to fawn and dun was there, and
+vivid streaks that were almost scarlet where fractures
+were fresh, but had changed to maroon and terra
+cotta under the action of the weather. A fluted cliff-face,
+touched by the air-brush of the declining sun,
+flushed a pink so delicate that one seemed to be looking
+at it through a rosy mist. There were intenser
+blocks and masses of colours showing in vivid lumps
+on a buttressed cliff ahead, but they were quenched
+before we reached them in a flood of indigo and mauve
+shadows that drenched the chasm as the sun dropped
+out of sight. From the heights it must have been a
+brilliant sunset, flaming with intense reds and yellows
+as desert sunsets always are; but looking out through
+the purple mists of the great gorge there was only a
+flutter of bright pennons&mdash;crimson, gold, polished
+bronze and dusky olive green&mdash;streaming across an
+ever widening and narrowing notch of jagged rock,
+black and opaque like splintered ebony. For a quarter<span class="pagenum">[Pg 250]</span>
+of an hour we seemed to be steering for those shimmering
+pennons as for a harbor beacon; then a sudden
+up-thrust of black wall cut them off like a sliding
+door. By the time we were headed west again the
+dark pall of fallen night had smothered all life out
+of the flame-drenched sky, leaving it a pure transparent
+black, pricked with the twinkle of kindling stars.
+Only by the absence of stars below could one trace the
+blank opacity of the blacker black of the towering
+cliffs.</p>
+
+<p>No one had said anything to me about an all-day-and-all-night
+schedule for the raft, and, as a matter
+of fact, running in the night had not entered into the
+original itinerary at all. The reason we were bumping
+along in the dark now was that Ike, who had no
+more idea of time than an Oriental, had pushed off
+from Gerome an hour late, wasted another unnecessary
+hour in Lincoln yarning across the sugar barrel
+at the general store, and, as a consequence, had been
+overtaken by night ten miles above the point he
+wanted to make. As there was no fast water intervening,
+and as Earl had shown no signs of dissent,
+Ike had simply gone right on ahead regardless.
+When I asked him if it wasn&#8217;t a bit risky, he said he
+thought not very; adding comfortingly that he had
+floated down on rafts a lot of times before, and hadn&#8217;t
+&#8220;allus bumped.&#8221; If he could see to tighten up
+stringer pegs, he reckoned Earl ought to be able to
+see rocks, &#8220;&#8217;cose rocks was a sight bigger&#8217;n pegs.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It was not long after Ike had nullified the effect of
+his reassuring philosophy by smearing the end of his
+thumb with a mallet that Earl&#8217;s night-owl eyes<span class="pagenum">[Pg 251]</span>
+played him false to the extent of overlooking a rock.
+It may well have been a very small rock, and it
+was doubtless submerged a foot or more; so there was
+no use expecting a man to see the ripple above it
+when there wasn&#8217;t light enough to indicate the passage
+of his hand before his eyes. It was no fault of Earl&#8217;s
+at all, and even the optimistic Ike had claimed no
+more than that he hadn&#8217;t &#8220;allus bumped.&#8221; Nor was
+it a very serious matter at the worst. The raft merely
+hesitated a few seconds, swung part way round,
+slipped free again and, her head brought back at the
+pull of the launch, resumed her way. The jar of
+striking was not enough to throw a well-braced man
+off his feet. (The only reason Roos fell and pulped
+his ear was because he had failed to set himself at the
+right angle when the shock came.) The worst thing
+that happened was the loss of a dozen or so cords of
+wood which, being unsecurely stacked, toppled over
+when she struck. Luckily, the boat was parked on
+the opposite side, as was also Roos. It would have
+been hard to pick up either before morning, and
+Roos would hardly have lasted. The wood was a
+total loss to Ike, of course; but he was less concerned
+about that than he was over the fact that it reduced
+her &#8220;freeboard&#8221; on that quarter by three feet, so that
+she wouldn&#8217;t make so much of a &#8220;showin&#8217; in the picters.&#8221;
+He <i>did</i> raise a howl the next morning, though.
+That was when he found that his old denim jacket
+had gone over with the cordwood. It wasn&#8217;t the
+&#8220;wamus&#8221; itself he minded so much, he said, but the
+fact that in one of that garment&#8217;s pockets had been
+stored the milk chocolate which he was using to alien<span class="pagenum">[Pg 252]</span>ate
+the affections of the Dutchman&#8217;s collie. &#8220;It&#8217;s
+all in gettin&#8217; a jump on a pup&#8217;s feelin&#8217;s at the fust
+offsta&#8217;t,&#8221; he philosophied bitterly; &#8220;an&#8217; naow I&#8217;ll be
+losin&#8217; mah jump.&#8221; Rather keen on the psychology
+of alienation, that observation of old Ike, it struck
+me.</p>
+
+<p>It was along toward nine o&#8217;clock, and shortly after
+the abrupt walls of the canyon began to fall away
+somewhat, that a light appeared on the left bank.
+Making a wide circle just above what had now become
+a glowing window-square, Earl brought the
+raft&#8217;s head up-stream and swung her in against the
+bank. The place was marked Creston on the maps,
+but appeared to be spoken of locally as Halberson&#8217;s
+Ferry. We spent the night with the hospitable Halbersons,
+who ran the ferry across to the Colville
+Reservation side and operated a small sawmill when
+logs were available. Earl slept at his ranch, a few
+miles away on the <i>mesa</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The night was intensely cold, and I was not surprised
+to find icicles over a foot long on the flume
+behind the house in the morning. The frozen ground
+returned a metallic clank to the tread of my hob-nailed
+boots as I stepped outside the door. Then I
+gave a gasp of amazement, for what did I see but Ike
+running&mdash;with a light, springing step&mdash;right along
+the surface of the river? At my exclamation one of
+the Halbersons left off toweling and came over to
+join me. &#8220;What&#8217;s wrong?&#8221; he asked, swinging his
+arms to keep warm. &#8220;Wrong!&#8221; I ejaculated; &#8220;look
+at that! I know this isn&#8217;t Galilee; but you don&#8217;t
+mean to tell me the Columbia has frozen over during<span class="pagenum">[Pg 253]</span>
+the night!&#8221; &#8220;Hardly that,&#8221; was the laughing answer.
+&#8220;Ike&#8217;s not running on either the ice or the water; he&#8217;s
+just riding a water-soaked log to save walking. It&#8217;s
+an old trick of his. Not many can do it like he can.&#8221;
+And that was all there was to it. Ike had spotted a
+drift-log stranded a short distance up-river, and was
+simply bringing it down the easiest way so as to lash
+it to the raft and take it to market. But I should
+have hated to have seen a thing like that &#8220;water-walking&#8221;
+effect in those long ago days on the Canadian
+Big Bend, when we used to prime our breakfast
+coffee with a couple of fingers of &#8220;thirty per
+over-proof.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>We cast off at nine-thirty, after Ike had laid in
+some more &#8220;component parts&#8221; of his mighty sweep
+at the little sawmill. Although less deeply encanyoned
+than through the stretch down which we passed
+the previous night, there were still enormously high
+cliffs on both sides of the river. Trees and brush
+were scarcer and scrubbier than above, and the general
+aspect was becoming more and more like the
+semi-arid parts of the Colorado Desert. The colouring
+was somewhat less vivid than the riot in the canyon
+above, but was almost equally varied. The colour-effect
+was diversified along this part of the river by
+the appearance of great patches of rock-growing
+lichen, shading through half a dozen reds and browns
+to the most delicate amethyst and sage-green. At
+places it was impossible to tell from the river where
+the mineral pigments left off and the vegetable coating
+began.</p>
+
+<p>The river was broad and widening, with a compar<span class="pagenum">[Pg 254]</span>atively
+slow current and only occasional stretches of
+white water. I took the occasion to launch the skiff
+and paddle about for an hour, trying to get some line
+on the speed at which the raft was towing. In smooth
+water I found I had the legs of her about three-to-one,
+and in rapids of about two-to-one. From this
+I figured that she did not derive more than from a
+mile and a half to two miles an hour of her speed
+from the launch. I only raced her through one bit
+of rapid, and she was such a poor sport about the
+course that I refused to repeat the stunt. Just as I
+began to spurt past her down through the jumping
+white caps she did a sort of a side-slip and crowded
+me out of the channel and into a rather messy souse-hole.
+The outraged <i>Imshallah</i> gulped a big mouthful,
+but floundered through right-side up, as she
+always seemed able to do in that sort of stuff. But
+I pulled into an eddy and let the hulking old wood-pile
+have the right-of-way, declining Earl&#8217;s tooted
+challenge for a brush in the riffle immediately following.
+A monster that could eat whirlpools alive wasn&#8217;t
+anything for a skiff to monkey with the business end
+of. I boarded her respectfully by the stern and
+pulled <i>Imshallah</i> up after me.</p>
+
+<p>The great bald dome of White Rock, towering a
+thousand feet above the left bank of the river, signalled
+our approach to Hell Gate. Towing across a
+broad reach of quiet water, Earl laid the raft against
+the left bank about half a mile above where a pair of
+black rock jaws, froth-flecked and savage, seemed
+closing together in an attempt to bite the river in two.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 255]</span>
+That was as close as it was safe to stop the raft, Earl
+explained as we made fast the mooring lines, for the
+current began to accelerate rapidly almost immediately
+below. There were some shacks and an ancient
+apple orchard on the bench above, and Ike came over
+to whisper that they used to make some mighty kicky
+cider there once upon a time, and perhaps.... I
+did not need the prompting of Earl&#8217;s admonitory
+head-shake. &#8220;Get a jump on you with the sweep,&#8221; I
+said, &#8220;while Earl and I go down and help Roos set
+up. There&#8217;ll be time enough to talk about cider below
+Hell Gate.&#8221; I saw a somewhat (to judge from a
+distance) Bacchantic ciderette picking her way down
+the bench bank to the raft as the launch sped off down
+stream, but if Ike realized dividends from the visit
+there was never anything to indicate it.</p>
+
+<p>Although Hell Gate is a long ways from being the
+worst rapid on the Columbia, it comes pretty near to
+qualifying as the <i>worst looking</i> rapid. A long black
+reef, jutting out from the left bank, chokes the
+river into a narrow channel and forces it over
+against the rocky wall on the right. It shoots
+between these obstructions with great velocity, only
+to split itself in two against a big rock island a hundred
+yards farther down. The more direct channel
+is to the right, but it is too narrow to be of use. The
+main river, writhing like a wounded snake after being
+bounced off the sheer wall of the island, zigzags on
+through the black basaltic barrier in a course shaped
+a good deal like an elongated letter &#8220;Z.&#8221; Hell Gate
+is very much like either the Great or Little Dalles<span class="pagenum">[Pg 256]</span>
+would be if a jog were put into it by an earthquake&mdash;a
+rapid shaped like a flash of lightning, and with just
+as much kick in it.</p>
+
+<p>After much climbing and scrambling over rocks,
+Roos found a place about half way down the left side
+of the jagged gorge from which he could command
+the raft rounding the first leg of the &#8220;Z&#8221; and running
+part of the second leg. It would have taken a half
+dozen machines to cover the whole run through, but
+the place he had chosen was the one which would
+show the most one camera could be expected to get.
+It would miss entirely the main thing&mdash;the fight to
+keep the raft from bumping the rock island and splitting
+in two like the river did. That could not be
+helped, however. A set up in a place to catch that
+would have caught very little else, and we desired to
+show something of the general character of the gorge
+and rapid. Roos, solacing himself with the remark to
+the effect that, if the raft <i>did</i> break up, probably the
+biggest part of the wreck would come down his side,
+was cutting himself a &#8220;sylvan frame&#8221; through the
+branches of a gnarled old screw pine as we left him
+to go to the launch.</p>
+
+<p><a id="page256" name="page256"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/illo_320.jpg" width="600" height="442" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">IKE RIDING A LOG (<i>left</i>)<br />
+IKE ON THE MOORING LINE OF THE
+RAFT (<i>right</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><a id="page257" name="page257"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 441px;">
+<img src="images/illo_321.jpg" width="441" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">RAFT IN TOW OF LAUNCH NEAR MOUTH OF SAN POIL (<i>above</i>)<br />
+IKE AT THE SWEEP BELOW HELL GATE (<i>below</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Ike was sitting on the bank talking with a couple
+of men from the farm-house when we got back to the
+raft. He had completed the sweep, he said, but as
+he had forgotten to provide any &#8220;pin&#8221; to hang it on
+he didn&#8217;t quite know what to do. Perhaps we had
+better go up to the farm-house and have dinner first,
+and then maybe he would think of something. The
+thought of keeping Roos&mdash;whom I had seen on the
+verge of apoplexy over a half minute delay once
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 257]</span>he was ready for action&mdash;standing with crooked elbow
+at his crank, waiting an hour or more for the raft to
+shoot round the bend the next second, struck me as
+so ludicrous that I had to sit down myself to laugh
+without risk of rolling into the river. When I finally
+got my breath and sight back, I found Earl&#8217;s ready
+mind had hit upon the idea of using the hickory adze-handle
+as a pivot for the sweep and that he and Ike
+were already rigging it. Ten minutes later the launch
+had swung the raft out into the current and we were
+headed for Hell Gate.</p>
+
+<p>The sweep, clumsy as it looked, was most ingeniously
+constructed. Its handle was a four-inch-in-diameter
+fir trunk, about twenty feet in length. One
+end of it had been hewn down to give hand-grip on it,
+and the other split to receive the blade. The latter
+was a twelve-foot plank, a foot and a half in width
+and three inches in thickness, roughly rounded and
+hewn to the shape of the flat of an oar. It was set at
+a slight upward tilt from the fir-trunk handle. Ike
+had contrived to centre the weight of the whole sweep
+so nicely that you could swing it on its adze-handle
+pivot with one hand. Swing it in the air, I mean;
+submerged, five or six men would have been none too
+few to force that colossal blade through the water.
+Ike admitted that himself, but reckoned that the two
+of us ought to be &#8216;better&#8217;n nothin&#8217; &#8217;tall.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>As we swung out into the quickening current, I
+mentioned to Ike that, as I had never even seen a
+sweep of that kind in operation, much less worked at
+it myself, it might now be in order for him to give me
+some idea of what he hoped to do with it, and how.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 258]</span>
+&#8220;Ye&#8217;re right,&#8221; he assented, after ejecting the inevitable
+squirt of tobacco and parking the residuary quid
+out of the way of his tongue as a squirrel stows a nut;
+&#8220;ye&#8217;re right; five minutes fer eloosidashun an&#8217;
+r&#8217;h&#8217;rsal.&#8221; As usual, Ike overestimated the time at his
+disposal; nevertheless, his intensive method of training
+was so much to the point that I picked up a
+&#8220;right smart bit o&#8217; sweep dope&#8221; before we began to
+cram into the crooked craw of Hell Gate.</p>
+
+<p>This was the biggest raft he had ever tried to take
+through, Ike explained, but he&#8217;d never had so powerful
+a motor launch; and Earl was the best man in his
+line on the Columbia. He reckoned that the launch
+would be able to swing the head of the raft clear of the
+rock island where the river split &#8220;agin&#8221; it; but swinging
+<i>out</i> the head would have the effect of swinging in
+the stern. We were to man the sweep for the purpose
+of keeping the raft from striking amidships. We
+would only have to stroke one way, but we&#8217;d sure
+have to &#8220;jump into it billy hell!&#8221; &#8220;That being so,&#8221; I
+suggested, &#8220;perhaps we better try a practice stroke or
+two to perfect our team-work.&#8221; That struck Ike as
+reasonable, and so we went at it, he on the extreme end
+of the handle, I one &#8220;grip&#8221; farther along.</p>
+
+<p>Pressing the handle almost to our feet in order to
+elevate the blade, we dipped the latter with a swinging
+upward lift and jumped into the stroke. In
+order to keep the blade well submerged, it was necessary
+to exert almost as much force upward as forward.
+The compression on the spine was rather
+awful&mdash;especially as I was two or three inches taller
+than Ike, and on top of that, had the &#8220;inside&#8221; berth,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 259]</span>
+where the handle was somewhat nearer the deck. But
+the blade moved through the water when we both
+straightened into it; slowly at first, and more rapidly
+toward the end of the stroke. Then we lifted the
+blade out of the water, and Ike swung it back through
+the air alone. I had only to &#8220;crab-step&#8221; back along
+the runway&mdash;a couple of planks laid over the cordwood&mdash;and
+be ready for the next stroke. Twice we
+went through that operation, without&mdash;so far as I
+could see&mdash;having any effect whatever upon the raft;
+but that was only because I was expecting &#8220;skiff-action&#8221;
+from a hundred tons of logs. We really
+must have altered the course considerably, for presently
+a howl came back from Earl to &#8220;do it t&#8217;other
+way,&#8221; as we were throwing her out of the channel.
+By the time we had &#8220;corrected&#8221; with a couple of
+strokes in the opposite direction the launch was dipping
+over the crest of the &#8220;intake.&#8221; Straightening
+up but not relinquishing the handle, Ike said to &#8220;let
+&#8217;er ride fer a minnit,&#8221; but to stand-by ready.</p>
+
+<p>That swift opening run through the outer portal of
+Hell Gate offered about the only chance I had for a
+&#8220;look-see.&#8221; My recollections of the interval that followed
+at the sweep are a good deal blurred. I noted
+that the water of the black-walled chasm down which
+we were racing was swift and deep, but not&mdash;right
+there at least&mdash;too rough for the skiff to ride. I
+noted how the sharp point of the rock island ahead
+threw off two unequal back-curving waves, as a battleship
+will do when turning at full speed. I remember
+thinking that, if I were in the skiff, I would try to
+avoid the island by sheering over to the right-hand<span class="pagenum">[Pg 260]</span>
+channel. It looked too hard a pull to make the main
+one to the left; and the latter would have the worst
+whirlpools, too. I noted how confoundedly in the
+way of the river that sharp-nosed island was; and not
+only of the river, but of anything coming down the
+river. With that up-stabbing point out of the stream,
+how easy it would be! But since....</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Stan&#8217;-by!&#8221; came in a growl from Ike. &#8220;&#8217;Memba
+naow&mdash;&#8216;billy hell&#8217; when I says &#8216;jump!&#8217;&#8221; By the fact
+that he spat forth the whole of his freshly-bitten quid
+I had a feeling that the emergency was considerably
+beyond the ordinary. My last clear recollection was
+of Earl&#8217;s sharply altering his course just before he
+nosed into the roaring back-curving wave thrown off
+by the island and beginning to tow to the left with
+his line at half of a right-angle to the raft. The staccato
+of his accelerating engine cut like the rattle of a
+machine-gun through the heavy rumble of the rapid,
+and I knew that he had thrown it wide open even before
+the foam-geyser kicked up by the propellers began
+to tumble over onto the stern of the launch. On a
+reduced scale, it was the same sort of in-tumbling
+jet that a destroyer throws up when, at the appearance
+of an ominous blur in the fog, she goes from
+quarter-speed-ahead to full-speed-astern. A jet like
+that means that the spinning screws are meeting
+almost solid resistance in the water.</p>
+
+<p>Ike&#8217;s shoulder cut off my view ahead now, and I
+knew that the bow was swinging out only from the
+way the stern was swinging in. At his grunted
+&#8220;Now!&#8221; we did our curtsey-and-bow to the sweep-handle,
+just as we had practised it, then dipped the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 261]</span>
+blade and drove it hard to the right. Four or five
+times we repeated that stroke, and right smartly, too,
+it seemed to me. The stern stopped swinging just at
+the right time, shooting by the foam-whitened fang
+of the black point by a good ten feet. The back-curving
+wave crashed down in solid green on the starboard
+quarter&mdash;but harmlessly. There was water
+enough to have swamped a <i>batteau</i>, but against a raft
+the comber had knocked its head off for nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Under Ike&#8217;s assurance that the battle would all be
+over but the shouting in half a minute, I had put
+about everything I had into those half dozen mighty
+pushes with the sweep. I started to back off leisurely
+and resume my survey of the scenery as we cleared the
+point, but Ike&#8217;s mumbled &#8220;Nother one!&#8221; brought me
+back to the sweep again. Evidently there had been
+some kind of a slip-up. &#8220;Wha&#8217; &#8217;smatter?&#8221; I gurgled,
+as we swayed onto the kicking handle, and
+&#8220;Engin&#8217;s on blink,&#8221; rumbled the chesty reply. &#8220;Gotta
+keep&#8217;er off wi&#8217; sweep.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It had been the motor-boat&#8217;s rôle, after keeping the
+head of the raft clear of the point of the island by a
+strong side pull, to tow out straight ahead again as
+soon as the menace of collision was past. Earl was
+trying to do this now (I glimpsed as I crab-stepped
+back), but with two or three cylinders missing was
+not able to do much more than straighten out the tow-line.
+As the raft was already angling to the channel,
+the fact the current was swifter against the side of
+the island had the tendency to throw her stern in that
+direction. It was up to the sweep to keep her from
+striking, just as it had been at the point. What made<span class="pagenum">[Pg 262]</span>
+it worse now was that the possible points of impact
+were scattered all the way along for two or three
+hundred yards, while the launch was giving very
+little help.</p>
+
+<p>A man ought to be able to lean onto a sweep all
+day long without getting more than a good comfortable
+weariness, and so I <i>could</i> have done had I been
+properly broken in. But I was in the wrong place
+on the sweep, and, on top of that, had allowed my infantile
+enthusiasm to lead me into trying to scoop
+half the Columbia out of its channel at every stroke.
+And so it was that when we came to a real showdown,
+I found myself pretty hard put to come
+through with what was needed. Ike&#8217;s relentless
+&#8220;&#8217;Nother one!&#8221; at the end of each soul-and-body
+wracking stroke was all that was said, but the &#8217;tween-teethed
+grimness of its utterance was more potent
+as a verbal scourge than a steady stream of sulphurous
+curses. Ike was saving his breath, and I didn&#8217;t
+have any left to pour out my feelings with.</p>
+
+<p>We were close to the ragged black wall all the way,
+and I have an idea that the back-waves thrown off
+by the projecting points had about as much to do
+with keeping us from striking as had the sweep. Such
+waves will often buffer off a canoe or <i>batteau</i>, and
+they must have helped some with the raft. There is
+no doubt, however, that, if the raft had once been
+allowed to swing broadside, either she or the rock
+island would have had to change shape or else hold up
+the million or so horse-power driving the Columbia.
+That could have only resulted in a one-two-three
+climax, with the island, Columbia and raft finishing<span class="pagenum">[Pg 263]</span>
+in the order named. Or, to express it in more accurate
+race-track vernacular; &#8220;Island,&#8221; first; &#8220;Columbia,&#8221;
+second; &#8220;Raft,&#8221; nowhere!</p>
+
+<p>My spine was a bar of red-hot iron rasping up and
+down along the exposed ends of all its connecting
+nerves, when a throaty &#8220;Aw right!&#8221; from Ike signalled
+that the worst was past. Hanging over the end
+of the trailing sweep-handle, I saw that the raft had
+swung into a big eddy at the foot of the island, and
+that the launch, with its engine still spraying scattered
+pops, was trying to help the back-current carry
+her in to the right bank. Middle and Lower Rapids
+of Hell Gate were still below us, but Earl had evidently
+determined not to run them until his engine
+was hitting on all fours again. It was characteristic
+of him that he didn&#8217;t offer any explanation as to what
+had gone wrong, or why; but the trouble must have
+been a consequence of the terrific strain put
+on the engine in towing the head of the raft
+clear of the upper point of the island. At
+the end of a quarter hour&#8217;s tinkering Earl reckoned
+that the engine would go &#8220;purty good&#8221; now; leastways,
+he hoped so, for there was nothing more he
+could do outside of a machine-shop. To save tying up
+again below, he ran across and picked up Roos and
+the camera before casting off.</p>
+
+<p>Middle and Lower Rapids were just straight, fast,
+white water, and we ran them without trouble. Roos
+set up on the raft and shot a panorama of the reeling
+rollers and the flying black curtains of the rocky
+walls as they slid past. Then he made a close-up of
+the weird, undulating Chinese-Dragon-wiggle of the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 264]</span>
+&#8220;deck&#8221; of the raft, and finally, when we had recovered
+a bit of breath, of Ike and me toiling at the
+sweep. To save time, we had lunch on the raft, taking
+Earl&#8217;s portion up to him in the skiff.</p>
+
+<p>Ike, announcing that he would need a crew of four
+or five men to handle the raft in Box Canyon, was
+scouting for hands all afternoon. Whenever a farm
+or a ferry appeared in the distance, we would pull
+ahead in the skiff and he would dash ashore and pursue
+intensive recruiting until the raft had come up
+and gone on down river. Then we would push off
+and chase it, repeating the performance as soon as
+another apple orchard or ferry tower crept out beyond
+a bend. For all our zeal, there was not a man
+to show when we finally pulled the skiff aboard as
+darkness was falling on the river. Most of the men
+Ike talked to took one look at the nearing raft and
+cut him off with a &#8220;Good-night&#8221; gesture, the significance
+of which was not lost on me even in the distant
+skiff. The nearest we came to landing any one was
+at Plum, where the half-breed ferry-man said he
+would have gone if it hadn&#8217;t been for the fact that his
+wife was about to become a mother. It wasn&#8217;t that
+he was worried on the woman&#8217;s account (she did that
+sort of thing quite regularly without trouble), but
+he had bet a horse with the blacksmith that it was
+going to be a boy, and he kind of wanted to be on
+hand to be sure they didn&#8217;t put anything over on him.</p>
+
+<p>At Clark&#8217;s Ferry an old pal of Ike&#8217;s, whom he had
+confidently counted on getting, not only refused to
+go when he saw the raft, but even took the old river
+rat aside and talked to him long and earnestly, after<span class="pagenum">[Pg 265]</span>
+the manner of a brother. Ike was rather depressed
+after that, and spent the next hour slouching back and
+forth across the stern runway, nursing the handle of
+the gently-swung sweep against his cheek like a pet
+kitten. He was deeply introspective, and seemed to
+be brooding over something. It was not until the next
+morning that he admitted that the raft had not proved
+quite as handy as he had calculated.</p>
+
+<p>Again we ran well into the dark, but this time in a
+somewhat opener canyon than the black gorge we had
+threaded the night before. It was Spring Canyon
+we were making for, where Ike had left his last raft.
+No one was living there, he said, but it was a convenient
+place for the ranchers from up on the plateau to
+come and get the wood. Earl found the place and
+made the landing with not even a window-light to
+guide. We moored to the lower logs of the cedar
+raft, most of which was now lying high and dry on
+the rocks, left by the falling river. We cooked supper
+on the bank and&mdash;after Roos had deftly picked
+the lock with a bent wire&mdash;slept on the floor of an
+abandoned farm-house on the bench above.</p>
+
+<p>Ike had complained a good deal of his gasoline-burned
+back during the day, and was evidently suffering
+not a little discomfort from the chafing of his
+woollen undershirt. He was restless during the night,
+and when he got up at daybreak I saw him pick up
+and shake out an old white table-cloth that had been
+thrown in one corner. When I went down to the raft
+a little later, I found the old rat stripped to the waist
+and Earl engaged in swathing the burned back in the
+folds of the white table-cloth. As the resultant bundle<span class="pagenum">[Pg 266]</span>
+was rather too bulky to allow a shirt to be drawn over
+it, Ike went around for a couple of hours just as he
+was, for all the world like &#8220;the noblest Roman of them
+all&#8221;&mdash;from neck to the waist, that is. The long, drooping,
+tobacco-stained moustaches, no less than the sagging
+overalls, would have had rather a &#8220;foreign&#8221; look
+on the <i>Forum Romanum</i>.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page267" name="page267">[Pg 267]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XI<br />
+<br />
+BY LAUNCH THROUGH BOX CANYON</h2>
+
+<p>There was plainly something on Ike&#8217;s mind all
+through breakfast, but what it was didn&#8217;t transpire
+until I asked him what time he would be ready to push
+off. Then, like a man who blurts out an unpalatable
+truth, he gave the free end of his &#8220;toga&#8221; a fling back
+over his shoulder and announced that he had come to
+the conclusion that the raft was too big and too loosely
+constructed to run Box Canyon; in fact, we could
+count ourselves lucky that we got through Hell Gate
+without smashing up. What he proposed to do was to
+take the biggest and straightest logs from both the
+rafts and make a small, solid one that would stand any
+amount of banging from the rocks. He never gave
+a thought to his life when working on the river, he
+declared, but it would be a shame to run an almost
+certain risk of losing so big a lot of logs and cordwood.
+The wreckage would be sure to be salvaged
+by farmers who would otherwise have to buy wood
+from him, so he would be a double loser in case the
+raft went to pieces. I told him that I quite appreciated
+his feelings (about the wood and logs, I mean),
+and asked how long he figured it would take to get
+the logs out of the old rafts and build a new one. He
+reckoned it could be done in two or three days, if we
+hustled. As I had already learned that any of Ike&#8217;s<span class="pagenum">[Pg 268]</span>
+estimates of time had to be multiplied by at least two
+to approximate accuracy, I realized at once that our
+rafting voyage was at an end. We already had some
+very good raft pictures, and as a few hundred yards
+of the run through Box Canyon would be all that
+could be added to these, it did not seem worth anything
+like the delay building the new raft would impose.
+As far as the sale of the wood and logs was
+concerned, Ike said he would rather have the stuff
+where it was than in Bridgeport.</p>
+
+<p>So, quite unexpectedly but in all good feeling, we
+prepared to abandon the raft and have the motor-boat
+take the skiff in tow as far as Chelan. This
+would make up a part of the time we had lost in waiting
+for the raft in the first place, and also save the
+portage round Box Canyon. It was quite out of the
+question venturing into that gorge in our small boat,
+Earl said, but he had made it before with his launch,
+and reckoned he could do it again. We settled with
+Ike on a basis of twenty dollars a day for his time, out
+of which he would pay for the launch. As his big
+raft of logs and firewood was brought to its destination
+for nothing by this arrangement, he was that
+much ahead. For the further use of the launch, we
+were to pay Earl ten dollars a day and buy the gasoline.</p>
+
+<p>We helped Ike get the raft securely moored, had
+an early lunch on the rocks, and pushed off at a little
+after noon, the skiff in tow of the launch on a short
+painter. A few miles along Ike pointed out a depression,
+high above the river on the left side, which he
+said was the mouth of the Grand Coulee, the ancient
+bed of the Columbia. I have already mentioned a<span class="pagenum">[Pg 269]</span>
+project which contemplates bringing water from the
+Pend d&#8217;Oreille to irrigate nearly two million acres of
+semi-arid land of the Columbia basin. A project
+that some engineers consider will bring water to the
+same land more directly and at a much less cost per
+acre is to build a dam all the way across the Columbia
+below the mouth of the Grand Coulee, and use the
+power thus available to pump sixteen thousand second-feet
+into the old channel of that river. Mr. James
+O&#8217;Sullivan, a contractor of Port Huron, Michigan,
+who has made an exhaustive study of this latter project,
+writes me as follows:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&#8220;A dam at this point could be built 300 feet high above
+low water, and it would form a lake 150 miles long all the
+way to the Canadian boundary. It is estimated that one
+million dollars would pay all the flooding damages. A dam
+300 feet high would be 4,300 feet long on the crest, and
+would require about 5,000,000 cubic yards of concrete. It
+would cost, assuming bedrock not to exceed 100 feet below
+water, about forty million dollars. It is estimated that the
+power-house, direct connected pumps, turbines and discharge
+pipes would cost fifteen million dollars.... From the
+Columbia River to the arid lands, a distance of less than
+forty miles, there is a natural channel less than one mile wide,
+flanked by rock walls on both sides, so that the cost of getting
+water to the land would be primarily confined to the dam
+and power. Such a dam would require about five years to
+build, and it would create out of a worthless desert a national
+estate of four hundred and fifty million dollars, and
+the land would produce annually in crops two hundred and
+seventy-five million.... An irrigation district is now
+being formed in Central Washington, and it is proposed to
+proceed at once with the core drilling of the dam-site, to
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 270]</span>determine the nature and depth of bedrock, which seems to
+be the only question left unsettled which affects the feasibility
+of the project. The Northwestern states are all in a
+league for securing the reclamation of this vast area, and
+there is no doubt that, if bedrock conditions prove to be
+favourable, that in the near future the money will be raised to
+construct this great project, which will reclaim an area
+equal to the combined irrigation projects undertaken by the
+U. S. Government to-day.... It is considered now that
+where power is free, a pumping lift as high as 300 feet is
+perfectly feasible.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Which of these two great projects for the reclamation
+of the desert of the Columbia Basin has the
+most to recommend is not a question upon which a
+mere river <i>voyageur</i>, who is not an engineer, can offer
+an intelligent opinion. That the possibilities of such
+reclamation, if it can be economically effected, are
+incalculably immense, however, has been amply demonstrated.
+From source to mouth, the Columbia to-day
+is almost useless for power, irrigation and even
+transportation. The experience of those who, lured
+on by abnormal rainfalls of a decade or more ago,
+tried dry farming in this region border closely on the
+tragic. And the tragedy has been all the more poignant
+from the fact that the disaster of drought has
+overtaken them year after year with the Columbia
+running half a million second-feet of water to waste
+right before their eyes. I subsequently met a rancher
+in Wenatchee who said the only good the Columbia
+ever was to a man who tried to farm along it in the
+dry belt was as a place to drown himself in when he
+went broke.</p>
+
+<p><a id="page270" name="page270"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 446px;">
+<img src="images/illo_336.jpg" width="446" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">THE SUSPENSION BRIDGE AT CHELAN FALLS (<i>above</i>)<br />
+OLD RIVER VETERANS ON THE LANDING AT POTARIS. (CAPT.
+McDERMID ON LEFT, IKE EMERSON ON RIGHT) (<i>below</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><a id="page271" name="page271"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 449px;">
+<img src="images/illo_337.jpg" width="449" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">NIGHT WAS FALLING AS WE HEADED INTO BOX CANYON (<i>above</i>)<br />
+THE COLUMBIA ABOVE BOX CANYON (<i>below</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 271]</span>The rock-littered channel of Moneghan&#8217;s or Buckley&#8217;s
+Rapids was easily threaded by the launch, and
+Equilibrium or &#8220;Jumbo&#8221; Rapids, three miles lower
+down, did not prove a serious obstruction. The official
+name is the former, and was given the riffle by
+Symons on account of a round-topped rock which
+rolled back and forth in the current because of its
+unstable equilibrium. The local name of &#8220;Jumbo&#8221;
+derives from the fact that this same rolling rock has
+something of the appearance of an elephant, when
+viewed from a certain angle. Ten miles more of deep,
+evenly-flowing water brought us to Mah-kin Rapids
+and the head of Nespilem Canyon. The next twenty-four
+miles, terminating at the foot of what is officially
+called Kalichen Falls and Whirlpool (Box Canyon
+in local nomenclature), is the fastest stretch of equal
+length on the Columbia except on the Big Bend in
+Canada. It is one continuous succession of rapids,
+eddies and whirlpools all the way, and the much feared
+Box Canyon is a fitting finale. I was distinctly glad
+to be running through in a motor-boat rather than
+the skiff. As to the raft, I never have been able to
+make up my mind as to just how she would have
+fared.</p>
+
+<p>The roar of the savage half-mile tumble of Mah-kin
+Rapids was a fitting overture to the main performance.
+The river narrows down sharply between
+precipitous banks, and most of the rocks from the
+surrounding hills seem to have rolled into the middle
+of the channel. There was an awful mess of churned
+water even where the river was deepest, and I
+wouldn&#8217;t have been quite comfortable heading into it<span class="pagenum">[Pg 272]</span>
+even in the launch. Earl seemed rather of the same
+mind, too, for he kept edging out to the right every
+time one of the big combers lurched over at him.
+With the engine running like a top, he kept her in
+comparatively good water all the way through. It
+was a striking lesson in the value of power in running
+a rapid&mdash;as long as the power doesn&#8217;t fail you.</p>
+
+<p>Rock-peppered rapids followed each other every
+mile or two from the foot of Mah-kin, but&mdash;thanks
+to Earl&#8217;s nose for the best channel&mdash;we were not taking
+more than an occasional shower of spray over the
+bows where the water was whitest. It was not too
+rough for reading, and, anxious to prepare Roos for
+what he was about to experience at Kalichen Falls
+and Collision Rock, I dug out Symons&#8217; report and
+ran rapidly through the dramatic description of how
+his party fared in running the sinister gorge ahead.
+It seems to me rather a classic of its kind, and I am
+setting it down in full, just as I read it to Roos and
+Ike that afternoon in the cockpit of the launch. I
+only wish I could complete the effect with the diorama
+of the flying canyon walls, the swirling waters of the
+river, and the obligato in duet by the roaring rapids
+and the sharply hitting engine.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&#8220;The shores of Nespilem Canyon are strewn with huge
+masses of black basaltic rock of all sizes and shapes, and
+this continues for several miles, forming a characteristic
+picture of Columbia River scenery. The complete ...
+lifelessness of the scene makes it seem exceedingly wild, almost
+unearthly. And so we plunge along swiftly through the
+rolling water, with huge rocks looming up, now on one side
+and now on the other. Every stroke of the oar is bearing
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 273]</span>us onward, nearer and nearer, to that portion of our voyage
+most dreaded, the terrible Kalichen Falls and Whirlpool Rapids.
+We hear the low rumbling of the water, and see the
+tops of the huge half-sunken rocks and the white foam of
+the tumbling waters. For a few moments the rowing ceases,
+while brave old Pierre gives his orders to the Indians in
+their own tongue. He knows that everything depends upon
+his steering and their rowing or backing at the right moment,
+with all the strength they possess. Years ago he was in a
+Hudson Bay Company <i>batteau</i> which capsized in these very
+rapids, and out of a crew of sixteen men eight perished in
+the water or on the rocks.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The Indians make their preparations for the struggle by
+stripping off all their superfluous clothing, removing their
+gloves, and each ties a bright-coloured handkerchief tightly
+about his head; poles and extra oars are laid ready in convenient
+places to reach should they become necessary, and
+then with a shout the Indians seize their oars and commence
+laying to them with all their strength. We are rushing
+forward at a fearful rate, owing to the combined exertions
+of the Indians and the racing current, and we shudder at the
+thought of striking any of the huge black rocks near which
+we glide. Now we are fairly in the rapids, and our boat is
+rushing madly through the foam and billows; the Indians
+are shouting at every stroke in their wild, savage glee; it is
+infectious; we shout too, and feel the wild exultation which
+comes to men in moments of great excitement and danger.
+Ugly masses of rocks show their heads above the troubled
+waters on every side, and sunken rocks are discernible by
+the action of the surf. Great billows strike us fore and aft,
+some falling squarely over the bows and drenching us to the
+waist. This is bad enough, but the worst is yet to come as
+we draw near with great velocity to a huge rock which appears
+dead ahead.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 274]</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Has old Pierre seen it? The water looks terribly cold
+as we think of his failing eyesight. Then an order, a shout,
+backing on one side and pulling on the other, and a quick
+stroke of the steering oar, and the rock appears on our
+right hand. Another command, and answering shout, and the
+oars bend like willows as the Indians struggle to get the
+boat out of the strong eddy into which Pierre had thrown
+her. Finally she shoots ahead and passes the rock like a
+flash, within less than an oar&#8217;s length of it, and we shout for
+joy and breathe freely again....</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;For half a mile the river is comparatively good, and our
+staunch crew rest on their oars preparatory to the next
+struggle, which soon comes, as some more rocky, foamy
+rapids are reached. Here the swells are very high and grand,
+and our boat at one time seems to stand almost perpendicularly.&#8221;
+(&#8220;Them&#8217;s Eagle Rapids,&#8221; Ike interrupted; &#8220;sloppier
+&#8217;n &#8217;ell, but straight.&#8221;)</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;For about nine miles further the river continues studded
+with rocks and swift, with ripples every mile or so, until
+we reach Foster Creek Rapids. Here the rocks become
+thicker ... and the water fierce and wild. For a mile
+more we plunge and toss through the foaming, roaring
+water, amid wild yells from our Indian friends, and we
+emerge from Foster Creek Rapids, which appear to be as
+rough and dangerous a place as any we have yet encountered.
+We are now out of Nespilem Canyon and through all
+the Nespilem Rapids, and we certainly feel greatly relieved....&#8221;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>Ike, renewing his quid, observed that they didn&#8217;t
+call it Nespilem Canyon any more, for the reason that
+that sounded too much like &#8220;Let&#8217;s spill &#8217;em!&#8221; and
+there was enough chance of that without asking for
+it. Roos, in bravado, asked Ike if he was going to<span class="pagenum">[Pg 275]</span>
+strip down like Symons&#8217; Indians did. The old Roman
+replied by pulling on a heavy mackinaw over his
+&#8220;toga,&#8221; saying that he&#8217;d rather have warmth than
+action once he was out in the &#8220;Columby.&#8221; That led
+me to ask him&mdash;with a touch of bravado on my own
+account&mdash;how long it would take him to &#8220;submarine&#8221;
+from Box Canyon to Kettle Falls. He grinned a bit
+sourly at that, and started slacking the lashings on
+the sweeps and pike-poles. Roos was just tying a
+red handkerchief round his head when Earl beckoned
+him forward to take the wheel while he gave the engine
+a final hurried tuning. Ike, saying that we would
+be hitting &#8220;White Cap&#8221; just round the next bend,
+gave me brief but pointed instructions in the use of
+sweep and pike-pole in case the engine went wrong.
+He had spat forth his quid again, just as at Hell Gate,
+and his unmuffled voice had a strange and penetrating
+<i>timbre</i>.</p>
+
+<p>White Cap Rapids are well named. Two rocky
+points converge at the head and force all the conflicting
+currents of the river into a straight, steep
+channel, heavily littered with boulders and fanged
+with outcropping bedrock. In that currents from
+opposite sides of the river are thrown together in one
+mad tumble of wallowing waters, it is much like Gordon
+Rapids, on the Big Bend. If anything, it is the
+rougher of the two, making up in volume what it
+lacks in drop. It is a rapid that would be particularly
+mean for a small boat, from the fact that there would
+be no way of keeping out of the middle of it, and that
+is a wet place&mdash;very. The launch had the power to
+hold a course just on the outer right edge of the rough<span class="pagenum">[Pg 276]</span>
+water, and so made a fairly comfortable passage of it.</p>
+
+<p>With the &#8220;intake&#8221; above Kalichen Falls full in
+view a half mile distant, Earl went back to his engine
+as we shot out at the foot of &#8220;White Cap&#8221; and gave
+it a few little &#8220;jiggering&#8221; caresses&mdash;much as a rider
+pats the neck of his hunter as he comes to a jump&mdash;before
+the final test. Then he covered it carefully
+with a double canvas and went back to the wheel.
+Roos he kept forward, standing-by to take the wheel
+or tinker the engine in case of emergency. The lad,
+though quite without &#8220;river sense,&#8221; was a first-class
+mechanic and fairly dependable at the steering wheel
+providing he was told what to do.</p>
+
+<p>The sounding board of the rocky walls gave a deep
+pulsating resonance to the heavy roar ahead, but it
+was not until we dipped over the &#8220;intake&#8221; that the
+full volume of it assailed us. Then it came with a
+rush, a palpable avalanche of sound that impacted on
+the ear-drums with the raw, grinding roar of a passing
+freight train. It was not from the huge rollers the
+launch was skirting so smartly that this tearing, rending
+roar came, but from an enormous black rock
+almost dead ahead. It was trying to do the same
+thing that big island in the middle of Hell Gate had
+tried to do, and was succeeding rather better. The
+latter had been able to do no more than split the river
+down the middle; this one was forcing the whole
+stream to do a side-step, and pretty nearly a somersault&mdash;hence
+Kalichen Falls and Whirlpool. Collision
+Rock was distinctly impressive, even from a
+launch.</p>
+
+<p>The sun was just dipping behind the southern wall<span class="pagenum">[Pg 277]</span>
+of Box Canyon (how funky I became later, when I
+was alone, about going into a rapid in that slanting,
+deceptive evening light!) as the launch hit the rough
+water. There was dancing iridescence in the flung
+foam-spurts above the combers, and at the right of
+Collision Bock the beginning of a rainbow which I
+knew would grow almost to a full circle when we
+looked back from below the fall. I snapped once with
+my kodak into the reeling tops of the waves that
+raced beside us, and then started to wind up to have a
+fresh film for the rock and the crowning rainbow.
+That highly artistic exposure was never made.</p>
+
+<p>Earl, instead of shutting off his engine as he did
+in running Spokane Rapids, opened up all the wider
+as he neared the barrier and its refluent wave. This
+was because the danger of striking submerged rocks
+was less than that of butting into that one outcrop
+of ragged reef that was coming so near to throwing
+the river over on its back. If the launch was to avoid
+telescoping on Collision Rock as the Columbia was
+doing, it must get enough way on to shoot across the
+current into the eddy on the left. That was what
+Earl was preparing for when he opened up the engine.
+With both boat and current doing well over twenty
+miles an hour, we were literally rushing down at the
+rocky barrier with the speed of an express train when
+Earl spun the wheel hard over and drove her sharply
+to the left. That was when I stopped kodaking.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of the rough water, the launch had been remarkably
+dry until her course was altered. Then she
+made up for lost time. The next ten or fifteen seconds
+was an unbroken deluge. With a great up-toss<span class="pagenum">[Pg 278]</span>
+of wake, she heeled all of forty-five degrees to starboard
+at the turn, seeing which, the river forthwith
+began piling over her port or up-stream side and making
+an astonishingly single-minded attempt to push
+her on the rest of the way under. Failing in that (for
+her draught was too great and her engine set too low
+to make her easily capsizable), the river tried to accomplish
+the same end by swamping her. Fore and
+aft the water came pouring over in a solid green flood,
+and kept right on pouring until Earl, having driven
+through to the point he wanted, turned her head down
+stream again and let her right herself.</p>
+
+<p>The water was swishing about my knees for a few
+moments in the cockpit, and it must have been worse
+than that forward. Then it drained down into the
+bilge without, apparently, greatly affecting her buoyancy.
+The higher-keyed staccato of the engine cut
+sharply through the heavier roar of the falls. It was
+still popping like a machine-gun, without a break.
+Reassured by that welcome sound, Earl orientated
+quickly as he shook the water from his eyes, and then
+put her full at the head of the falls. Just how much
+of a pitch there was at this stage of water I couldn&#8217;t
+quite make out. Nothing in comparison with the cataract
+there at high water (when the river rushes right
+over the top of Collision Rock) certainly; and yet it
+was a dizzy bit of a drop, with rather too deliberate
+a recovery to leave one quite comfortable. For a few
+seconds the launch&#8217;s head was deeply buried in the
+soft stuff of the souse-hole into which she took her
+header; the next her bows were high in the air as the
+up-boil caught her. Then her propellers began strik<span class="pagenum">[Pg 279]</span>ing
+into something solider than air-charged suds, and
+she shot jerkily away in a current so torn with swirls
+that it looked like a great length of twisted green-and-white
+rope. We had missed Collision Rock by thirty
+feet, and given the dreaded whirlpool behind it an
+even wider berth.</p>
+
+<p>The next thirteen miles we did at a rate that Ike
+figured must have been about the fastest travelling
+ever done on the Columbia. The current runs at
+from ten to twenty miles an hour all the way from the
+head of Box Canyon to Bridgeport, and Earl, racing
+to reach Foster Creek Rapids before it was dark, ran
+just about wide open nearly the whole distance. It
+was real train speed at which we sped down the darkening
+gorge&mdash;possibly over forty miles an hour at
+times. Earl knew the channel like a book, and said
+there was nothing to bother about in the way of rocks
+as long as he could see. We were out of the closely-walled
+part of the canyon at Eagle Rapids, and the
+sunset glow was bright upon the water ahead. There
+is a series of short, steep riffles here, extending for a
+mile and a half, and Earl slammed right down the
+lot of them on the high. Ike was right about their
+being sloppy, but the beacon of the afterglow gave
+the bearing straight through. Two miles further on
+the river appeared suddenly to be filled with swimming
+hippos&mdash;round-topped black rocks just showing
+above the water; but each one was silhouetted against
+a surface that glinted rose and gold, and so was as
+easy to miss as in broad daylight.</p>
+
+<p>It was all but full night as the roar of Foster Creek
+Rapids began to drown the rattle of the engine, with<span class="pagenum">[Pg 280]</span>
+only a luminous lilac mist floating above the south-western
+mountains to mark where the sun had set;
+but it was enough&mdash;just enough&mdash;to throw a glow of
+pale amethyst on the frothy tops of the white-caps,
+leaving the untorn water to roll on in fluid anthracite.
+Earl barely eased her at the head, and then
+plunged her down a path of polished ebony, with the
+blank blur of rocks looming close on the right and an
+apparitional line of half-guessed rollers booming
+boisterously to the left. For three-quarters of a mile
+we raced that ghostly Ku-Klux-Klan procession, and
+Roos, who was timing with his radium-faced watch,
+announced that we had made the distance in something
+like seventy seconds. Then there was quieter
+water, and presently the lights of Bridgeport. Earl
+put us off opposite the town, and ran down a quarter
+of a mile farther to get out of the still swiftly-running
+current and berth the launch in a quiet eddy
+below the sawmill.</p>
+
+<p>Bridgeport, for a town a score of miles from the
+railway, proved unexpectedly metropolitan, with electric
+lights, banks, movie theatres, and a sign at the
+main crossing prohibiting &#8220;Left Hand Turns.&#8221; The
+people, for a country town, showed very diverting
+evidences of sophistication. At the movies that night
+(where we went to get the election returns), they
+continually laughed at the villain and snickered at
+the heroine&#8217;s platitudinous sub-titles; and finally,
+when word came that it was Harding beyond all
+doubt, they forgot the picture completely and gave
+their undivided attention to joshing the town&#8217;s only
+avowed Democrat. The victim bore up fairly well as<span class="pagenum">[Pg 281]</span>
+long as his baiters stuck to &#8220;straight politics,&#8221; but
+when they accused him of wearing an imitation leather
+coat made of brown oil-cloth, the shaft got under his
+armour. With a ruddy blush that was the plainest
+kind of a confession of guilt, he pushed out to the
+aisle and beat a disorderly retreat.</p>
+
+<p>A prosperous apple farmer sitting next me (he
+had been telling me what his crop would bring the
+while the naturally vamp-faced heroine was trying
+to register pup-innocence and &#8220;gold-cannot-buy-me&#8221;
+as the villain was choking her) sniffed contemptuously
+as the discomfited Democrat disappeared through the
+swinging doors. &#8220;Seems to feel worse about being
+caught with an imitation coat than about being an
+imitation politician. Better send him to Congress!&#8221;
+Now <i>wasn&#8217;t</i> that good for a small town that didn&#8217;t
+even have a railroad? I&#8217;ve known men of cities of all
+of a hundred thousand, with street cars, municipal
+baths, Carnegie libraries and women&#8217;s clubs, who
+hadn&#8217;t the measure of Congress as accurately as that.
+I wish there had been time to see more of Bridgeport.</p>
+
+<p>It was down to twelve above when we turned out
+in the morning, with the clear air tingling with frost
+particles and incipient ice-fringes around the eddies.
+Fortunately, Earl had bailed both boats the night before
+and drained his engine. Just below Bridgeport
+the river, which had been running almost due west
+from the mouth of the Spokane River, turned off to
+the north. In a slackening current we approached
+the small patch of open country at the mouth of the
+Okinagan. The latter, which heads above the lake
+of the same name in British Columbia, appears an<span class="pagenum">[Pg 282]</span>
+insignificant stream as viewed from the Columbia, and
+one would never suspect that it is navigable for good-sized
+stern-wheelers for a considerable distance above
+its mouth. On the right bank of the Columbia, just
+above the mouth of the Okinagan, is the site of what
+was perhaps the most important of the original Astor
+posts of the interior. As a sequel to the war of 1812
+it was turned over to the Northwest Company, and
+ultimately passed under the control of Hudson Bay.
+I could see nothing but a barren flat at this point
+where so much history was made, but a splendid apple
+orchard occupies most of the fertile bench in the loop
+of the bend on the opposite bank.</p>
+
+<p>The mouth of the Okinagan marks the most northerly
+point of the Washington Big Bend of the Columbia.
+From there it flows southwesterly for a few
+miles to the mouth of the Methow, before turning almost
+directly south. We passed Brewster without
+landing, but pulled up alongside a big stern-wheeler
+moored against the bank at Potaris, just above the
+swift-running Methow Rapids. It was the <i>Bridgeport</i>,
+and Ike had spoken of her skipper, whom he
+called &#8220;Old Cap,&#8221; many times and with the greatest
+affection. &#8220;Old Cap&#8221; proved to be the Captain McDermid,
+who had run the <i>Shoshone</i> down through
+Grand Rapids, and who was rated as the nerviest
+steamer skipper left on the Columbia.</p>
+
+<p>Captain McDermid was waiting on the bow of his
+steamer to give us a hand aboard. He had read of
+our voyage in the Spokane papers, he said, and had
+been on the lookout for several days. At first he had
+watched for a skiff, but later, when he had heard that<span class="pagenum">[Pg 283]</span>
+we had pushed off with Ike on a raft, it was logs he
+had been keeping a weather eye lifting for. When
+Ike described the raft to him, he wagged his head
+significantly, and said he reckoned it was just as well
+we had changed to the launch for Box Canyon. &#8220;It
+isn&#8217;t everybody that can navigate under water like
+this old rat here,&#8221; he added, giving Ike a playful prod
+in the ribs.</p>
+
+<p>As we were planning to go on through to the mouth
+of the Chelan River, in the hope of getting up to the
+lake that afternoon, an hour was the most I could
+stop over on the <i>Bridgeport</i> for a yarn with Captain
+McDermid, where I would have been glad of a
+week. He told me, very simply but graphically, of
+the run down Grand Rapids, and a little of his work
+with stern or side-wheelers in other parts of the world,
+which included a year on the upper Amazon and about
+the same time as skipper of a ferry running from the
+Battery to Staten Island. Then he spoke, with a
+shade of sadness, of the <i>Bridgeport</i> and his plans
+for the future. In all the thousand miles of the Columbia
+between the Dalles and its source, she had
+been the last steamer to maintain a regular service.
+(This was not reckoning the Arrow Lakes, of course).
+But the close of the present apple season had marked
+the end. Between the increasing competition of railways
+and trucks, the game was no longer worth the
+candle. He, and his partners in the <i>Bridgeport</i>,
+had decided to try to take her to Portland and offer
+her for sale. She was very powerfully engined and
+would undoubtedly bring a good price&mdash;once they
+got her there. But getting her to Portland was the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 284]</span>
+rub. There were locks at the Cascades and the Dalles,
+but Rock Island, Cabinet, Priest and Umatilla,
+to say nothing of a number of lesser rapids would
+have to be run. It was a big gamble, insurance, of
+course, being out of the question on any terms. The
+<i>Douglas</i>, half the size of the <i>Bridgeport</i>, had
+tried it a couple of months ago, and&mdash;well, we would
+see the consequences on the rocks below Cabinet Rapids.
+Got through Rock Island all right, and then
+went wrong in Cabinet, which wasn&#8217;t half as bad.
+Overconfidence, probably, &#8220;Old Cap&#8221; thought. But
+he felt sure that <i>he</i> would have better luck, especially
+if he went down first and made a good study of Rock
+Island and Priest; and that was one of the things
+that he had wanted to see me about. If there was
+room for him in the skiff, he would like to run through
+with us as far as Pasco, and brush up on the channel
+as we went along. If things were so he could get
+away, he would join us at Wenatchee on our return
+from Chelan. I jumped at the chance without hesitation,
+for it would give us the benefit of the experience
+and help of the very best man on that part of
+the Columbia in getting through the worst of the
+rapids that remained to be run. I had been a good
+deal concerned about how the sinister cascade of Rock
+Island was to be negotiated, to say nothing of the
+long series of riffles called Priest Rapids, which had
+even a worse record. I parted with Captain McDermid
+with the understanding that we would get in
+touch by phone a day or two later, when I knew definitely
+when we would return to the river from Chelan,
+and make the final arrangements.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 285]</span></p>
+
+<p>Leaving Ike on the <i>Bridgeport</i> for a yarn with
+his old friend, we pushed off in the launch for Chelan.
+Methow Rapids, just below the river of that name,
+was the only fast water encountered, and that was a
+good, straight run in a fairly clear channel. We
+landed half a mile below the mouth of the Chelan
+River, where the remains of a road led down through
+the boulders to the tower of an abandoned ferry. Earl
+put about at once and headed back up-stream, expecting
+to pick up Ike at Potaris and push on through to
+Bridgeport that evening.</p>
+
+<p>We parted from both Earl and Ike in all good
+feeling and with much regret. Each in his line was
+one of the best men I have ever had to do with. Ike&mdash;in
+spite of the extent to which his movements were
+dominated by the maxim that &#8220;time is made for
+slaves,&#8221; or, more likely, for that very reason&mdash;was a
+most priceless character. I only hope I shall be able
+to recruit him for another river voyage in the not-too-distant
+future.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page286" name="page286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XII<br />
+<br />
+CHELAN TO PASCO</h2>
+
+<p>For two reasons I am writing but briefly of our
+visit to Lake Chelan: first, because it was entirely incidental
+to the Columbia voyage, and, second, because
+one who has only made the run up and down this
+loveliest of mountain lakes has no call to write of it.
+Chelan is well named &#8220;Beautiful Water.&#8221; Sixty
+miles long and from one to four miles wide, cliff-walled
+and backed by snowy mountains and glaciers,
+it has much in common with the Arrow Lakes of the
+upper Columbia, and, by the same tokens, Kootenay
+Lake. Among the large mountain lakes of the world
+it has few peers.</p>
+
+<p>The Chelan River falls three hundred and eighty-five
+feet in the four miles from the outlet of the lake
+to where it tumbles into the Columbia. It is a foam-white
+torrent all the way, with a wonderful &#8220;Horse-shoe&#8221;
+gorge near the lower end which has few rivals
+for savage grandeur. One may reach the lake from
+the Columbia by roads starting either north or south
+of the draining river. We went by the latter, as it
+was the more conveniently reached from the ferry-man&#8217;s
+house where we had left our outfit after landing.
+The town of Chelan, at the lower end of the
+lake, is a lovely little village, with clean streets, bright
+shops, and a very comfortable hotel. I have forgotten
+the name of the hotel, but not the fact that it
+serves a big pitcher of thick, yellow cream with every<span class="pagenum">[Pg 287]</span>
+breakfast. So far as my own experience goes, it is
+the only hotel in America or Europe which has perpetuated
+that now all but extinct ante-bellum custom.
+In case there may be any interested to know&mdash;even
+actually to enjoy&mdash;what our forefathers had with
+their coffee and mush, I will state that three transcontinental
+railways pass within a hundred miles to the
+southward of Chelan. It will prove well worth the
+stop-over; and there is the lake besides.</p>
+
+<p>The lower end of Lake Chelan is surrounded by
+rolling hills, whose fertile soil is admirably adapted
+to apples, now an important industry in that region;
+the upper end is closely walled with mountains and
+high cliffs&mdash;really an extremely deep gorge half filled
+with water. Indeed, the distinction of being the
+&#8220;deepest furrow Time has wrought on the face of the
+Western Hemisphere&#8221; is claimed for upper Chelan
+Lake&mdash;this because there are cliffs which rise almost
+vertically for six thousand feet from the water&#8217;s edge,
+and at a point where the sounding lead has needed
+nearly a third of that length of line to bring it back
+from a rocky bottom which is indented far below the
+level of the sea.</p>
+
+<p>The head of Chelan is far back in the heart of the
+Cascades, in the glaciers of which its feeding streams
+take their rise. The main tributaries are Railroad
+Creek, which flows in from the south about two-thirds
+of the way up, and Stehekin River, which comes in
+at the head. These two streams are credited with
+some of the finest waterfalls, gorges and cliff and
+glacier-begirt mountain valleys to be found in North
+America, and it is possible to see the best of both in<span class="pagenum">[Pg 288]</span>
+the course of a single &#8220;circular&#8221; trip by packtrain.
+To my great regret, it was not practicable to get an
+outfit together in the limited time at our disposal.
+The best we could do so late in the season was a hurried
+run up to Rainbow Falls, a most striking cataract,
+three hundred and fifty feet in height, descending
+over the cliffs of the Stehekin River four miles
+above the head of the lake. Roos made a number of
+scenic shots here, but on a roll which&mdash;whether in the
+camera or the laboratory it was impossible to determine&mdash;was
+badly light-struck. Similar misfortune
+attended a number of other shots he made (through
+the courtesy of the Captain of the mail launch in running
+near the cliffs) of waterfalls tumbling directly
+into the lake. There are many slips between the cup
+and the lip&mdash;the camera and the screen, I should say&mdash;in
+scenic movie work.</p>
+
+<p><a id="page288" name="page288"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/illo_356.jpg" width="600" height="459" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">A ROCKY CLIFF NEAR HEAD OF LAKE
+CHELAN (<i>left</i>)<br />
+
+RAINBOW FALLS, 350 FEET HIGH, ABOVE
+HEAD OF LAKE CHELAN (<i>right</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><a id="page289" name="page289"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 437px;">
+<img src="images/illo_357.jpg" width="437" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">WENATCHEE UNDER THE DUST CLOUD OF ITS SPEEDING
+AUTOS (<i>above</i>)<br />
+HEAD OF ROCK ISLAND RAPIDS (<i>below</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>We arrived back at the town of Chelan in time for
+lunch on the sixth of November, and a couple of hours
+later were down at the Columbia ready to push off
+again. I had been unable to get in touch with Captain
+McDermid by phone, but was confident that he
+would turn up in good time at Wenatchee. As there
+was nothing between that point and the mouth of the
+Chelan in the way of really bad water, I had no hesitation
+in making the run without a &#8220;pilot.&#8221; Launching
+<i>Imshallah</i> below the old ferry-tower at two
+o&#8217;clock, we reached the little town of Entiat, just
+above the river and rapids of that name, at five. The
+skiff rode higher with Captain Armstrong and his
+luggage out, her increased buoyancy compensating
+in a measure for the less intelligent handling she had.
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 289]</span>Roos took the steering paddle in the stern, and I continued
+rowing from the forward thwart. All of the
+luggage was shifted well aft. The current was fairly
+swift all the way, but the two or three rapids encountered
+were not difficult to pass. Ribbon Cliff, two
+thousand feet high and streaked with strata of yellow,
+grey and black clays, was the most striking physical
+feature seen in the course of this easy afternoon&#8217;s
+run.</p>
+
+<p>Entiat is a prosperous little apple-growing centre,
+and, with the packing season at its height, was jammed
+to the roof with workers. Rooms at the hotel
+were out of the question. Roos slept on a couch in
+the parlour, which room was also occupied by three
+drummers and two truck drivers. I had a shakedown
+on a canvased-in porch, on which were six beds
+and four cots. My room-mates kept me awake a good
+part of the night growling because their wages had
+just been cut to seven dollars a day, now that the rush
+was over. I would have been the more surprised that
+any one should complain about a wage like that had
+not a trio of farmettes&mdash;or rather packettes&mdash;at the
+big family dinner table been comparing notes of their
+takings. One twinkling-fingered blonde confessed to
+having averaged thirteen dollars a day for the last
+week packing apples, while a brown-bloomered brunette
+had done a bit better than twelve. The third
+one&mdash;attenuated, stoop-shouldered and spectacled&mdash;was
+in the dumps because sore fingers had scaled
+her average down to ten-fifty&mdash;&#8220;hardly worth coming
+out from Spokane for,&#8221; she sniffed. Roos tried to
+engage them in conversation, and started out auspi<span class="pagenum">[Pg 290]</span>ciously
+with a description of running Box Canyon.
+But the gimlet-eyed thin one asked him what he got
+for doing a thing like that, and promptly their interest
+faded. And why <i>should</i> they have cared to waste
+time over a mere seventy-five-dollar-a-week cameraman?
+But it was something even to have eaten pumpkin
+pie with the plutocracy.</p>
+
+<p>The swift-flowing Entiat River has dumped a good
+many thousand tons of boulders into the Columbia,
+and most of these have lodged to form a broad, shallow
+bar a short distance below the mouth of the
+former. The Columbia hasn&#8217;t been able quite to make
+up its mind the best way to go here, and so has hit on
+a sort of a compromise by using three or four channels.
+Roos found himself in a good deal the same sort of
+dilemma when we came rolling along there on the
+morning of the seventh, but as a boat&mdash;if it is going
+to preserve its entity as such&mdash;cannot run down more
+than one channel at a time, <i>Imshallah</i> found the attempt
+at a compromise to which she was committed
+only ended in butting her head against a low gravel
+island. It was impossible to make the main middle
+channel from there, but we poled off without much
+difficulty and went bumping off down a shallow channel
+to the extreme right. She kissed off a boulder once
+or twice before winning through to deeper water, but
+not hard enough to do her much harm. It was a distinctly
+messy piece of work, though, and I was glad
+that Ike or Captain Armstrong was not there to see
+their teachings put into practice.</p>
+
+<p>The river cliffs became lower as we ran south, and
+after passing a commanding point on the right bank<span class="pagenum">[Pg 291]</span>
+we came suddenly upon the open valley of the Wenatchee,
+the nearest thing to a plain we had seen in
+all the hundreds of miles from the source of the Columbia.
+There are not over twenty to thirty square
+miles of land that is even comparatively level here,
+but to eyes which had been wont for two months to
+seek sky-line with a forty-five degree upward slant
+of gaze it was like coming out of an Andean pass
+upon the boundless Pampas of Argentina. Wenatchee
+was in sight for several miles before we reached
+it, an impressive water-front of mills, warehouses and
+tall buildings. Over all floated a dark pall, such as
+one sees above Pittsburgh, Birmingham, Essen or any
+other great factory city, but we looked in vain for the
+forest of chimneys it would have taken to produce that
+bituminous blanket. As we drew nearer we discovered
+that what we had taken to be smoke was a
+mighty dust-cloud. It was a Sunday at the height of
+the apple-packing season, and all the plutocratic
+packettes were joy-riding. There were, it is true,
+more Fords than Rolls-Royces in the solid double
+procession of cars that jammed the main street for a
+mile, but that was doubtless because the supply of the
+former had held out better. I can&#8217;t believe that the
+consideration of price had anything to do with it.</p>
+
+<p>The hotel, of course, was full, even with the dining-room
+set thick with cots, but by admiring a haberdashery
+drummer&#8217;s line of neck-ties for an hour, I
+managed to get him to &#8220;will&#8221; me his room and bath
+when he departed that afternoon. Roos employed
+similar strategy with a jazz movie orchestra fiddler,
+but his train didn&#8217;t pull out until four-thirty in the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 292]</span>
+morning. A young reporter from the local paper
+called for an interview in the afternoon, and told us
+the story of the <i>Douglas</i>, the steamer which Captain
+McDermid had mentioned as having been lost in
+trying to take her to Portland. Selig had gone along
+to write the story of the run through Rock Island
+Rapids, the first to be reached and the place which
+was reckoned as the most dangerous she would have
+to pass. When she had come out of that sinister gorge
+without mishap, he had them land him at the first
+convenient place in the quiet water below, from where
+he made his way to the railway and hurried back to
+Wenatchee with his story. That he had seen all the
+best of the excitement, he had no doubt. A quarter
+of an hour after Selig left her, the <i>Douglas</i> was a
+total wreck on the rocks below Cabinet Rapids. He
+didn&#8217;t know just how it had happened, but said we
+would find what was left of her still where she had
+struck.</p>
+
+<p>Wenatchee is the liveliest kind of a town, and
+claims to be the largest apple-shipping point in the
+United States. It also has a daily paper which claims
+to be the largest in the world in a city of under ten
+thousand population. I can easily believe this is true.
+I have seen many papers in cities of fifty or a hundred
+thousand that were not to be compared with it
+for both telegraphic and local news. Banks are on
+almost every corner for a half dozen blocks of the
+main street of Wenatchee, and every one seems to
+have a bank account. I saw stacks of check-books
+by the cashiers&#8217; desks in restaurants and shops, and<span class="pagenum">[Pg 293]</span>
+in one of the ice cream parlours I saw a young packette
+paying for her nut sundae with a check.</p>
+
+<p>No word came from Captain McDermid during the
+day, and after endeavouring to reach him by phone all
+of the following forenoon, I reluctantly decided to
+push on without him. This was a good deal of a disappointment,
+not only because I felt that I was going
+to need his help mighty badly, but also because I was
+anxious to see more of him personally. A man who
+will take a steamer containing his wife and children
+down Rickey&#8217;s Rapids of the Columbia isn&#8217;t to be met
+with every day. Roos was anxious to get a picture of
+the &#8220;Farmer Who Would See the Sea&#8221; working his
+way down Rock Island Rapids, and as his machine
+was about the most valuable thing there was to lose
+in getting down there, it seemed up to me to do what
+I could. But for the first time since we pushed off
+to run the Big Bend, I unpacked and kept out my inflatable
+&#8220;Gieve&#8221; life-preserver waistcoat, which I had
+worn in the North Sea during the war, and which I
+had brought along on the &#8220;off chance.&#8221; Selig came
+down with his Graflex to get a photo of our departure
+for the <i>World</i>, but declined an invitation for another
+run through Rock Island Rapids.</p>
+
+<p>There is a long and lofty highway bridge spanning
+the Columbia half a mile below Wenatchee, which
+fine structure also appears to be used on occasion as
+a city dump. That it was functioning in this capacity
+at the very moment we were about to pass under it
+between the two mid-stream piers did not become
+apparent until the swift current had carried us so<span class="pagenum">[Pg 294]</span>
+close that it was not safe to try to alter course either
+to left or right. There was nothing to do but run the
+gauntlet of the swervily swooping dust-tailed comets
+whose heads appeared to run the whole gamut of discard
+of a rather extravagant town of eight thousand
+people, all disdainful of &#8220;used&#8221; things. It would
+have been a rare chance to renew our outfit, only most
+of the contributions were speeding too rapidly at the
+end of their hundred-foot drop to make them entirely
+acceptable. &#8220;Low bridge!&#8221; I shouted to Roos, and
+swung hard onto my oars, yelling a lung-full at every
+stroke in the hope that the busy dumpers might stay
+their murderous hands at the last moment. Vain
+hope! My final frightened upward glance told me
+that the nauseous cataclysm was augmenting rather
+than lessening.</p>
+
+<p>I put <i>Imshallah</i> into some mighty nasty looking
+rapids with a lot less apprehension than I drove her
+into that reeking second-hand barrage, that Niagara
+of things that people didn&#8217;t want. Doubtless it was
+the fact that <i>I</i> wanted the stuff still less than they did
+that lent power to my arms and gave me a strength
+far transcending that of ordinary endeavour. Roos
+swore afterward that I lifted her right out of the
+water, just as a speeding hydroplane lifts at the top
+of its jump. This may have been so; but if it was,
+Roos sensed it rather than saw it, for his humped
+shoulders were folded tightly over his ducked head,
+like the wings of a newly hatched chicken. Anyhow,
+the little lady drove through safely, just as she always
+had. But where she had always emerged dewy-fresh
+and dancing jauntily on the tips of her toes from the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 295]</span>
+roughest of rapids, here she oozed out upon an oil-slicked
+stream with the &#8220;Mark of the Beast&#8221; on her
+fore and aft. I mean that literally. That accursed
+little &#8220;White Wings&#8221; that sat up aloft to take toll of
+the life of poor Jack, must have had some kind of a
+slaughter-house dumping contract&mdash;and <i>Imshallah</i>
+got a smothering smear of the proceeds. Also
+a trailing length of burlap and a bag of cinders. As
+the latter burst when it kissed off my shoulder, Roos&#8217;
+joke about my wearing sack-cloth-and-ashes was not
+entirely without point. The only article of value accruing
+was the shaving-brush which fell in Roos&#8217; lap.
+He felt sure it must have been thrown away by mistake,
+for it had real camel&#8217;s-hair bristles, and he liked
+it better than his own&mdash;after the ashes had worked out
+of it. And yet it might have been a lot worse. I only
+<i>heard</i> the splash of the wash-boiler that must have hit
+just ahead of her, but the sewing machine that grazed
+her stern jazzed right across my line of vision.</p>
+
+<p>Up to that time Surprise Rapids of the Big Bend
+of Canada had stood as the superlative in the way of a
+really nasty hole to go through; from then on &#8220;Surprise
+Rapids of Wenatchee Bridge&#8221; claimed pride of
+place in this respect.</p>
+
+<p>Swabbing down decks as best we could without
+landing, we pushed ahead. I was anxious to get down
+to Rock Island Rapids in time to look over the channels,
+if not to start through, before dark. We should
+have known better than to treat a dainty lady like
+<i>Imshallah</i> in that way. It was bad enough to have
+subjected her to the indignity of running the garbage
+barrage; not to give her a proper bath after it was un<span class="pagenum">[Pg 296]</span>pardonable.
+At least that was the way she seemed
+to look at it, and so I never felt inclined to blame her
+for taking matters into her own hands. Wallowing
+through a sharp bit of rapid a mile below the bridge
+washed the outside of her bright and clean as ever,
+but it was the stain of that slaughter-house stuff on
+the inside that rankled. She was restive and cranky
+in the swirls and eddies all down a long stretch of
+slack water running between black basalt islands, and
+as the river narrowed and began to tumble over a
+boisterous rapid above the Great Northern Railway
+bridge, she began jumping about nervously, like a
+spirited horse watching his chance for a bolt.</p>
+
+<p>It was Roos&#8217; business, of course, to watch where
+she was going, but he made no claim of being a qualified
+steersman; so that there was really no excuse for
+my failing to watch our capricious lady&#8217;s symptoms
+and keep a steadying hand on her. Probably I <i>should</i>
+have done so had not a freight train run out on the
+bridge just as we neared the head of the rapid, throwing
+out so striking a smoke-smudge against a background
+of sun-silvered clouds that I needs must try
+for a hurried snapshot. That done, we were close to
+the &#8220;V&#8221; of the drop-off, and I had just time to see
+that there were three or four rather terrifying rollers
+tumbling right in the heart of the riffle, evidently
+thrown up by a jagged outcrop of bedrock very close
+to the surface. I would never have chanced putting
+even a big <i>batteau</i> directly into so wild a welter, but,
+with fairly good water to the left, there was no need
+of our passing within ten feet of the centre of disturbance.
+The course was so plain that I do not re<span class="pagenum">[Pg 297]</span>call
+even calling any warning to Roos as I sat down
+and resumed my oars. Each of us claimed the other
+was responsible for what followed, but I think the
+real truth of it was that <i>Imshallah</i> had made up her
+mind to have a bath without further delay, and
+couldn&#8217;t have been stopped anyhow.</p>
+
+<p>I never did see just what hit us, nor how we were
+hit; for it all came with the suddenness of a sand-bagging.
+Roos was stroking away confidently, and appeared
+to be singing, from the movement of his lips.
+The words, if any, were drowned in the roar. All at
+once his eyes became wild and he lashed out with a
+frenzied paddle-pull that was evidently intended to
+throw her head to the left. The next instant the
+crash came&mdash;sudden, shattering, savage. I remember
+distinctly wondering why Roos&#8217; eyes were shifted
+apprehensively upward, like those of a man who fancies
+he is backing away from a bombing airplane.
+And I think I recall spray dashing two or three
+lengths astern of us, before the solid battering ram
+of the water hit me on the back, and Roos in the face.
+And all <i>Imshallah</i> did was to stand straight up on
+her hind legs and let little demi-semi-quivers run up
+and down her back like a real lady exulting in the
+tickle of a shower-bath. Then she lay down and let
+the river run over her; then reared up on her hind legs
+again. Twice or thrice she repeated that routine,
+when, apparently satisfied that her ablutions were
+complete, she settled down and ran the rest of the
+rapid sedately and soberly, and, I am afraid, without
+much help from either oars or paddle. I have
+always thought Roos was particularly happy in his<span class="pagenum">[Pg 298]</span>
+description of how it looked for&#8217;ard just after that
+first big wave hit us. &#8220;The top of that comber was
+ten feet above your head,&#8221; he said, &#8220;and it came curving
+over you just like the &#8216;canopy&#8217; of a &#8216;Jack-in-the-Pulpit.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>With <i>Imshallah</i> rather more than half full of
+water, and consequently not a lot more freeboard for
+the moment than a good thick plank, it was just as
+well that no more rapids appeared before we found a
+patch of bank flat enough to allow us to land and
+dump her. Fresh as a daisy inside and out, she was
+as sweet and reasonable when we launched her again
+as any other lady of quality after she has had her
+own way. Not far below the bridge we tied up near
+the supply-pipe of a railway pumping station on the
+left bank. With the black gorge of Rock Island
+Rapids three-quarters of a mile below sending up an
+ominous growl, this appeared to be the proper place
+to stop and ask the way.</p>
+
+<p>The engineer of the pumping-station said that he
+knew very little about the big rapid, as he had only
+been on his present job for a week. He had only seen
+the left-hand channel, and, as an old sailor, he was
+dead certain no open boat ever launched could live
+to run the lower end of it. He said he thought the
+safest way would be to put the skiff on his push-car,
+run it down the tracks a couple of miles, and launch
+it below the worst of the rapids. I told him we might
+be very glad to do this as a last resort, but, as it would
+involve a lot of time and labour, I would like to look
+at the rapid first. He told us to make free of his
+bunk-house in case we spent the night there, and sug<span class="pagenum">[Pg 299]</span>gested
+we call in at a farm house a couple of hundred
+yards down the track and talk with an old man there,
+who would probably know all about the rapid.</p>
+
+<p>That proved to be a good tip. The farmer turned
+out to be an old-time stern-wheeler captain, who had
+navigated the upper Columbia for many years in the
+early days. He was greatly interested in our trip,
+and said that we ought to have no great trouble with
+the rapids ahead, that is, as long as we didn&#8217;t try to
+take undue liberties with them. The safest way to
+get through would be to land at the head of the big
+island that divided the channels and line right down
+the left side of it. It would be pretty hard work, but
+we ought not to get in wrong if we took our time. He
+was sorry he couldn&#8217;t go down and look the place
+over with us, but it happened that his youngest daughter
+was being married that evening, and things were
+sort of crowding for the rest of the day. <i>That</i> explained
+why the yard was full of flivvers, and the numerous
+dressed-up men lounging around the porches.
+We decided that the groom was the lad, with an aggressively
+fresh-shaven gill, who was being made the
+butt of a joke every time he sauntered up to a new
+group, and that the bride was the buxom miss having
+her chestnut hair combed at a window, with at least
+half a dozen other girls looking on.</p>
+
+<p>Roos was very keen to have the wedding postponed
+to the following morning, and changed to an <i>al fresco</i>
+affair which he could shoot with good light. With a
+little study, he said, he was sure he could work it into
+his &#8220;continuity.&#8221; Perhaps, for instance, the
+&#8220;Farmer-Who-Would-See-the-Sea&#8221;
+might start them off on<span class="pagenum">[Pg 300]</span>
+their honeymoon by taking them a few miles down
+river in his boat. That would lend &#8220;heart interest and....&#8221;
+I throttled that scheme in the bud before my
+impetuous companion could broach it to the principals.
+I wasn&#8217;t going to tempt the providence that had
+saved me whole from the wrath of Jock o&#8217; Windermere
+by taking a chance with any more &#8220;bride stuff.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The black-walled gorge of Rock Island is one of
+the grimmest-looking holes on the Columbia, and of
+all hours of the day sunset, when the deep shadows
+are banking thick above the roaring waters, is the
+least cheery time to pay it a visit. Somewhat as at
+Hell Gate, the river splits upon a long, rocky island,
+the broader, shallower channel being to the right, and
+the narrower, deeper one to the left. The upper end
+of the right-hand channel was quiet and straight; indeed,
+it was the one I would have been prompted to
+take had not the old river captain at the farm-house
+inclined to the opinion that the lining on the other
+would be easier. The former had been the course
+Symons had taken, and he mentioned that the lower
+end was very crooked and rocky. I decided, therefore,
+to brave the difficulties that I could see something
+of in advance rather than to blunder into those
+I knew not of. Although the left channel began to
+speed up right from the head, I saw enough of it to
+be sure that we could run at least the upper two-thirds
+of it without much risk, and that there was then
+a good eddy from which to land on the side next to
+the railroad. This was the head of the main fall&mdash;an
+extremely rough cascade having a drop of ten feet in
+four hundred yards. Down that we would have to<span class="pagenum">[Pg 301]</span>
+line. I was quite in agreement with the pump-station
+man that no open boat would live in those wildly rolling
+waters. Fearful of complications, I restrained
+Roos from accepting an invitation to the wedding, and
+we turned in early for a good night&#8217;s sleep at the
+pump-station bunk-house.</p>
+
+<p>The game old octogenarian had asked me especially
+to hail him from the river in the morning, so that he
+could go down and help us through the rapids. I
+should have been glad indeed of his advice in what I
+knew would be a mighty awkward operation, but had
+not the heart to disturb him when I saw there was no
+curl of smoke from the kitchen chimney when we
+drifted by at eight o&#8217;clock. The roar of fast and furious
+revelry had vied with the roar of the rapids pretty
+well all night, culminating with a crescendo leading up
+to the old shoe barrage at about daybreak. It didn&#8217;t
+seem quite human to keep the old boy lining down river
+all morning after lining up against that big barrel of
+&#8220;sweet cider&#8221; all night.... (No, I hadn&#8217;t missed
+that little detail; that was one of the reasons I had
+kept Roos away). So we drifted on down toward
+the big noise alone. The pump-man promised he
+would come down to help as soon as his tank was
+filled, but that wouldn&#8217;t be for an hour or more.</p>
+
+<p>Rock Island Rapids are in a gorge within a gorge.
+The black water-scoured canyon with the foam-white
+river at the bottom of it is not over fifty feet
+deep in the sheer. Back of high-water mark there is
+a narrow strip of bench on either side, above which
+rises a thousand feet or more of brown bluff. The
+eastern wall still cast its shadow on the river, but the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 302]</span>
+reflection of the straw-yellow band of broadening
+light creeping down the western bluff filled the gorge
+with a diffused golden glow that threw every rock and
+riffle into sharp relief. It was a dozen times better
+to see by than the blinding brilliance of direct light,
+and, knowing just what to expect for the next quarter-mile,
+I ran confidently into the head of the rapid.
+Early morning is the hour of confidence and optimism
+on the flowing road; evening the hour of doubt, indecision
+and apprehension.</p>
+
+<p>A submerged rock at the entrance to the left channel,
+which I had marked mentally from the high bank
+the night before as an obstacle to be avoided, proved
+rather harder to locate from water level; but Roos
+spotted it in time to give it a comfortable berth in
+shooting by. Then the abrupt black walls closed in,
+and we ran for three hundred yards in fast but not
+dangerous water. The current took us straight into
+the eddy I had picked for a landing place, and the
+skiff slid quietly into a gentle swirling loop of back-water,
+with nothing but a huge jutting rock intervening
+between that secure haven and the brink of the
+fall. So far all had gone exactly as planned. Now
+we were to see how it looked for lining.</p>
+
+<p>Roos set up on a shelf and cranked while I lined
+round the projecting rock, an operation which proved
+unexpectedly simple once it was started right. At
+my first attempt I failed to swing the boat out of the
+eddy, and as a consequence she was brought back
+against the rock and given rather a stiff bump. The
+next time I launched her higher up, and paying out
+plenty of scope, let her go right out into the main<span class="pagenum">[Pg 303]</span>
+current and over the &#8220;intake&#8221; of the fall. It took
+brisk following up to keep the line from fouling, and
+after that was cleared I didn&#8217;t have quite as much
+time as I needed to take in slack and brace myself for
+the coming jerk. The result was <i>Imshallah</i> got such
+a way on in her hundred feet of run that, like a <i>locoed</i>
+broncho pulling up and galloping off with its picket-pin,
+she took me right along over and off the big rock
+and into the water below. To my great surprise,
+where I was expecting to go straight into the whirlpool
+one usually finds behind a projecting rock, I
+landed in water that was both slack and comparatively
+shallow. Recovering quickly from my stumble, I
+braced against the easy current and checked the runaway
+with little trouble. Roos, who had missed the
+last part of the action, wanted me to do that jump
+and stumble over again, but the ten foot flop down
+onto the not very deeply submerged boulders was a
+bit too much a shake-up to sustain for art&#8217;s sake.</p>
+
+<p>Now that it was too late to line back, I saw why it
+was the old captain had advised working down the
+side of the island. The left bank of the cascade
+(which latter was tumbling close beside me now),
+was all but sheer. Only here and there were there
+footings close to the water, so that the man with the
+line would have to make his way for the most part
+along the top of the rocky wall. <i>He</i> could get along
+all right, but there was no place where a man could
+follow the boat and keep it off with a pole. It might
+have been managed with a man poling-off from the
+boat itself, but I hardly felt like urging Roos to take
+the chance. It was out of the question trying to line<span class="pagenum">[Pg 304]</span>
+back up the &#8220;intake&#8221; of the fall, but there <i>was</i> one
+loop-hole which looked worth exploring before risking
+an almost certain mess-up in trying to work down
+the side of the cascade.</p>
+
+<p>I have mentioned that I had expected to find a
+whirlpool under the big jutting rock. The only reason
+there wasn&#8217;t one was because what at high water
+must have been a very considerable back channel
+took out at this point and acted as a sort of safety-valve.
+There was still a stream a few inches deep
+flowing out here, running off to the left into a dark
+cavernous-looking crack in the bedrock. That water
+had to come back to the river somewhere below, and
+there was just a chance that the boat could be squeezed
+through the same way. At any rate, there was not
+enough of a weight of water to do any harm, and it
+ought not to be hard to &#8220;back up&#8221; in the event it
+proved impossible to push on through. Leaving
+Roos to set up and shoot a particularly villainous
+whirlpool he had discovered, I dragged the skiff
+through the shallow opening and launched it into a
+deep black pool beyond.</p>
+
+<p>Poling from pool to pool, I entered a miniature
+gorge where I was presently so walled in by the rock
+that the raw roar of the cascade was muffled to a
+heavy, earth-shaking rumble. This tiny canyonette
+opened up at the end of a hundred yards to a sheer-walled
+rock-bound pool, evidently scoured out by the
+action of a high-water whirlpool. This turned out
+to be an enormous &#8220;pot-hole,&#8221; for I had to avoid the
+water-spun boulder, which had been the tool of the
+sculpturing River God, in pushing into the outlet<span class="pagenum">[Pg 305]</span>
+crack. The latter was so narrow and overhanging
+that I had to lie down and work the skiff along with
+my up-raised hands. Twenty yards of that brought
+me out to a winding little lake, less steeply walled
+than the gorge above, but apparently closed all the
+way round, even at the lower end. I was in a complete
+<i>cul de sac</i>. A gurgling whirlpool showed where
+the water escaped by a subterranean passage, but that
+was plainly no place to take a lady, especially a lady
+of quality like <i>Imshallah</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Tying <i>Imshallah</i> up to a boulder to prevent her
+amiable weakness for rushing to the embraces of
+whirlpools getting the better of her, I climbed up a
+steeply-sloping pitch of bedrock and looked down to
+the head of a long narrow arm of quiet water. The
+gay little waterfall breaking forth from the rock beneath
+my feet was leaping directly into the main
+stream of the Columbia&mdash;and below the cascade. A
+stiff thirty or forty-foot portage, and we were
+through. We might have to wait for the pump-man
+to help us lift the boat up that first pitch, but he
+ought to be along almost any time now.</p>
+
+<p>Taking a short-cut back across the water-washed
+rock, I found Roos just completing his shots of the
+cascade. The sun was on the latter now, and its dazzling
+whiteness threw it into striking relief against
+the sinister walls between which it tumbled. Save the
+first two falls of Surprise Rapids, there is not a savager
+rush of water on the upper Columbia than this
+final three hundred yards of the left-hand channel of
+Rock Island. Roos was delighted with the way it
+showed up in his finder, and even more pleased when<span class="pagenum">[Pg 306]</span>
+he learned that we were not going to have to line the
+boat down it. Then he had one of his confounded
+inspirations. That portage over the reef of bedrock,
+with the little waterfall in the background, would
+photograph like a million dollars, he declared; but to
+get the full effect of it, and to preserve &#8220;continuity,&#8221;
+the &#8220;farmer&#8221; ought to do it alone. It wouldn&#8217;t do to
+include the pump-man in the picture, now that the
+&#8220;farmer&#8221; was supposed to be travelling alone. If I
+<i>had</i> to have his help, all right; only it wouldn&#8217;t do to
+shoot while the other man was in the picture. But it
+<i>would</i> really be the &#8220;Cat&#8217;s ears&#8221; if the &#8220;farmer&#8221; could
+make it on his own. He wouldn&#8217;t have to make
+that big pull-up without stopping; he could jerk
+the boat along a foot or two at a time, and then get
+his breath like the pursued villain did in the processional
+finales of knockabout comedies. Then he
+showed me how, by resuming the same grip on the
+boat and the same facial expression at each renewed
+attack, the action could be made to appear practically
+continuous.</p>
+
+<p>Well, I fell for it. Tom Sawyer was not more
+adroit in getting out of white-washing his fence than
+was Roos in getting out of that portage job. He
+wanted to preserve &#8220;continuity&#8221; by starting back at
+the head of the cascade, but we compromised by making
+it the &#8220;pot-hole.&#8221; Emerging to the lakelet, I
+registered &#8220;extreme dejection&#8221; at finding my progress
+blocked, and &#8220;dull gloom&#8221; as I landed and climbed
+up for a look-see. But when I reached the top of the
+reef and discovered the quiet water below, like sunlight
+breaking through a cloud, I assumed as nearly as<span class="pagenum">[Pg 307]</span>
+I knew how an exact imitation of an expression I had
+seen on the face of Balboa in a picture called &#8220;First
+Sight of the Pacific.&#8221; &#8220;That&#8217;s the &#8216;Cat&#8217;s ears,&#8217;&#8221; encouraged
+Roos; &#8220;now snake the boat over&mdash;and make
+it snappy!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>I made it snappy, all right; but it was my spine
+that did most of the snapping. And it wasn&#8217;t a foot
+at a time that I snaked the boat over. (Roos had
+been too optimistic on that score); it was by inches.
+Roos took infinite pains in coaching me as to &#8220;resuming
+grip and expression;&#8221; but even so, I am afraid the
+finished film will display considerable jerkiness in
+its &#8220;continuous action.&#8221; I gained some solace by calling
+Roos names all the time, and so must again beg
+&#8220;lip-readers&#8221; who see the picture to consider the provocation
+and not judge too harshly. Once tilted over
+the crest of the reef, the boat took more holding than
+hauling. Being pretty well gone in the back and
+knees, she got away from me and slid the last ten
+feet, giving her bottom a bumping that it never did
+entirely recover from. I was caulking incipient leaks
+all the way to Portland as a consequence of that confounded
+&#8220;one man&#8221; portage.</p>
+
+<p>Just as we had loaded up and were ready to push
+off, the pump-man breezed along and asked us to
+give him a passage as far as Columbia River station,
+two or three miles below. He wanted to take an oar,
+but as the distance was short and the current swift, I
+told him it was not worth bothering with. So he laid
+the oar he had taken out along the starboard gunwale,
+and knelt just aft the after thwart, facing forward.
+Roos always claimed that it was the loom of<span class="pagenum">[Pg 308]</span>
+the pump-man&#8217;s back cutting off his view ahead that
+was responsible for the little diversion that followed.
+A good part of the blame was doubtless my own for
+not keeping a sharper watch over my shoulder, as I
+certainly should have done had I been alone. In any
+event, <i>Imshallah&#8217;s alibi</i> was complete. She behaved
+through it all like a real thoroughbred.</p>
+
+<p>There was a sinuous tangle of swirls where the
+right-hand and left-hand cascades flew at each other&#8217;s
+throats at the lower end of the rock island, and then a
+gay stretch of sun-dazzled froth where the teeth of a
+long reef menaced all the way across the channel;
+then a stretch of lazily-coiling green-black water,
+flowing between lofty brown cliffs and broken here
+and there with the loom of house-like rocks of shattered
+basalt. The roar of Rock Island died down in
+muffled <i>diminuendo</i>, and it seemed mighty good to
+have that diapason muttering in bafflement astern
+rather than growling in anticipation ahead. There
+was only one little rapid between here and the siding,
+the pump-man said, and it wouldn&#8217;t bother us much as
+there was plenty of room to get by. He was right&mdash;for
+the most part.</p>
+
+<p>I took a good look at the riffle as we headed down
+to it. It was a short stretch of rough, noisy water,
+but nothing that would have had to be avoided except
+for a single big roller in the middle of it. As this was
+throwing a great dash of spray high in the air every
+now and then, I felt sure the rock responsible for it
+was very slightly submerged&mdash;perhaps not more than
+a few inches. As this was so obviously an obstacle to
+steer well clear of, it never occurred to me to give<span class="pagenum">[Pg 309]</span>
+Roos any especial warning about it, especially as he
+continued standing and sizing up the situation for half
+a minute after I had resumed my oars. The main
+current ran straight across the riffle, but with fifty
+feet of clear water to the left there was no need of
+getting into any of the worst of it, let alone trying to
+hurdle that foam-throwing rock.</p>
+
+<p>Leaning hard on my oars, I had good steerage-way
+on the skiff by the time she dipped over into the fast-running
+water. Roos was cuffing jauntily at the
+wave crests, and singing. Because of the sequel, I
+remember particularly it was &#8220;Dardanella&#8221; that was
+claiming his attention. Two or three times he had
+maintained that he was a &#8220;lucky fella&#8221; before I saw
+what seemed to me to be mingled dissent and perturbation
+gathering in the pump-man&#8217;s steel-grey eyes.
+Then, all of a sudden, he gave vocal expression to his
+doubts. &#8220;You won&#8217;t think you&#8217;re a &#8216;lucky fella&#8217; if
+you put her onta that rock,&#8221; he yelled over his shoulder.
+Turning at the finish of my stroke, I saw that
+big spray-flipping comber about two lengths away,
+and <i>dead ahead</i>, looking savager than ever. Trailing
+my right oar, I pulled every ounce I could bring to
+bear upon my left, trying to throw her head toward
+the better water. The next instant I was all but falling
+over backwards as the oar snapped cleanly off in
+the oar-lock. I recall perfectly the gleam of the long
+copper nails which had weakened it, and the fresh
+fracture of the broken spruce.</p>
+
+<p>The weight I put onto my right oar in saving myself
+from tumbling backward had the effect of throwing
+her head in just the opposite direction I had in<span class="pagenum">[Pg 310]</span>tended.
+Since she could hardly have avoided hitting
+the big roller anyhow, once she was so near, it is
+probably better that she hit it squarely than sidling.
+The crash was solid, almost shattering in its intensity,
+and yet I am not sure that she hit the rock at all. If
+she did, it was a glancing blow, for she could not possibly
+have survived anything heavier.</p>
+
+<p>The pump-man, true to his sailor instincts, kept
+his head perfectly in the face of the deluge that had
+engulfed him. The spare oar was lying ready to
+hand, and he had it waiting for me in the oar-lock by
+the time I was on an even keel again. The second
+wave, which she rode on her own, threw <i>Imshallah&#8217;s</i>
+head off a bit, but by the time she was rising to the
+third I was helping her again with the oars. Seeing
+how well she was taking it, I did not try to pull out
+of the riffle now, but let her run right down through
+it to the end. Only the first wave put much green
+water into her, but even that had not filled her anywhere
+nearly so deep as she had been the evening
+before. When we beached her below Columbia River
+station we found her starboard bow heavily dented,
+but even that did not convince me that we had hit the
+big rock. I am rather inclined to think that denting
+was done when I did my lone-hand portage at Rock
+Island. I was dead sorry I couldn&#8217;t persuade that
+pump-man to throw up his job and come along with
+us. He had the real stuff in him.</p>
+
+<p><a id="page310" name="page310"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 429px;">
+<img src="images/illo_380.jpg" width="429" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">THE PICTURE THAT COST ME A WETTING (<i>above</i>)<br />
+THE WRECK OF THE "DOUGLAS" (<i>below</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><a id="page311" name="page311"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/illo_381.jpg" width="600" height="449" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">WE COOKED OUR BREAKFAST IN THE GALLEY OF THE WRECK OF THE
+&#8220;DOUGLAS&#8221; (<i>left</i>)<br />
+A ROCKY CLIFF ABOVE BEVERLY (<i>right</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>After having lunch in the railway men&#8217;s eating
+house at Columbia River, we went down to push off
+again. Finding the local ferry-man examining the
+skiff, I asked him if he thought she would do to run
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 311]</span>Cabinet Rapids, which we could hear rumbling a mile
+below. &#8220;Not if you try to push them out of the river
+the way you did that riffle above here a while ago,&#8221;
+he replied with a grin. He said he had been watching
+us through his glass, and that the boat had disappeared
+from sight for three or four seconds when she
+hit the big roller. He offered to bet his ferry-boat
+against the skiff that we couldn&#8217;t do it again and
+come through right-side-up. No takers. Speaking
+seriously, he said that, by keeping well to the left, we
+could run Cabinet all right&mdash;if nothing went wrong.
+&#8220;But better not make a practice of breaking an oar
+just where you&#8217;re going to need it most,&#8221; he added
+with another grin; &#8220;there&#8217;s nothing on the river that
+would live through the big riffle over against the right
+bank. You&#8217;ll see what she did to the <i>Douglas</i>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Landing from the slack water above a rocky point
+which juts out into the river at the head of Cabinet
+Rapids, we climbed a couple of hundred yards over
+water-scoured boulders to the brink of the gorge. It
+was a decidedly rough-looking rapid, but by no means
+so hopeless for running with a small boat as Rock
+Island. In that the main riffle was thrown against a
+sheer bank of the river, it reminded me a good deal
+of Death Rapids on the Big Bend. But this riffle,
+while appearing fully as rough as that of the dreaded
+<i>Dalles des Morts</i>, was not, like the latter, unavoidable.
+The chance of passing it in only fairly broken water
+to the left looked quite good enough to try. The
+wreck of the <i>Douglas</i>, standing out white and stark
+against the black boulders a mile below, was a good
+warning against taking any unnecessary chances. I<span class="pagenum">[Pg 312]</span>
+looked well to the oars and the trim of the boat before
+shoving off.</p>
+
+<p>Once out into the river, I could see that the rapid
+was white from bank to bank, but still nothing that
+ought to trouble us seriously. I stood for a minute
+or two looking ahead from the vantage of one of the
+thwarts, and it was just as I was taking up my oars
+again in the quickening current that the corner of my
+eye glimpsed the narrow opening of a deep back-channel
+winding off between splintered walls of columnar
+basalt to the left. I wasn&#8217;t looking for any
+more one-man portages, but this opening looked good
+enough to explore. It might lead through by an easy
+way, and there was hardly enough water to do much
+harm if it didn&#8217;t. It took hard pulling to sheer off
+from the &#8220;intake&#8221; now we had drifted so close, but
+we finally made it and entered the dark back-channel.
+Narrowing and broadening, just as the other had
+done, it led on for a couple of hundred yards, finally
+to discharge over a six-foot fall into a deeply indented
+pool that opened out to the river about half way down
+the rapid. The wedge-shaped crack at the head of the
+little fall was narrower than the skiff at water-line,
+but by dint of a little lifting and tugging we worked
+her through and lowered her into the pool below.
+Pulling out through the opening, we headed her confidently
+into the current. There was a quarter-mile
+of white water yet, but we were far enough down now
+so that the loss of an oar or any other mishap wouldn&#8217;t
+leave the skiff to run into those wallowing rollers over
+against the further cliff. A sharp, slashing run carried
+us through to the foot of Cabinet Rapids, and a<span class="pagenum">[Pg 313]</span>
+few minutes later we had hauled up into an eddy
+under the left bank opposite the wreck of the
+<i>Douglas</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The little stern-wheeler had come to grief at high-water,
+so that we had to clamber all of three hundred
+yards over big, smooth, round boulders to reach the
+point where the wreck was lying. The latter was by
+no means in so bad a shape as I had expected to find it.
+The principal damage appeared to have been done to
+the wheel, which was clamped down tight over a huge
+boulder, and to the starboard bow, which was stove in.
+The rest of her hull and her upper works were intact;
+also the engines, though terribly rusty. There was
+not much from which one could reconstruct the story
+of the disaster; in fact, I have not learned to this day
+any authentic details. The chances are, however, that
+the wheel struck a rock somewhere in Cabinet Rapids,
+and, after that, drifting out of control, she had come
+in for the rest of the mauling. If her captain is like
+the rest of the Columbia River skippers I met, I have
+no doubt that she will be patched up again before
+next high-water and started off for Portland.</p>
+
+<p>With towering cliffs on both sides and the great
+black boulders scattered all around, Roos felt that
+both subject and setting were highly favourable for
+an effective movie, and started to think out a way to
+work the wreck of the <i>Douglas</i> into his &#8220;continuity.&#8221;
+After some minutes of brown study, he declared that
+the best way to work it would be for the &#8220;farmer&#8221; to
+land, come clambering across the boulders registering
+&#8220;puzzled wonderment,&#8221; and then to stand in silent
+contemplation of the wreck, registering &#8220;thankful<span class="pagenum">[Pg 314]</span>ness.&#8221;
+&#8220;Thankfulness for what?&#8221; I demanded; &#8220;it
+doesn&#8217;t strike me as Christian to gloat over the wreck
+of a ship.&#8221; &#8220;You don&#8217;t get me at all,&#8221; he expostulated.
+&#8220;I don&#8217;t mean for him to show thankfulness
+because of the wreck of the steamer, but because his
+own boat has so far escaped a similar fate. He just
+stands here with his arms folded, casts his eyes upward,
+moves his lips as if....&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Nothing doing,&#8221; I cut in decisively. &#8220;If you&#8217;d
+been raising beans and hay and apricots as long as I
+have, you&#8217;d know that a farmer never registers thankfulness
+about anything but a rise in the market, and
+there ain&#8217;t no such thing any more.&#8221; While we were
+arguing that moot point, the sun dipped behind the
+loftily looming wall of brown-black cliff across the
+river and the trouble settled itself automatically.
+Because there was no longer light, Roos thought it
+would be a good stunt to camp where we were until
+morning, and as a camp was always &#8220;continuity&#8221;&mdash;there
+we were!</p>
+
+<p>There was plenty of cordwood left, and the galley
+stove was in good condition. As we had no candles,
+dinner was cooked by the mingled red and green
+gleams of the port and starboard lights, transferred to
+the galley for that purpose. I slept in the cook&#8217;s
+cabin and Roos&mdash;with his bed made up on the wire
+springs from the Captain&#8217;s cabin&mdash;on the deck of the
+galley. With water freezing half an inch thick in the
+coffee-pot on the galley stove, we had an insufferably
+cold night of it&mdash;one of the worst we spent on the river.
+In the morning Roos made his &#8220;camp shots,&#8221; which
+consisted principally of the farmer chopping cord<span class="pagenum">[Pg 315]</span>wood
+on the main deck, building a fire in the galley
+stove and cooking breakfast. Out of deference to
+my esoteric knowledge of the way farmers feel about
+things, he consented to omit the &#8220;thankfulness stuff.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Shoving off into a steady six-mile current at nine-thirty,
+a few minutes brought us in sight of a striking
+basaltic island, which Symons had characterized as
+&#8220;one of the most perfect profile rocks in existence.&#8221;
+&#8220;Approaching it from the north,&#8221; he wrote, &#8220;it presents
+a striking likeness to the profile of Queen Victoria....
+Coming nearer to it and passing it on the
+west, the profile changes and merges into a more
+Grecian and Sphinx-like face, whose placid immobility
+takes one&#8217;s mind involuntarily to far-off Egypt.
+It rises from the surface of the water about a hundred
+feet, and a pair of eagles have selected it as their home,
+and upon its extreme top have built a nest, giving, as
+it were, a crown to this goddess of the Columbia.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Roos declared himself strong for that &#8220;Sphinx
+stuff,&#8221; and had his camera set up in the bow ready
+for a close-up of every change of expression. He was
+doomed to disappointment. The first thing we discovered
+missing was the crowning eagles&#8217; nest, and
+then Victoria&#8217;s nose, mouth and chin. Her brow and
+hair were there, but both considerably eroded and
+inroad-ed by the weather. The &#8220;Grecian-and-Sphinx-like
+face&#8221; we never did locate, although I
+pulled around the island twice in search of them.
+Roos declared her an &#8220;oil can,&#8221; and packed up his
+camera in supreme disgust. That was, I believe, the
+last time he had it set up on the Columbia.</p>
+
+<p>As Lieutenant Symons had proved so invariably<span class="pagenum">[Pg 316]</span>
+accurate in all of his topographical descriptions, I am
+strongly inclined to the belief that floods and the
+elements had conspired to wreak much havoc with
+&#8220;Victoria&#8217;s&#8221; features in the forty years that had
+elapsed since he limned them so strikingly with pen
+and pencil. I have known fairly stonily-featured
+ladies to change almost as much in a good deal less
+than forty years.</p>
+
+<p>Cabinet Rapids is the beginning of a somewhat
+irregular series of columnar basaltic cliffs which wall
+in the Columbia closely for the next thirty miles.
+They range in height from fifteen hundred to three
+thousand feet, and in colour from a rich blend of saffron-cinnamon,
+through all the shades of brown, to a
+dull black. The prevailing formation is that of upended
+cordwood, but there are endless weird stratifications
+and lamiations, with here and there queer
+nuclei that suggest sulphur crystallizations. Imbedded
+in the face of one of these cliffs not far from
+the tumultuous run of Gualquil Rapids, is a landmark
+that has been famous among Columbia <i>voyageurs</i>
+for over a hundred years. This is huge log,
+barkless and weather-whitened, standing on end in
+the native basalt. Over a thousand feet above the
+river and almost an equal distance from the brink of
+the sheer wall of rock, there is no possible question of
+its having been set there by man. The descriptions
+written of it a hundred years ago might have been
+written to-day. Whether it is petrified or not, there
+is no way of knowing. The only possible explanation
+of its presence is that it was lodged where it is at a
+time when the Columbia flowed a thousand feet<span class="pagenum">[Pg 317]</span>
+higher than it does to-day, probably before it tore its
+great gorge through the Cascades and much of what
+is now eastern Washington was a vast lake.</p>
+
+<p>On the suggestion of the ferry-man at Trinidad, we
+avoided the upper half of Gualquil Rapids by taking
+a straight, narrow channel to the right, which would
+probably have been dry in another week. There is a
+half mile of fast, white water here, ending with some
+heavy swirls against a sheer cliff, but nothing seriously
+to menace any well-handled open boat. The
+water was slack for a number of miles from the foot
+of Gualquil, but began quickening where the river
+spread out between long gravel bars below Vantage
+Ferry. They were shunting sheep across at the latter
+point, and the Portuguese herders crowded eagerly
+round our boat, making strange &#8220;high signs&#8221; and
+voicing cryptic utterances, evidently having something
+to do with a local bootleggers&#8217; code. At our
+failure to respond in kind, they became suspicious
+(doubtless the fact that Roos was wearing a second-hand
+Canadian officer&#8217;s uniform he had bought in
+Revelstoke had something to do with it) that we were
+prohibition enforcement officials, and they were muttering
+darkly to each other and shaking their heads
+as we pushed off again.</p>
+
+<p>The cliffs ran out not long after we left Vantage
+Ferry, and as we neared the Chicago, Milwaukee and
+St. Paul Bridge at Beverly rough patches of sandy
+desert began opening up on either side. Deprived of
+the shelter of the high river walls, we were at once exposed
+to a heavy easterly wind that had evidently
+been blowing all day on the desert. The sun dulled<span class="pagenum">[Pg 318]</span>
+to a luminous blur behind the pall of the sand-filled
+air, and the wind, which headed us every now and
+then, about neutralized the impulse of the accelerating
+current. There was a forty-miles-an-hour sand-storm
+blowing when we beached the boat under the
+railway bridge at four-thirty. The brilliantly golden-yellow
+cars of the C. M. &amp; St. P. Limited rumbling
+across above behind their electric locomotive
+seemed strangely out-of-place in the desolate landscape.</p>
+
+<p>The one sidewalk of the town&#8217;s fragment of street
+was ankle-deep in sand as we buffetted our way to
+the hotel. &#8220;Have you ever been in Beverly before?&#8221;
+asked the sandy-haired (literally) girl who responded
+to the jangle of the cowbell on the counter. &#8220;But
+I should know better than that,&#8221; she apologized with
+a blush as she blew off the grit on the register; &#8220;&#8217;cause
+if you had been here once, you&#8217;d sure never be here
+again. What&#8217;s the game, anyhow? You haven&#8217;t...?&#8221;
+A knowing twitch of a dusty eyelash finished
+the question.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;No, we haven&#8217;t,&#8221; growled Roos irritably. Somehow
+he was never able to extract half the amusement
+that I did over being taken for a boot-legger.</p>
+
+<p>It was the sand-storm that broke Roos&#8217; heart, I
+think. He was non-committal at supper that night
+when I started to talk about Priest Rapids, and the
+next morning, after describing his shave as like rubbing
+his face with a brick, he announced that he was
+through with the Columbia for good. As there was a
+good deal to be said for his contention that, between
+the shortening days and the high cliffs walling in the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 319]</span>
+river, there were only two or three hours of good
+shooting light even when the sun was out, I did not
+feel justified in urging him to go on unless he wanted
+to. In any event, light for filming the running and
+lining of Priest Rapids, now that the sand-storm was
+at its height, was out of the question for a day or two
+at least. And below Priest Rapids there would be
+nothing worth filming until the mouth of the Snake
+was passed. I suggested, therefore, that he should
+go on to Pasco by train and await me there, finding
+out in the meantime by wire whether Chester cared
+to have him continue the &#8220;farmer&#8221; picture in the face
+of the adverse light conditions.</p>
+
+<p>By this time I had fairly complete data on Priest
+Rapids. These, beginning at the end of a stretch of
+slack water several miles below Beverly, continue for
+eleven miles. In this distance there are seven major
+riffles, with considerable intervals of fairly quiet water
+between. It seemed probable that all of these, with
+the exception of the second and seventh, and possibly
+the sixth, could be run. The lining of the others,
+while not difficult, would require the help of another
+man. All that morning I inhaled sand as I went
+over Beverly with a fine-toothed comb in a very
+earnest effort to find some one willing to give me a
+hand through Priest Rapids. The nearest I came to
+success was an ex-brakeman, who said he would go
+with me after the storm was over, provided a job
+hadn&#8217;t turned up in the meantime. The only real
+river-man I found was an old chap who opined that
+the middle of November was too late in the year to
+be getting his feet&mdash;if nothing else&mdash;wet in the &#8220;Co<span class="pagenum">[Pg 320]</span>lumby.&#8221;
+He offered to haul the boat to the foot of
+the rapids by the road for twenty dollars, but as the
+down-river branch of the Milwaukee presented an opportunity
+to accomplish the same end in less time and
+discomfort, I decided to portage by the latter. As
+there was an auto-stage service from Hanford to
+Pasco, Roos accompanied me to the former point by
+train, and helped get the boat down to the river and
+into the water in the morning. Hanford was not the
+point on the line closest to the foot of Priest Rapids,
+but I took the boat through to there because the station
+was nearer the river than at White Bluffs, and
+launching, therefore, a simpler matter.</p>
+
+<p>The stretch of seventy miles between the foot of
+Priest Rapids and the mouth of the Snake has the
+slowest current of any part of the Columbia above the
+Dalles. Mindful of the time we had been losing by
+stops for lunch, I now began putting into practice a
+plan which I followed right on to the end of my voyage.
+Taking a package of biscuit and a couple of
+bars of milk chocolate in my pocket, I kept the river
+right straight on through to my destination. Munching
+and resting for an hour at noon, I at least had the
+benefit of the current for this period. Eating a much
+lighter lunch, I also gained the advantage of no longer
+being troubled with that comfortable <i>siesta</i>-time
+drowsiness that inevitably follows a hearty meal and
+disinclines one strongly to heavy exertion for an hour
+or more.</p>
+
+<p>For a dozen miles or more below Hanford the river,
+flanked on either side by rolling desert sand-dunes,
+winds in broad shallow reaches through a region des<span class="pagenum">[Pg 321]</span>olate
+in the extreme. The only signs of life I saw for
+many miles were coyotes slinking through the hungry
+sage-brush and occasional flocks of geese, the latter
+forerunners of the countless myriads that were to keep
+me company below the Snake. At Richfield the results
+of irrigation became evident in young apple
+orchards and green fields of alfalfa, and these multiplied
+all the way down to Pasco. The country seemed
+very flat and monotonous after so many weeks among
+cliffs and mountains, but there was no question of its
+richness and productivity once water was brought to
+it. The low overflow flats about the mouth of the
+Yakima, which flows into the Columbia from the west
+a few miles above Pasco, gave little indication of the
+beauty of the famous apple country which owes so
+much to the waters diverted from that little river.</p>
+
+<p>After pulling for an hour with the long Northern
+Pacific bridge in view, I landed just below the Pasco-Kennewick
+ferry at three o&#8217;clock. As I was beaching
+the boat and getting out the luggage to leave in the
+ferry-man&#8217;s house-boat, a hail from the river attracted
+my attention. It was from Roos, in the front seat of
+an auto, on the approaching ferry-boat. His stage
+had been behind time in leaving Hanford, and as a
+consequence I had beaten him to the Pasco landing
+by ten minutes. After the speed with which we had
+moved on the upper river, however, mine had been
+rather a slow run. In spite of my steady pulling, it
+had taken me just under six hours to do the thirty-five
+miles.</p>
+
+<p>After the exchange of a wire or two, Roos obtained
+permission from Chester to suspend the &#8220;farmer&#8221;<span class="pagenum">[Pg 322]</span>
+picture, and was ordered on to New York to report.
+We were both a good deal disappointed not to have a
+pictorial record of the &#8220;farmer&#8221; actually seeing the
+sea; in fact, we did some hours of &#8220;location&#8221; scouting
+in the hope of finding a substitute Pacific in the
+vicinity of Pasco. If that Beverly sand-storm had
+only made itself felt seventy-five miles farther down
+river I honestly believe we would have accomplished
+our worthy end. There was a pretty bit of white
+beach below the N. P. bridge. <i>If</i> the sand had been
+blowing thick enough to obscure the farther shore,
+and <i>if</i> the wind had blown in the right direction to
+throw up a line or two of surf, I could have stood
+with one foot on that beach, the other on <i>Imshallah&#8217;s</i>
+bow, elbow on knee, chin in hand, and registered &#8220;fulfilment,&#8221;
+and none could have told it from the real
+Pacific. Indeed, that bit of backwash from Pasco&#8217;s
+outfall sewer, with the sand-barrage and surf I have
+postulated, would have &#8220;shot&#8221; <i>more</i> like the Pacific
+than many spots I can think of looking off to the
+Columbia bar.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page323" name="page323">[Pg 323]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII<br />
+<br />
+PASCO TO THE DALLES</h2>
+
+<p>The only lone-hand river voyage I had ever taken
+previous to the one on which I was about to embark
+was down the lower Colorado River, from Needles to
+the head of the Gulf of California. This had been in
+comparatively quiet water all the way, with nothing
+much to look out for save the tidal bore at the lower
+end. As I had never been above the Dalles on the
+lower Columbia, I had very little idea of what I would
+encounter in the way of rapids. I knew that there
+were locks by which the Dalles and Cascades could
+be passed, but as the combined fall at these points
+accounted for only about a quarter of that between the
+Snake and tide-water, it was certain there must still
+be some very swift rapids to run. That there had at
+times been a steamer service maintained from the
+Snake down meant that there must be some sort of a
+rock-free channel through all of the riffles; but it did
+not necessarily mean that these were runnable in a
+small boat. A properly handled stern-wheeler can
+be drifted down and (by means of line and capstan)
+hauled up rapids where not even a high-powered
+launch can live. I had a list of about a score of the
+principal rapids between the Snake and Celilo Falls,
+with their distances from the Canadian Boundary
+by river. This would enable me to know approximately
+<i>where</i> I was going to find them. That was all.<span class="pagenum">[Pg 324]</span>
+Information on fall, channel and the best means of
+running them I would have to pick up as I went along.</p>
+
+<p>I shoved off from Pasco Ferry at nine o&#8217;clock in
+the morning of Sunday, November fourteenth. With
+Roos and his blanket-roll, camera and tripod out of
+the stern, I found that the skiff trimmed better when
+I rowed from the after thwart. She pulled easier and
+handled a lot more smartly now. It was evident,
+however, that her increased freeboard was going to
+make her harder to hold to her course with head winds,
+but these I hoped to have little trouble with until I
+reached the gorge of the Cascades. The ferry-man
+assured me that I would encounter no really bad
+water until I came to the last pitch of Umatilla
+Rapids, about thirty-five miles below. He advised
+me to take a good look at that before putting into it,
+as an unbroken reef ran almost directly across the
+current and the channel was not easy to locate. It
+was the most troublesome bar to navigation on the
+lower Columbia, and steamers were repeatedly getting
+in trouble there. I would see the latest wreck a
+couple of miles below the foot of the rapids.</p>
+
+<p>I passed the mouth of the Snake about three miles
+below the ferry. Here was no such spectacular meeting
+of waters as occurs when the Pend d&#8217;Oreille and
+Columbia spring together, for the country is low and
+level, and the mouth of the Snake broad and shallow.
+The discharge was through two channels, and the
+water greenish-grey in colour; but where that blend
+in the swift tributaries of the upper river suggests the
+intense coldness of glacial origin, here the picture
+conjured up was of desert and alkali plains. Its<span class="pagenum">[Pg 325]</span>
+mouth is the least interesting part of the Snake. It
+has some magnificent canyons in its upper and middle
+waters&mdash;as have also its two fine tributaries, the Salmon
+and Clearwater,&mdash;and its Shoshone Falls are
+second only to Niagara on the North American continent.</p>
+
+<p>Lieutenant Symons, who concluded his exploration
+of the upper Columbia at the Snake, characterizes the
+region as a &#8220;bleak, dreary waste, in which for many
+miles around sage-brush and sand predominate ...
+one of the most abominable places in the country to
+live in.&#8221; Alexander Ross, on the other hand, writing
+seventy years earlier, describes it as one of the loveliest
+lands imaginable. The fact that the one reached
+the Snake in the fall and the other in the spring may
+have had something to do with these diametrically
+opposed impressions. Irrigation and cultivation have
+gone far to redeem this land from the desert Symons
+found it, but it is still far from being quite the Paradise
+Ross seemed to think it was. As the only considerable
+plain touching the Columbia at any point in
+its course, this region of the Snake can never make the
+scenic appeal of the hundreds of miles of cliff-walled
+gorges above and below; but it is a land of great potential
+richness. With water and power available
+from the two greatest rivers of the West, there can be
+no question of its future, both agriculturally and industrially.
+Pasco will yet more than fulfil the promises
+made for that mushroom town in its early boom
+days. &#8220;KEEP YOUR EYE ON PASCO!&#8221; was
+a byword from one end of the country to the other in
+the nineties, and this hustling rail and agricultural<span class="pagenum">[Pg 326]</span>
+centre at the junction of the Columbia and the Snake
+should not be lost sight of even to-day.</p>
+
+<p>The lighter-hued water of the Snake was pretty
+well churned into the flood of the Columbia at the end
+of a mile, leaving a faint suggestion of cloudiness in
+the transparent green that the latter had preserved
+all the way from the Arrow Lakes. The long bridge
+of the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway
+spanned the Columbia just below the Snake, and
+from there on paralleled the river closely right down
+to the Willamette. After the Oregon-Washington
+Railway and Navigation Company tracks appeared
+on the south bank below the Walla Walla, it was only
+at rare intervals that I was out of sight of a grade, or
+out of sound of a train, for the remainder of my voyage.
+In a day or two the trainmen, running back and
+forth between divisional points, came to recognize
+the bright green skiff plugging on down the dark
+green river (mighty small she must have looked to
+them from the banks) and never failed to give her a
+hail or a wave in passing. On a certain memorable
+occasion one of them (doubtless in direct defiance of
+rules) ventured even further in the way of a warning
+... but I will tell of that in its place.</p>
+
+<p>Homley Rapids, seven miles below Pasco ferry,
+are formed by a rough reef of bedrock running half
+way across the river from the right bank. Approached
+from the right side of the long gravel island that divides
+the river just above them, one might get badly
+tangled up before he got through; by the left-hand
+channel the going is easy if one keeps an eye on the
+shallowing water at the bars. A sky-line of brown<span class="pagenum">[Pg 327]</span>
+mountains, with a double-turreted butte as their most
+conspicuous feature, marks the point where the Columbia
+finally turns west for its assault on the Cascades
+and its plunge to the Pacific. That bend is the
+boundary of the fertile plains extending from the
+Yakima to the Walla Walla, and the beginning of a
+new series of gorges, in some respects the grandest of
+all. The matchless panorama of the Cascade gorges
+is a fitting finale to the stupendous scenic pageant
+that has been staged all the way from the glacial
+sources of the Columbia.</p>
+
+<p>A low sandy beach just above the mouth of the
+rather insignificant Walla Walla comes pretty near
+to being the most historically important point on the
+Columbia. Here Lewis and Clark first came to the
+waters of the long-struggled-toward Oregon; here
+came Frémont, the &#8220;Pathfinder;&#8221; here Thompson
+planted his pious proclamation claiming all of the
+valley of the Columbia for the Northwest Company;
+and by here, sooner or later, passed and repassed
+practically every one of the trappers, missionaries,
+settlers and other pioneers who were finally to bring
+Oregon permanently under the Stars and Stripes.</p>
+
+<p>The double-topped butte, an outstanding landmark
+for <i>voyageurs</i> for a hundred years, has long been
+called &#8220;The Two Virgins.&#8221; The story is told locally
+of a Catholic priest who saved his life by taking refuge
+in a cave between the castellated turrets during
+an Indian massacre, but who got in rather serious
+trouble with the Church afterwards as a consequence
+of sending words of his deliverance by a French-Canadian
+half-breed <i>voyageur</i>. The latter got the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 328]</span>
+salient details of the story straight, but neglected to
+explain that the two virgins were mountains. The
+result was that the unlucky priest narrowly missed
+excommunication for saving his life at the expense of
+breaking his vows. I got no affidavit with the story;
+but local &#8220;stock&#8221; yarns are always worth preserving
+on account of their colour.</p>
+
+<p>There were a number of big black rocks where the
+river began its bend to the west, but the channel to the
+right was not hard to follow. Neither did Bull Run
+Rapids, a few miles farther down, offer any difficulties.
+I followed the steamer channel as having the
+swiftest current, but could have passed without
+trouble on either side of it in much quieter water.
+Brown and terra-cotta-tinged cliffs reared higher and
+higher to left and right, encroaching closely on the
+river. There was little room for cultivation at any
+point, and often the railways had had to resort to
+heavy cutting and tunnelling to find a way through
+some jutting rock buttress. There were no trees, and
+the general aspect of the country was desolate in the
+extreme.</p>
+
+<p>It was toward the end of a grey afternoon that I
+headed <i>Imshallah</i> into the first pitch of Umatilla
+Rapids. The sun had dissolved into a slowly thickening
+mist about three o&#8217;clock, and from then on the
+whole landscape had been gradually neutralizing itself
+by taking on shade after shade of dull, inconspicuous
+grey. From the grey-white mistiness of the sky to
+the grey-green murkiness of the river there was nothing
+that contrasted with anything else; every object
+was blended, dissolved, all but quenched. The foam-<span class="pagenum">[Pg 329]</span>ruffles
+above even the sharpest of the riffles blurred
+like the streaking of clouded marble at a hundred
+feet, and it took the livest kind of a lookout to avoid
+the ones with teeth in them. Neither the first nor the
+second riffle had any very bad water, but my neck was
+stiff from watching over my shoulder even as they
+were. I had rather intended avoiding this trouble by
+drifting down anything that looked very threatening
+stern first, but that would have involved retrimming
+the boat and greatly reducing her speed. If I was
+going to make Umatilla by dark, there was no time
+to lose.</p>
+
+<p>From the head of the first riffle of Umatilla Rapids
+to the head of the third or main one is a mile and a
+half. There was a slight up-river breeze blowing in
+the mist, and the heavy rumble of the big fall came
+to my ears some distance above the opening riffle.
+The distant roar augmented steadily after that, and
+the sharper grind of the more imminent riffles was
+never loud enough to drown it out entirely. The
+fact that it had a certain &#8220;all pervasive&#8221; quality, seeming
+to fill the whole of the gorge with its heavy beat,
+told me that it was an unusually long rapid, as well as
+an unusually rough one. That, it seemed, was about
+all I was going to be able to find out. No one was in
+sight on the left bank, which I was skirting, and the
+right bank was masked with mist. With none to seek
+information from, and with not enough light to see
+for myself, the alternatives were very simple: I
+could either land, line as far as I could while light
+lasted and then seek Umatilla on foot for the night,
+or I could take my chance at running through. It<span class="pagenum">[Pg 330]</span>
+was the delay and uncertainty sure to be attendant
+upon lining that was the principal factor in deciding
+me to try the latter course. Also, I knew that there
+was an open channel all the way through, and that the
+rapid was a comparatively broad and shallow one,
+rather than constricted and deep. This meant that
+it would be straight white water&mdash;a succession of
+broken waves&mdash;I was going into, rather than heavy
+swirls and whirlpools; just the water in which the
+skiff had already proved she was at her best. These
+points seemed to minimize the risk of going wrong to
+a point where the chance of running was worth taking
+for the time and trouble it would save. If I had not
+known these things in advance, I should never, of
+course, have risked going into so strong a rapid under
+such conditions of light.</p>
+
+<p>I shall always have a very grateful feeling toward
+that Pasco ferry-man for those few words he dropped
+about the run of the reef and the set of the current at
+Umatilla Rapid. This is one of the few great rapids
+I have ever known on any river where the main drift
+of the current will not carry a boat to the deepest
+channel. This is due to the fact that the great reef
+of native rock which causes the rapid is sufficiently
+submerged even at middle water to permit a considerable
+flow directly across it. The consequence of this
+is that a boat, large or small, which follows the current
+and does not start soon enough working over toward
+the point where a channel has been blasted through
+the reef, is almost certain to be carried directly upon
+the latter. This has happened to a good many steam<span class="pagenum">[Pg 331]</span>ers,
+the latest having been wrecked not long before
+my voyage.</p>
+
+<p>With a rough idea of the lay of things in my mind,
+I had edged a good deal farther out across the current
+than would have been the case had I been trusting to
+my own judgment of the way the rapid <i>ought</i> to develop
+in the light of my past experience. The smooth
+but swiftly-flowing water to the left looked almost
+empty of threat, and it was not until I was within a
+hundred feet of the barrier that I saw it was flowing
+directly over the latter and went tumbling down the
+farther side in an almost straight fall. At the same
+instant I saw that I was still heading forty or fifty
+feet to the left of where the &#8220;intake&#8221; dipped through
+the break in the reef. Realizing that I could never
+make it by heading straight, I swung the skiff round
+and pulled quartering to the current with her head
+up-stream. Even then it was a nearer squeak than I
+like to think of. I missed the middle of the &#8220;V&#8221; by
+ten feet as I swung her head down-stream again, and
+as the racing current carried her up against the back-wave
+thrown off the end of the break in the reef she
+heeled heavily to starboard, like an auto turning on a
+steeply-banked track. Then she shot out into the
+big white combers in mid-channel and started slap-banging
+down through them. It looked beastly rough
+ahead, but in any event it was better than hanging up
+on the reef at the outset. We were going to have run
+for our money whatever happened.</p>
+
+<p>The only precautions there had been time to take
+were slipping into my &#8220;Gieve&#8221; and throwing all my<span class="pagenum">[Pg 332]</span>
+luggage aft. Half-inflated, the rubber-lined jacket
+was no handicap in rowing, and the tube hung ready
+to receive more air if necessity arose. As for the trim,
+it had been my snap judgment at the last moment
+that it would be better to give the skiff her head in the
+rollers that I <i>knew</i> were coming, and let her take her
+chance in being down by the stern in whirlpools that
+might never materialize. I still think that was the
+best thing to have done under the circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>Not until I was right down into that wild wallow
+of rock-churned foam was there a chance to get an
+idea of the rather remarkable bedrock formation
+which is responsible for making Umatilla Rapids the
+worrisome problem they have always been for river
+skippers. After piercing the black basaltic barrier
+of the reef, the channel shoots to the left and runs for
+a quarter of a mile or more (I was too busy to judge
+distances accurately) right along the foot of it. With
+a considerable stream of water cascading over the
+reef at almost right angles to the channel, a queer sort
+of side-kick is thrown into the waves of the latter
+which make it one of the most &#8220;unrhythmic&#8221; rapids I
+ever ran. <i>Imshallah</i> pounded horribly, but gave not
+the savagest of the twisting combers a chance to put
+anything solid over her high held head. My erratic
+pecking strokes did not find green water often enough
+to give her much way over the current, but she responded
+instantly every time I dug deep to throw her
+head back after she had been buffeted sideways by
+an arrogant ruffian of a roller.</p>
+
+<p>As soon as I saw the way she was riding the roughest
+of the water, I realized that the only chance of a<span class="pagenum">[Pg 333]</span>
+bad mess-up would come through my failure to keep
+her head to the enemy. Knowing this wasn&#8217;t likely
+to happen unless I broke an oar, I eased a bit on my
+pulling and gave just a quick short-arm jerk now and
+then to hold her steady. She was never near to
+broaching-to, and I&#8217;m mighty glad she wasn&#8217;t. Umatilla
+is the sort of a rapid that hasn&#8217;t quite the teeth to
+get the best of a carefully handled boat that is running
+in good luck, but which has the power, with a mile to
+spare, to grind to match-wood any craft that gets into
+trouble on its own account. It was an eerie run that&mdash;with
+the snarling cascade of the reef on one side, the
+ghostly dance of the rollers on the other, and the impenetrable
+grey curtain of the mist blanking everything
+beyond a radius of a hundred feet; but <i>Imshallah</i>
+went through it with her head in the air and came
+waltzing out into the swirls below as cocky as a partridge.
+Indeed, that was just the trouble. The pair
+of us were just a bit <i>too</i> cocky over the way we had
+gone it blind and come through so smartly. It remained
+for a couple of lesser rapids to reduce both
+of us to a proper humility of spirit.</p>
+
+<p>I had been prepared to make a quick shift to the
+forward thwart in case there was a bad run of whirlpools
+following the rapid, and so bring her up by the
+stern. This did not prove necessary, however, as the
+rapidly broadening river was too shallow for dangerous
+under-currents. A short run in slackening water
+brought me to the town of Umatilla just as the lights
+were beginning to twinkle in the windows. Landing
+in the quiet water below a short stone jetty, I left my
+stuff in a nearby shack and sought the hotel. The<span class="pagenum">[Pg 334]</span>
+pool-room &#8220;stove-decorators&#8221; refused to believe I had
+come through the rapid until I described it to them.
+Then they said it was better to be a lucky darnfool
+on the Columbia than an unlucky school-teacher.
+&#8220;School-teacher,&#8221; it appeared, was the local apotheosis
+of Wisdom, and stood at the opposite pole from
+&#8220;darnfool.&#8221; It seems that there had been two male
+school-teachers drowned in Umatilla that summer and
+only one darnfool, and they were rather put out at
+me for having failed to even up the score. Then they
+tried to spoil my evening by telling me all the things
+that had happened to people in Devil&#8217;s Run Rapids,
+which I would go into just below the mouth of the
+river the first thing in the morning. They had me
+rather fussed for a while, too&mdash;until they told one
+about a farmer who, after having had his launch upset
+on his way home from his wedding, swam out with his
+bride in his arms. I told them I&#8217;d try to get that lusty
+swimmer to tow me through Devil&#8217;s Run in the morning,
+and turned in for a good sleep.</p>
+
+<p>Umatilla is a decrepit little old town that knew its
+best days away back in the last century, when it was
+the head of steamer navigation on the Columbia and
+the terminus of the freighting route to Idaho and
+eastern Washington. There are rich irrigated lands
+farther up the Umatilla River, but the development
+of these seems to have done little for the stagnating
+old settlement by the Columbia, which has little left
+but its historic memories. It was by the Umatilla
+that the rugged Hunt and the remnants of the Astor
+overland party came to the Columbia, after what was
+perhaps the most terrible journey ever made across<span class="pagenum">[Pg 335]</span>
+the continent. And all through the time of the <i>voyageurs</i>,
+the trappers and the pioneers, Umatilla was
+only less important as a halting and portage point
+than the Cascades and the Dalles.</p>
+
+<p>I pulled away from the jetty of Umatilla at eight
+o&#8217;clock in the morning of November fifteenth. The
+sky was clear and there was no trace of the mist of
+the previous evening. There was brilliant, diamond-bright
+visibility on the river, with the usual early
+morning mirage effects, due to the chill stratum of
+air lying close to the water. This exaggerated considerably
+the height of distant riffles, lifting them up
+into eye-scope much sooner than they would have
+been picked up ordinarily. I put on my &#8220;Gieve&#8221; and
+blew it up in anticipation of a stiff fight at Devil&#8217;s
+Run, only to find just enough rocks and riffles there
+to make me certain of locating them. I could see,
+however, that the formation was such that there might
+have been very troublesome water there at higher, and
+possibly lower, stages. Out of charity for the tellers
+of a good many awesome tales I had to listen to in
+respect of rapids I subsequently found to be comparatively
+innocuous, I am inclined to believe that a number
+of them were substantially straight accounts of
+disasters which had actually occurred in flood season,
+or at times when other water levels than those I encountered
+made the riffles in question much more
+troublesome.</p>
+
+<p>I had an easy day of it for rapids, but, as a consequence
+of the comparatively slow water, rather a hard
+one for pulling. Canoe Encampment Rapids, twenty
+miles below Devil&#8217;s Run, gave me a good lift for a<span class="pagenum">[Pg 336]</span>
+mile or more, but not enough to make much of a respite
+from the oars if I was going to make the fifty
+miles I had set for my day&#8217;s run. I was still ten miles
+short of that at four o&#8217;clock when a drizzling rain setting
+in from the south-west decided me to land for
+shelter at Hepburn Junction, on the left bank. That
+was the first rain I had encountered since passing the
+Canadian Boundary, after a month of practically continuous
+storms. There was nothing but a railway
+station at the Junction, but a nearby road-camp offered
+the chance of food and shelter. The young contractor&mdash;he
+was doing the concrete work on a State
+Highway bridge at that point&mdash;eyed my bedraggled
+figure somewhat disapprovingly at first, at a loss,
+apparently, as to whether I was a straight hobo or
+merely a disguised boot-legger. An instant later we
+had recognized each other as football opponents of
+Los Angeles-Pasadena school-days. His name was
+Walter Rees, of a family prominent among early
+Southern California pioneers. With the rain pattering
+on the tent roof, we talked each other to sleep lamenting
+the good old days of the &#8220;flying wedge&#8221; and
+massed play in football.</p>
+
+<p>It was clear again the following morning, but with
+a mistiness to the west masking Mount Hood and the
+Cascades, to which I was now coming very near. The
+cliffs had been rearing up higher and higher at every
+mile, great walls of red-brown and black rock strongly
+suggestive, in their rugged barrenness, of the buttressed,
+turreted and columned formation through
+which the river runs below the mouth of the Spokane.
+Owyhee, Blalock and Four O&#8217;clock rapids were easy<span class="pagenum">[Pg 337]</span>
+running, but the sustained roar which the slight up-river
+breeze brought to my ears as the black, right-angling
+gorge of Rock Creek came in sight was fair
+warning that there was really rough water ahead.
+Although I had been able to gather very little information
+along the way, the fact that I had so far descended
+but a small part of the two hundred feet of
+drop between Umatilla and Celilo Falls meant that
+the several rapids immediately ahead would have to
+make up for the loafing the Columbia had been guilty
+of for the last sixty miles.</p>
+
+<p>Taking advantage of the quiet stretch of water below
+Four O&#8217;clock Rapids, I went all over the skiff as
+she drifted in the easy current, tuning her up for the
+slap-banging she could not fail to receive in the long
+succession of sharp riffles which began at Rock Creek.
+In tightening up the brass screws along the gunwale,
+I removed and threw into the bottom of the boat both
+of my oar-locks. When I started to restore them to
+place as the roar of the nearing rapid grew louder, I
+found that one of them&mdash;the left&mdash;had been kicked
+out of reach under the bottom-boards. Rather than
+go to the trouble of tearing up the latter just then, I
+replaced the missing lock with one from my duffle-bag,
+a roughly-smithed piece of iron that I had carried
+away as a mascot from an old <i>batteau</i> at Boat
+Encampment. It proved quite a bit too snug for its
+socket, besides being a deal wider than it should have
+been for the shaft of my light oar. There was a
+spoon oar, with a ring lock, under the thwarts, but I
+was somewhat chary of using it since its mate had
+snapped with me below Rock Island Rapids.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 338]</span>The river narrowed sharply above Rock Creek,
+and, standing on a thwart as the skiff drifted down,
+I saw that the rapid dropped away in a solid stretch
+of white foam tumbling between black basaltic walls.
+There was a good, stiff fall, but it was reassuring that
+I could see right away to the end of the white water,
+which did not appear to continue around the ninety-degree
+bend at the foot. It was just the sort of water
+<i>Imshallah</i> was at her best in running, so I decided it
+was simply a matter of choosing the clearest channel
+and letting her go. A white cross-barred post on the
+mountainside at the angle of the bend gave me the
+bearing for the channel a minute or two before I
+made out the dip of the &#8220;intake.&#8221; Stowing everything
+well aft, as I had done at Umatilla, I took up
+my oars and put her straight over the jade-green tip
+of the &#8220;V.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>That was rough-and-rowdy water, and no mistake.
+Every roller meant a slam, and every slam meant a
+shower-bath; but withal, it was mostly spray that
+came over her bows&mdash;nothing really to bother about.
+And so <i>Imshallah</i> would have run it right through&mdash;had
+not a sharp dig I gave with my left oar jerked
+the latter out of that &#8220;open-faced&#8221; Boat Encampment
+mascot lock and sent me keeling over backwards.
+The next moment she was wallowing, beam-on, into
+the troughs and over the crests of the combers, dipping
+green water at every roll.</p>
+
+<p>Recovering my seat as quickly as possible, I tried
+to bring her head up again by backing with the right
+oar. She swung obediently enough, but I could not
+hold her bow down-stream once she was headed right.
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 339]</span>Rather than chance that &#8220;mascot&#8221; oar-lock again, I
+tumbled aft and did what I could with the paddle.
+Down as she was by the stern, that brought her head
+right out of the water and made it rather hopeless getting
+any way on her. She tumbled on through to the
+foot of the rapid without putting a gunwale under
+again, however, a circumstance for which I was highly
+thankful. She already had five or six inches of water
+in her, as I found as soon as I began to bail. It is
+just as well the trouble didn&#8217;t occur at the head of the
+rapid. We were half way down when I ceased to
+function, and <i>Imshallah</i> had about all she wanted to
+navigate the remainder. I was also duly thankful
+that there was nothing more than a few bad swirls at
+the foot of the rapid. Standing on her tail as she
+was after I plumped down in the stern with the
+paddle, a good strong whirlpool, such as must form
+at that sharp bend at high-water, would have made
+not more than one comfortable mouthful of her.</p>
+
+<p>From the foot of Rock Creek Rapids to the head
+of Squally Hook Rapids is something less than four
+miles of not very swift water. It took me about all
+the time the boat was drifting that distance to get her
+bailed out enough to retrieve my lost oar-lock from
+under the bottom-boards. Squally Hook, I could see,
+was much the same sort of a short, sharp, savage rapid
+as Rock Creek. There was the same restricted &#8220;intake,&#8221;
+and the same abrupt bend just beyond the foot;
+only below Squally Hook the river turned to the left,
+where at Rock Creek it had turned to the right.</p>
+
+<p>The sheer two-thousand-foot cliff on the inside of
+the bend that gives its name to the rapid is well called<span class="pagenum">[Pg 340]</span>
+Squally Hook. What had been a gentle ten-miles-an-hour
+breeze on the river above began resolving
+itself into a succession of fitful gusts of twenty or
+thirty as I approached the rock-walled bend. Even a
+steady head-wind makes steering awkward in going
+into a rapid; a gusty one is a distinct nuisance. To
+avoid the necessity of any sharp change of course
+after I was once among the white-caps, I resolved to
+use every care in heading into the rapid at exactly the
+right place. That was why, when I became aware
+that two girls from a farm-house on a bench above the
+right bank were motioning me imperiously in that
+direction, I swerved sharply from the course I had
+decided upon in an endeavour to locate the channel
+into which I was sure they were trying to tell me to
+head. Just what those confounded half-breed Loreli
+were <i>really</i> driving at I never did learn. Perhaps
+they had apples to sell, or some sweet cider; or perhaps
+they thought I had some cider that was not
+sweet. Perhaps it was pure sociability&mdash;the desire of
+a bit of a &#8220;talky-talk&#8221; with the green-boated <i>voyageur</i>.
+At any rate, they were certainly <i>not</i> trying
+to pilot me into a clear channel. That fact walloped
+me right between the eyes the instant I discovered
+that I had pulled beyond the entrance of a perfectly
+straight channel and that there was a barely submerged
+barrier of rock blocking the river all the way
+on to the right bank.</p>
+
+<p>That, of course, left me no alternative but to pull
+back for all that was in me to wait the &#8220;intake.&#8221; It
+was a very similar predicament to the one in which the
+mist had tricked me at the head of Umatilla; only<span class="pagenum">[Pg 341]</span>
+there I had room to make the channel and here I
+didn&#8217;t. The current, running now like a mill-race,
+carried me onto the reef sixty feet to the right of the
+smooth green chute of the &#8220;fairway.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>If it had taken half an hour instead of half a second
+to shoot out across the shoaling shelf of that froth-hidden
+reef there might have been time for a goodly
+bit of worrying anent the outcome. As it was, there
+was just the sudden thrill of seeing the bottom of the
+river leaping up to hit the bottom of the boat, the instant
+of suspense as she touched and dragged at the
+brink, and then the dizzy nose-dive of two or three
+feet down into deeper water. It was done so quickly
+that a stroke checked by the rock of the reef was
+finished in the up-boil below the little cascade. With
+an inch or two less of water she might have hung at
+the brink and swung beam-on to the current, which,
+of course, would have meant an instant capsize.
+The way it was, she made a straight clean jump of it,
+and only buried her nose in the souse-hole for the
+briefest part of a second when she struck. The rest
+was merely the matter of three hundred yards of
+rough running down a rock-clear channel.</p>
+
+<p>The authors of my near-mess-up came capering
+down the bank in pursuit as I swung out into the
+smoothening swirls, but I only shook my fist at them
+and resumed my oars. Darn women, anyway!&mdash;when
+a man&#8217;s running rapids, I mean.</p>
+
+<p>Now one would have thought that those two performances
+were enough for one afternoon, especially
+as both were very largely due to my own carelessness;
+but I suppose the &#8220;trilogy of trouble&#8221; had to be<span class="pagenum">[Pg 342]</span>
+rounded out complete. From the foot of Squally
+Hook Rapids to the head of Indian Rapids is about
+three miles. The water became ominously slack as I
+neared what appeared to be a number of great rock
+islands almost completely barring the river. It was
+not until I was almost even with the first of them that
+a channel, very narrow and very straight, opened up
+along the left bank. Various other channels led off
+among the islands, but with nothing to indicate how
+or where they emerged. That flume-like chute down
+the left bank was plainly the way the steamers went,
+and certainly the quickest and most direct course on
+down the river. Peering through the rocky vista, I
+could see a rain storm racing up the Columbia, with
+the grey face of it just blotting out a wedge-shaped
+gorge through the southern cliffs which I knew must
+be the mouth of the John Day. That storm was
+another reason why I should choose the shortest and
+swiftest channel. There ought to be some kind of
+shelter where this important southern tributary met
+the Columbia.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, I knew all about still water running deep
+(which was of no concern to me) and &#8220;twisty&#8221; (which
+was of considerable concern). I should certainly have
+given more thought to the matter of trimming for
+what was sure to be waiting to snap up <i>Imshallah</i> at
+the foot of that speeding chute of green-black water
+had not an old friend of mine breezed along just then.
+He was the engineer of the way freight on the &#8220;South-bank&#8221;
+line. We had been exchanging signals in passing
+for three days now&mdash;twice on his down run and<span class="pagenum">[Pg 343]</span>
+once on his up. This was the first opportunity I had
+had to show him how a rapid should be run, and I
+noted with gratification that he appeared to be slowing
+down so as to miss none of the fine points. On my
+part, dispensing with my wonted preliminary &#8220;look-see,&#8221;
+I swung hard on the oars in an effort to get into
+the swiftest water before the spectators were out of
+sight.</p>
+
+<p>As the engine drew up even with me, I balanced
+my oars with my right hand for a moment and waved
+the engineer greetings with my left; he, in turn, ran
+the locomotive with his left hand and waved with his
+right. Then I saw that the fireman was also waving,
+and, farther back, the brakeman, from the top of a
+car, and the conductor from the &#8220;lookout&#8221; of the
+caboose. The occupants of the &#8220;dirigible grandstand&#8221;
+at the Poughkeepsie regattas had nothing on the
+crew of that way freight. And the latter, moreover,
+were treated to a burst of speed such as no man-propelled
+boat in still water ever came close to. I was
+not pulling over four or five miles an hour myself, but
+that smooth, steep, unobstructed chute must have
+been spilling through its current at close to twenty.
+In a couple of hundred yards I pulled up three or
+four car-lengths on the comparatively slow-moving
+train, and I was still gaining when a sudden &#8220;<i>toot-a-too-toot!</i>&#8221;
+made me stop rowing and look around. I
+had recognized instantly the familiar danger signal,
+and was rather expecting to see a cow grazing with
+true bovine nonchalance on the weeds between the
+ties. Instead, it was the engineer&#8217;s wildly gesticulat<span class="pagenum">[Pg 344]</span>ing
+arm that caught my back-cast eye. He was pointing
+just ahead of me, and down&mdash;evidently at something
+in the water.</p>
+
+<p>Then I saw it too&mdash;a big black funnel-shaped hole
+down which a wide ribbon of river seemed to be taking
+a sort of a spiral tumble. It was that entirely
+well-meant <i>toot-a-toot</i>, which was intended to prod
+me, not a cow, into activity, that was primarily responsible
+for what followed. Had I not ceased rowing
+on hearing it, it is probable that the skiff would
+have had enough way when she did strike that
+whirlpool to carry her right on through. As it
+was <i>Imshallah</i> simply did an undulant glide into
+the watery tentacles of the lurking octopus, snuggled
+into his breast and prepared to spend the
+night reeling in a dervish dance with him. I must
+do the jade the justice of admitting that she had
+no intention of outraging the proprieties by going
+any further than a nocturnal terpsichorean revel.
+Going home for the night with him never entered her
+mind; so that when he tried to pull the &#8220;Cave-Man
+stuff&#8221; and drag her down to his under-water grottoes,
+she put up the most virtuous kind of resistance.
+The trouble was that I didn&#8217;t want to go even as far
+as she did. Dancing was the last thing I cared for,
+with that rain-storm and night coming on. Yet&mdash;at
+least as far as my friends on the way freight ever
+knew&mdash;an all-night <i>Danse d&#8217;Apache</i> looked very
+much like what we were up against; for I recall distinctly
+that when the train was disappearing round
+the next bend <i>Imshallah</i>, her head thrown ecstatically
+skyward, was still spinning in circles, while I<span class="pagenum">[Pg 345]</span>
+continued to fan the air with my oars like an animated
+Dutch windmill.</p>
+
+<p>It was a mighty sizeable whirlpool, that black-mouthed
+maelstrom into which <i>Imshallah&#8217;s</i> susceptibility
+had betrayed both of us. I should say that
+it was twice the diameter of the one which had given
+us such a severe shaking just above the Canadian
+Boundary, and with a &#8220;suck&#8221; in proportion. What
+helped the situation now, however, was the fact that
+the skiff carried rather less than half the weight she
+did then. At the rate she was taking water over the
+stern during that first attack, she could not have survived
+for more than half a minute; now she was riding
+so much more buoyantly that she was only dipping
+half a bucket or so once in every two or three rounds.
+When I saw that she could probably go on dancing
+for an hour or two without taking in enough water to
+put her under, something of the ludicrousness of the
+situation began to dawn on me. Missing the water
+completely with half of my strokes, and only dealing
+it futile slaps with the rest, I was making no more
+linear progress than if I had been riding a merry-go-round.
+I didn&#8217;t dare to put the stern any lower by
+sliding down there and trying to paddle where there
+was water to be reached. Crowding her head down by
+working my weight forward finally struck me as the
+only thing to do.</p>
+
+<p>With the forward thwart almost above my head
+this was not an easy consummation to effect, especially
+with an oar in either hand. Luckily, I was now using
+the &#8220;ring&#8221; oar-locks, so that they came along on the
+oars when I unshipped the latter. Standing up was,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 346]</span>
+of course, out of the question. I simply slid off backwards
+on to the bottom and wriggled forward in a
+sitting position until I felt my spine against the
+thwart. That brought her nose out of the clouds, and
+she settled down still farther when, after getting my
+elbows over the seat behind me, I worked up into a
+rowing position.</p>
+
+<p>The whirlpool was spinning from right to left, and
+one quick stroke with my left oar&mdash;against the current
+of the &#8220;spin,&#8221; that is&mdash;was enough to shoot her
+clear. Bad swirls and two or three smaller &#8220;twisters&#8221;
+made her course a devious one for the next hundred
+yards, but she never swung in a complete revolution
+again. I pulled into smooth water just as the first
+drops of the storm began to patter on the back of my
+neck.</p>
+
+<p>The first riffle of John Day Rapids sent its warning
+growl on the up-river wind before I was a quarter
+of a mile below the whirlpool, and ahead loomed a
+barrier of rock islands, rising out of the white foam
+churned up as the Columbia raced between them. I
+had to run the first riffle&mdash;an easy one&mdash;to make the
+mouth of the John Day, but that was as far as I went.
+I reckoned there had been quite enough excitement
+for one afternoon without poking into any more rough
+water against a rain and head wind. Dropping below
+the gravel bar off the mouth of the Day, I pulled
+fifty yards up-stream in a quiet current and moored
+<i>Imshallah</i> under the railway bridge. I camped for
+the night with a couple of motor tourists in a shack
+near the upper end of the bridge. My hosts were two
+genial souls, father and son, enjoying an indefinite<span class="pagenum">[Pg 347]</span>
+spell of fishing, hunting and trapping on a stake the
+former had made in the sale of one of his &#8220;prospects&#8221;
+in southern Oregon. They were bluff, big-hearted,
+genuine chaps, both of them, and we had a highly
+delightful evening of yarning.</p>
+
+<p>It was clear again the next morning, but with the
+barometer of my confidence jolted down several
+notches by what had occurred the previous afternoon.
+I pulled across the river and sought a quieter way
+through the second riffle of John Day Rapids than
+that promised by the boisterous steamer channel. By
+devious ways and sinuous, I wound this way and that
+among the black rock islands, until a shallow channel
+along the right bank let me out of the maze at the
+lower end. This waste of time and effort was largely
+due to funkiness on my part, and there was no necessity
+for it. The steamer channel is white and rough,
+with something of a whirlpool on the left side at the
+lower end, but nothing that there is any real excuse
+for avoiding. The third riffle was nothing to bother
+about; nor did Schofield&#8217;s Rapids, two miles below,
+offer any difficulties. As a matter of fact, Adventure,
+having had its innings, was taking a day off, leaving
+me to follow the Golden Trail of Romance. To-day
+was &#8220;Ladies&#8217; Day&#8221; on the Columbia.</p>
+
+<p>Romance first showed her bright eyes at a little
+farm on the right bank, three miles below Schofield&#8217;s
+Rapids. Landing here to ask about the channel
+through a rather noisy rapid beginning to boom ahead,
+I found a delectable apple-cheeked miss of about
+twelve in charge, her father and mother having gone
+across to Biggs for the day. She was in sore trouble<span class="pagenum">[Pg 348]</span>
+at the moment of my advent because her newly-born
+brindle bull calf&mdash;her really-truly very own&mdash;wouldn&#8217;t
+take nourishment properly. Now as luck
+would have it, teaching a calf table-manners chanced
+to be one of the few things I knew about stock-farming.
+So I showed her how to start in by letting <i>Cultus</i>
+(that was merely a temporary name, she said, because
+he was so bad) munch her own finger for a
+spell, from which, by slow degrees, the lacteal liaison
+with &#8220;Old Mooley&#8221; was established. It took us half
+an hour to get <i>Cultus</i> functioning on all fours, and
+rather longer than that to teach her collie, tabby
+cat, and the latter&#8217;s three kittens to sit in a row and
+have their mouths milked into. It didn&#8217;t take us long
+to exhaust &#8220;Old Mooley&#8217;s&#8221; milk supply at that game,
+and when I finally climbed over the barnyard fence
+on the way down to my boat, poor <i>Cultus</i> was left
+butting captiously at an empty udder. &#8220;Apple
+Cheek&#8221; rather wanted me to stay until her father
+came back, saying that he had gone to Biggs to get
+a &#8217;breed for a hired man, and that, if he didn&#8217;t get
+the &#8217;breed, maybe I would do. She almost burst into
+tears with shame when I told her I was a moving picture
+actor seeking rest and local colour on the Columbia.
+&#8220;You a actor, and I made you milk &#8216;Old
+Mooley!&#8217;&#8221; she sobbed; and it took all my lunch ration
+of milk chocolate to bring back her smile. Then, like
+the Scotch bride at Windermere, she asked me if I was
+Bill Hart. Somehow, I wasn&#8217;t quite base enough to
+tell her a concrete lie like that; so I compromised with
+a comparative abstraction. I was a rising star in the
+movie firmament, I said; an eclectic, taking the best<span class="pagenum">[Pg 349]</span>
+of all the risen stars, of whom much would be heard
+later. She was still pondering &#8220;<i>eclectic</i>&#8221; when I
+pushed off into the current. Bless your heart, little
+&#8220;Apple Cheek,&#8221; I hope you didn&#8217;t get a spanking for
+wasting all of <i>Cultus&#8217;</i> dinner on the dogs and cats
+and the side of the barn! You were about the first
+person I met on the Columbia who didn&#8217;t accuse me
+of being a boot-legger, and the only one who believed
+me hot off the bat when I said I was a movie star.</p>
+
+<p>The rapid ahead became noisier as I drew nearer,
+and when I saw it came from a reef which reached
+four-fifths of the way across the river from the left
+bank, I pulled in and landed at Biggs to inquire about
+the channel. The first man I spoke to called a second,
+and the latter a third, and so on <i>ad infinitum</i>. Pretty
+near to half the town must have been gathered at the
+railway station giving me advice at the end of a quarter
+of an hour. Each of them had a different suggestion
+to make, ranging from dragging through a half-empty
+back channel just below the town to taking
+the boat out and running it down the track on a
+push-cart. As they all were agreed that the steamers
+used to go down the opposite side, I finally decided
+that would be the best way through. Not to run too
+much risk of being carried down onto the reef in pulling
+across, I lined and poled a half mile up-stream
+before pushing off. Once over near the right bank,
+I found a channel broad and deep enough to have run
+at night.</p>
+
+<p>A couple of miles below Biggs the Columbia is
+divided by a long narrow rocky island. The deep,
+direct channel is that to the right, and is called Hell<span class="pagenum">[Pg 350]</span>
+Gate&mdash;the third gorge of that hackneyed name I had
+encountered since pushing off from Beavermouth.
+Possibly it was because I was fed-up with the name
+and all it connoted that I avoided this channel; more
+likely it was because Romance was at the tow-line.
+At any rate, I headed into the broad shallow channel
+that flows by the mouth of the River Des Chutes. It
+was up this tumultuous stream that Frémont, after
+camping at the Dalles and making a short boat voyage
+below, started south over the mountains in search
+of the mythical river that was supposed to drain from
+the Utah basin to the Pacific in the vicinity of San
+Francisco&mdash;one of the indomitable &#8220;Pathfinder&#8217;s&#8221;
+hardest journeys.</p>
+
+<p>Just beyond where the River of the Falls, true to
+name to the last, came cascading into the Columbia,
+Romance again raised her golden head&mdash;this time out
+of the steam rising above an Indian &#8220;Turkish-bath.&#8221;
+The first time I had found her in the guise of a twelve-year-old;
+this time it was more like a hundred and
+twelve. One can&#8217;t make certain within a year or two
+about a lady in a Turkish-bath; it wouldn&#8217;t be seemly
+even to <i>try</i> to do so. Pulling in close to the left bank
+to look at some queer mud-plastered Indian wickiups,
+a rush of steam suddenly burst from the side of the
+nearest one, and out of that spreading white cloud,
+rising like Aphrodite from the sea-foam, emerged
+the head and shoulders of an ancient squaw. She was
+horribly old&mdash;literally at the sans eyes, sans hair, sans
+teeth, sans everything (including clothes) stage.
+Cackling and gesticulating in the rolling steam, she<span class="pagenum">[Pg 351]</span>
+was the <i>belle ideal</i> of the witch of one&#8217;s fancy, muttering
+incantations above her boiling cauldron.</p>
+
+<p>Frémont, in somewhat humorous vein, tells of visiting
+an Indian camp in this vicinity on the Columbia,
+and of how one of the squaws who had rushed forth in
+complete <i>déshabille</i> on hearing the voices of strangers,
+&#8220;properized&#8221; herself at the last moment by using her
+papoose&mdash;as far as it would go&mdash;as a shield. But
+this old &#8220;Aphrodite&#8221; I had flushed from cover was so
+old that, if her youngest child had been ready to hand,
+and that latter had had one of her own children within
+reach, and this third one had had a child available, I
+am certain that still another generation or two would
+have had to be descended before a papoose sufficiently
+young enough to make &#8220;properization&#8221; prop&#8220;r would
+have been found. I trust I make that clear. And
+when you <i>have</i> visualized it, isn&#8217;t it a funny pyramid?</p>
+
+<p>With two or three more &#8220;Aphrodites&#8221; 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&mdash;steaming amazingly they were at the touch of
+the sharp early winter air&mdash;and plunged into the icy
+water. I learned later that this &#8220;sweat-bath&#8221; treatment
+is the favourite cure-all with the Indians of that
+part of the Columbia Basin.</p>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum">[Pg 352]</span>
+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 &#8220;water-smoke,&#8221; white against the encroaching
+cliffs, marked its approximate location. I was at last
+approaching the famous &#8220;long portage&#8221; of the old
+<i>voyageurs</i>, 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 canal. I caught the loom of the
+head-gate of the latter about the same time that the
+bridge of the &#8220;North-Bank&#8221; branch line, which spans
+the gorge below the falls, began rearing its blurred
+fret-work above the mists. Then, once again, Romance.
+&#8220;Ladies&#8217; Day&#8221; was not yet over. As I
+pulled in toward the entrance to the canal, 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 &#8220;Anglo-Chinook,&#8221; that I ferry her to the
+opposite bank, where her home was, and, where, apparently,
+she was long overdue. She wasn&#8217;t a beggar,
+she assured me, but&mdash;jingling her beaded bag under<span class="pagenum">[Pg 353]</span>
+my nose&mdash;was quite willing to pay me &#8220;<i>hiyu chickamon</i>&#8221;
+for my services. Nor was she unduly persistent.
+No sooner had I told her that I was in a &#8220;<i>hiyu rush</i>&#8221;
+and hadn&#8217;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 <i>Imshallah</i> back into
+the water, I told her to pile in.</p>
+
+<p>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&#8217;t expect that of a sixty-year-old
+squaw); but she was the most trusting soul I ever
+met, and that&#8217;s something. The falls were thundering
+not fifty yards below&mdash;near enough to wet us with
+their up-blown spray,&mdash;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&mdash;the boot
+... as if <i>that</i> had lost any cuticle. And at parting,<span class="pagenum">[Pg 354]</span>
+when I waved her money-bag aside and told her to
+keep her <i>chickamon</i> to spend on the movies, she came
+and patted me affectionately on the shoulder, repeating
+over and over &#8220;<i>Close tum-tum mika!</i>&#8221; And that,
+in Chinook, means: &#8220;You&#8217;re very much all right!&#8221;
+As far as I can remember, that is the only unqualified
+praise I ever had from a lady&mdash;one of that age, I
+mean. Squiring squaws&mdash;especially dear old souls
+like that one&mdash;is a lot better fun than a man would
+think.</p>
+
+<p><a id="page354" name="page354"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 462px;">
+<img src="images/illo_426.jpg" width="462" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">LIFTED DRAWBRIDGE ON CELILO CANAL (<i>above</i>)<br />
+TUMWATER GORGE OF THE GRAND DALLES (<i>below</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p><a id="page355" name="page355"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/illo_427.jpg" width="600" height="464" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">&#8220;IMSHALLAH&#8221; IN THE LOCK AT FIVE-MILE (<i>left</i>)<br />
+&#8220;IMSHALLAH&#8221; HALF WAY THROUGH THE CELILO CANAL (<i>right</i>)</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was four o&#8217;clock when I turned up at the lock-master&#8217;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 Canal 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. &#8220;Mistah&#8221; Sides got out his fiddle and
+played &#8220;The Arkansaw Traveller&#8221; and &#8220;Turkey in
+the Straw,&#8221; 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 <i>started</i> the trouble by putting
+feathers down my neck, I hope &#8220;Missus&#8221; Sides made
+that demure-eyed minx swab down decks in the morn<span class="pagenum">[Pg 355]</span>ing
+before she went to teach the young idea how to
+shoot.</p>
+
+<p>There is no lock at the head of the Celilo Canal,
+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 canal,
+down which I pulled with the thunder of the falls on
+one side and on the other the roar of a passing 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.</p>
+
+<p>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 <i>possible</i> for a well-handled steamer to run through
+in safety&mdash;provided she is lucky. With the completion
+of the Canal 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 suc<span class="pagenum">[Pg 356]</span>cess
+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 <i>D. S. Baker</i>, in
+1888.</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>&#8220;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 massive bluff.
+Deflected from the bluff, it turns at a sharp angle to be
+split asunder by a low reef of rock. When the <i>Baker</i> was
+drawn into the suck of the current at the head of the &#8216;chute&#8217;
+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, &#8216;Ahead, full speed,&#8217; 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 passed this danger point, she glided into the beautiful
+calm bay below and the feat was accomplished.&#8221;</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>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<span class="pagenum">[Pg 357]</span>
+of the Big Bend in Canada. It appeared to be customary
+for the old <i>voyageurs</i> to make an eight or ten
+miles portage here, whether going up or down stream,
+though there were doubtless times when their big
+<i>batteaux</i> were equal to running the Dalles below
+Celilo. I climbed out and took hurried surveys of
+both Tumwater and Five-Mile (sometimes called
+&#8220;The Big Chute&#8221;) in passing, 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 &#8220;look-see,&#8221;
+and it may well be that I was over optimistic.</p>
+
+<p>The Celilo Canal, 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 canal has failed of its object&mdash;that
+of opening up through navigation between
+tide-water and the upper Columbia&mdash;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 Canal rendered was the indirect one of<span class="pagenum">[Pg 358]</span>
+forcing a very considerable reduction of railway
+freight rates. That alone is said to have saved the
+shippers of eastern Oregon and Washington many
+times the cost of this highly expensive undertaking.</p>
+
+<p>I pulled at a leisurely gait down the Canal, stopping,
+as I have said, at Tumwater and Five-Mile,
+and at the latter giving the lock-master a hand in
+dropping <i>Imshallah</i> down a step to the next level.
+Rowing past a weird &#8220;fleet&#8221; 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, <i>Umatilla</i>, 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.</p>
+
+<p>While Captain Winslow was making a hurried
+shift 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 Canal
+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<span class="pagenum">[Pg 359]</span>
+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, passing us down to the second lock and
+on out into the river was but the matter of a few
+minutes.</p>
+
+<p>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 passage 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 fishing 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.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="page360" name="page360">[Pg 360]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV<br />
+<br />
+THE HOME STRETCH</h2>
+
+<p>The Dalles was the largest town I touched on the
+Columbia, and one of the most attractive. Long one
+of the largest wool-shipping 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.</p>
+
+<p>In the days of the <i>voyageurs</i> The Dalles was notorious
+for the unspeakably treacherous Indians who
+congregated there to intimidate and plunder all who
+passed that unavoidable portage. They were lying,
+thieving scoundrels for the most part, easily intimidated
+by a show of force and far less prone to stage
+a real fight than their more warlike brethren who
+disputed the passage at the Cascades. That this
+&#8220;plunderbund&#8221; 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<span class="pagenum">[Pg 361]</span>
+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 passing
+tourist until I made my Columbia voyage.</p>
+
+<p>I had intended, by making an early start from
+The Dalles, to endeavour to cover the forty odd miles
+to the head of the Cascades before dark of the same
+day. Two things conspired to defeat this ambitious
+plan: first, some unexpected mail which had to be
+answered, and, second, my equally unexpected booking
+of a passenger&mdash;a way passenger who had to be
+landed well short of the Cascades. Just as I was
+cleaning up the last of my letters, the hotel clerk
+introduced me to the &#8220;Society Editor&#8221; of The Dalles
+<i>Chronicle</i>, who wanted an interview. I told her that
+I was already two hours behind schedule, but that if
+she cared to ride the running road with me for a while,
+she could have the interview, with lunch thrown in,
+on the river. She accepted with alacrity, but begged
+for half an hour to clean up her desk at the <i>Chronicle</i>
+office and change to out-door togs. Well within that
+limit, she was back again at the hotel, flushed, pant-<span class="pagenum">[Pg 362]</span>ing
+and pant-ed, and announced that she was ready.
+Picking up a few odds and ends of food at the nearest
+grocery, we went down to the dock, where I
+launched and loaded up <i>Imshallah</i> in time to push
+off at ten o&#8217;clock. I had, of course, given up all idea
+of making the Cascades that day, and reckoned that
+Hood River, about twenty-five miles, would be a comfortable
+and convenient halting place for the night.
+And so it would have been....</p>
+
+<p><a id="page362" name="page362"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 440px;">
+<img src="images/illo_436.jpg" width="440" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">PALISADE ROCK, LOWER COLUMBIA RIVER</span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<p><a id="page363" name="page363"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 456px;">
+<img src="images/illo_437.jpg" width="456" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">MULTNOMAH FALLS COLUMBIA RIVER HIGHWAY, NEAR PORTLAND</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>I don&#8217;t remember whether or not we ever got very
+far with the &#8220;interview,&#8221; but I do recall that Miss
+S&mdash;&mdash; talked very interestingly of Johan Bojer and
+his work, and that she was in the midst of a keenly
+analytical review of &#8220;The Great Hunger&#8221; when a
+sudden darkening of what up to then had been only
+a slightly overcast sky reminded me that I had been
+extremely remiss in the matter of keeping an eye on
+the weather. Indeed, up to that moment the menace
+of storms on the river had been of such small moment
+as compared to that of rapids that I had come
+to rate it as no more than negligible. Now, however,
+heading into the heart of the Cascades, I was approaching
+a series of gorges long notorious among
+river <i>voyageurs</i> as a veritable &#8220;wind factory&#8221;&mdash;a
+&#8220;storm-breeder&#8221; of the worst description. After all
+that I had read of the way in which the early pioneers
+had been held up for weeks by head winds between
+the Dalles and the Cascades, there was no excuse for
+my failure to keep a weather eye lifting at so treacherous
+a point. The only <i>alibi</i> I can think of is Adam&#8217;s:
+&#8220;The woman did it.&#8221; Nor is there any ungallantry
+in that plea. Quite the contrary, in fact; for I am
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 363]</span>quite ready to confess that I should probably fail to
+watch the clouds again under similar circumstances.</p>
+
+<p>There were a few stray mavericks of sunshine
+shafts trying to struggle down to the inky pit of the
+river as I turned to give the weather a once-over, but
+they were quenched by the sinister cloud-pall even as
+I looked. The whole gorge of the river-riven Cascades
+was heaped full of wallowing nimbus which,
+driven by a fierce wind, was rolling up over the water
+like an advancing smoke-barrage. The forefront of
+the wind was marked by a wild welter of foam-white
+water, while a half mile behind a streaming curtain
+of gray-black indicated the position of the advancing
+wall of the rain. It would have been a vile-looking
+squall even in the open sea; here the sinister threat of
+it was considerably accentuated by the towering cliffs
+and the imminent outcrops of black rock studding the
+surface of the river. I had no serious doubt that
+<i>Imshallah</i>, after all the experience she had had in
+rough water, would find any great difficulty in riding
+out the blow where she was, but since it hardly seemed
+hospitable to subject my lady guest to any more of a
+wetting than could be avoided, I turned and headed
+for the lee shore. Miss S&mdash;&mdash; was only about half
+muffled in the rubber saddle <i>poncho</i> and the light
+&#8220;shed&#8221; tent I tossed to her before resuming my oars
+when the wall of the wind&mdash;hard and solid as the side
+of a flying barn&mdash;struck us full on the starboard beam.
+It was rather careless of me, not heading up to meet
+that squall before it struck; but the fact was that I
+simply couldn&#8217;t take seriously anything that it seemed
+possible <i>could</i> happen on such a deep, quiet stretch of<span class="pagenum">[Pg 364]</span>
+river. The consequence of taking that buffet on the
+beam was quite a merry bit of a mix-up. The shower-bath
+of blown spray and the dipping under of the
+lee rail were rather the least of my troubles. What
+did have me guessing for a minute, though, was the
+result of the fact that that confounded fifty-miles-an-hour
+zephyr got under the corners of the tent and,
+billowing it monstrously, carried about half of it overboard;
+also a somewhat lesser amount of Miss S&mdash;&mdash;,
+who was just wrapping herself in it. I had to drop
+my oars to effect adequate salvage operations, and so
+leave the skiff with her port gunwale pretty nearly
+hove under. As soon as I got around to swing her
+head up into the teeth of the wind things eased off a
+bit.</p>
+
+<p>The river was about a mile wide at this point&mdash;ten
+miles below The Dalles and about opposite the station
+of Rowena&mdash;and, save for occasional outcroppings
+of black bedrock, fairly deep. The north shore was
+rocky all the way along, but that to the south (which
+was also the more protected on account of a jutting
+point ahead) was a broad sandy beach. That beach
+seemed to offer a comparatively good landing, and,
+as it extended up-stream for half a mile, it appeared
+that I ought to have no great difficulty in fetching it.
+The first intimation I had that this might not be as
+easy as I had reckoned came when, in spite of the fact
+that I was pulling down-stream in a three or four-mile
+current, the wind backed the skiff up-stream
+past a long rock island at a rate of five or six miles
+an hour. That was one of the queerest sensations I
+experienced on the whole voyage&mdash;having to avoid<span class="pagenum">[Pg 365]</span>
+bumping the <i>lower</i> end of a rock the while I could
+see the riffle where a strong current was flowing
+around the <i>upper</i> end.</p>
+
+<p>I settled down to pulling in good earnest after
+that rather startling revelation, trying to hold the
+head of the skiff just enough to the left of the eye of
+the wind to give her a good shoot across the current.
+Luckily, I had been pretty well over toward the south
+bank when the wind struck. There was only about a
+quarter of a mile to go, but I was blown back just
+about the whole length of that half mile of sandy beach
+in making it. The last hundred yards I was rowing
+&#8220;all out,&#8221; and it was touch-and-go as to whether the
+skiff was going to nose into soft sand or the lower end
+of a long stretch of half-submerged rocks. I was a
+good deal relieved when it proved to be the beach&mdash;by
+about twenty feet. We would have made some
+kind of a landing on the rocks without doubt, but
+hardly without giving the bottom of the boat an
+awful banging.</p>
+
+<p>The sand proved unexpectedly soft when I jumped
+out upon it, but I struck firm bottom before I had
+sunk more than an inch or two above my boot tops
+and managed to drag the skiff up far enough to escape
+the heaviest of the wash of the waves. It was
+rather a sodden bundle of wet canvas that I carried
+out and deposited under a pine tree beyond high-water
+mark, but the core of it displayed considerable
+life after it had been extracted and set up to dry before
+the fire of pitchy cones that I finally succeeded
+in teasing into a blaze. To show Miss S&mdash;&mdash; that the
+storm hadn&#8217;t affected my equanimity, I asked her<span class="pagenum">[Pg 366]</span>
+to go on with her review of &#8220;The Great Hunger;&#8221; but
+she replied her own was more insistent, and reminded
+me that I hadn&#8217;t served lunch yet. Well, rain-soaked
+biscuit and milk chocolate are rather difficult to take
+without a spoon; but a pound of California seedless
+raisins, if munched slowly, go quite a way with two
+people.</p>
+
+<p>The worst of the squall was over in half an hour,
+and, anxious to make hay while the sun shone, I
+pushed off again in an endeavor to get on as far as
+I could before the next broadside opened up. Miss
+S&mdash;&mdash; and I landed at the Rowena Ferry, to
+catch the afternoon train back to The Dalles. She was a good
+ship-mate, and I greatly regret she had the bad luck
+to be my passenger on the only day I encountered a
+really hard blow in all of my voyage.</p>
+
+<p>There was another threatening turret of black
+cloud beginning to train its guns as I pulled out into
+the stream beyond Rowena, and it opened with all
+the big stuff it had before I had gone a mile. While
+it lasted, the bombardment was as fierce as the first
+one. Fortunately, its ammunition ran out sooner.
+I kept the middle of the current this time, pulling as
+hard as I could against the wind. I got a thorough
+raking, fore-and-aft, for my temerity, but, except at
+the height of the wind, I managed to avoid the ignominy
+of being forced back against the stream.</p>
+
+<p>The third squall, which opened up about three-thirty,
+was a better organized assault, and gave me a
+pretty splashy session of it. When that blow got the
+range of me I was just pulling along to the left of a
+desolate tongue of black basalt called Memaloose<span class="pagenum">[Pg 367]</span>
+Island. For many centuries this rocky isle was used
+by the Klickatats as a burial place, which fact induced
+a certain Indian-loving pioneer of The Dalles, Victor
+Trevett by name, to order his own grave dug
+there. A tall marble shaft near the lower end of the
+island marks the spot. Now I have no objection to
+marble shafts in general, nor even to this one in particular&mdash;as
+a shaft. I just got tired of seeing it, that
+was all. If any skipper on the Columbia ever passed
+Vic Trevett&#8217;s monument as many times in a year as
+I did in an hour, I should like to know what run he
+was on.</p>
+
+<p>Swathed in oilskins, my potential speed was cut
+down both by the resistance my augmented bulk offered
+to the wind and the increased difficulty of pulling
+with so much on. Down past the monument I
+would go in the lulls, and up past the monument I
+would go before the gusts. There, relentless as the
+<i>Flying Dutchman</i>, that white shaft hung for the best
+part of an hour. I only hope what I said to the wind
+didn&#8217;t disturb old Vic Trevett&#8217;s sleep. Finally, a
+quarter of an hour&#8217;s easing of the blow let me double
+the next point; and then it turned loose with all its
+guns again. Quite gone in the back and legs, I gave
+up the unequal fight and started to shoot off quartering
+toward the shore. Glancing over my shoulder in
+an endeavour to get some kind of an idea of where, and
+against what, I might count on striking, an astounding
+sight met my eyes, a picture so weird and infernal
+that I had to pause (mentally) and assure myself
+that those raisins I had for lunch had not been &#8220;processed.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 368]</span>Of all the sinister landscapes I ever saw&mdash;including
+the lava fields of a good many volcanoes and a number
+of the world&#8217;s most repulsive &#8220;bad lands&#8221;&mdash;that
+which opened up to me as I tried to head in beyond
+that hard-striven-for point stands alone in my memory
+for sheer awesomeness. The early winter twilight
+had already begun to settle upon the gloomy
+gorge, the duskiness greatly accentuating the all-pervading
+murk cast upon the river by the pall of the
+sooty clouds. All round loomed walls of black basalt,
+reflecting darkly in water whose green had been
+completely quenched by the brooding purple shadows.
+The very pines on the cliffs merged in the solid
+opacity behind their scraggly forms, and even the
+fringe of willows above high-water-mark looped round
+the crescent of beach below like a fragment of mourning
+band. And that stretch of silver sand&mdash;the one
+thing in the whole infernal landscape whose whiteness
+the gloom alone could not drown: how shall I
+describe the jolt it gave me when I discovered that
+six or seven black devils were engaged in systematically
+spraying it with an inky liquid that left it as
+dark and dead to the eye as a Stygian strand of anthracite?
+It was a lucky thing those raisins had <i>not</i>
+been &#8220;processed;&#8221; else I might not have remembered
+readily what I had heard of the way the &#8220;South-Bank&#8221;
+railway had been keeping the sand from drifting
+over its tracks by spraying with crude oil the
+bars uncovered at low water.</p>
+
+<p>With that infernal mystery cleared up, my mind
+was free to note and take advantage of a rather remarkable
+incidental phenomenon. The effect of oil<span class="pagenum">[Pg 369]</span>
+on troubled waters was no new thing to me, for on a
+number of occasions I had helped to rig a bag of kerosene-soaked
+oakum over the bows of a schooner
+hove-to in a gale; but to find a stretch of water already
+oiled for me at just the time and place I was in
+the sorest need of it&mdash;well, I couldn&#8217;t see where those
+manna-fed Children of Israel wandering in the desert
+found their advance arrangements looked to any better
+than that. The savage wind-whipped white-caps
+that were buffeting me in mid-stream dissolved into
+foam-streaked ripples the moment they impinged
+upon the broadening oil-sleeked belt where the petroleum
+had seeped riverward from the sprayed beach.
+A solid jetty of stone could not have broken the
+rollers more effectually. On one side was a wild wallow
+of tossing water; on the other&mdash;as far as the surface
+of the river was concerned&mdash;an almost complete
+calm.</p>
+
+<p>It was a horrible indignity to heap upon <i>Imshallah</i>
+(and, after the way she had displayed her resentment
+following her garbage shower under the Wenatchee
+bridge, I knew that spirited lady would make me
+pay dear for it if ever she had the chance); still&mdash;dead
+beat as I was&mdash;there was nothing else to do but to
+head into that oleaginous belt of calm and make the
+best of it. The wind still took a deal of bucking, but
+with the banging of the waves at an end my progress
+was greatly accelerated. Hailing the black devils on
+the bank, I asked where the nearest village was concealed,
+to learn that Moosier was a couple of miles
+below, but well back from the river. They rather
+doubted that I could find my way to the town across<span class="pagenum">[Pg 370]</span>
+the mudflats, but thought it might be worth trying in
+preference to pushing on in the dark to Hood River.</p>
+
+<p>Those imps of darkness were right about the difficulty
+of reaching Moosier after nightfall. A small
+river coming in at that point seemed to have deposited
+a huge bar of quicksand all along the left bank, and
+I would never have been able to make a landing at
+all had not a belated duck-hunter given me a hand.
+After tying up to an oar, he very courteously undertook
+to pilot me to the town through the half-overflowed
+willow and alder flats. As a consequence of
+taking the lead, it was the native rather than the visitor
+who went off the caving path into the waist-deep little
+river. Coming out of the woods, a hundred-yards of
+slushing across a flooded potato-patch brought us to
+the railway embankment, and from there it was comparatively
+good going to the hotel. Luckily, the latter
+had a new porcelain tub and running hot water,
+luxuries one cannot always be sure of in the smaller
+Columbia River towns.</p>
+
+<p><a id="page370" name="page370"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;">
+<img src="images/illo_446.jpg" width="600" height="415" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">CITY OF PORTLAND WITH MT. HOOD IN THE DISTANCE</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was just at the close of the local apple season, and
+I found the hotel brimming over with departing packers.
+Most of the latter were girls from Southern
+California orange-packing houses, imported for the
+season. Several of them came from Anaheim, and
+assured me that they had packed Valencias from a
+small grove of mine in that district. They were a
+good deal puzzled to account for the fact that a man
+with a Valencia grove should be &#8220;hobo-ing&#8221; round
+the country like I was, and seemed hardly to take me
+seriously when I assured them it was only a matter
+of a year or two before all farmers would be hobos.
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg 371]</span>It&#8217;s funny how apple-packing seems to bring out all
+the innate snobbery in a lady engaging in that lucrative
+calling; they didn&#8217;t seem to think tramping was
+quite respectable. I slept on the parlour couch until
+three in the morning, when I &#8220;inherited&#8221; the room
+occupied by a couple of packettes departing by the
+Portland train. As they seem to have been addicted
+to &#8220;<i>attar of edelweiss</i>,&#8221; or something of the kind, and
+there hadn&#8217;t been time for fumigation, I rather regretted
+making the shift.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+<p><a id="page371" name="page371"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 417px;">
+<img src="images/illo_447.jpg" width="417" height="600" alt="" title="" />
+<span class="caption">BRIDGE ON COLUMBIA HIGHWAY NEAR PORTLAND, OREGON</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>When I had splashed back to the river in the morning,
+I found that <i>Imshallah</i> anxious to hide the
+shame of that oil-bath, had spent the night trying to
+bury herself in the quicksand. Dumping her was
+out of the question, and I sank mid-thigh deep two
+or three times myself before I could persuade the
+sulking minx even to take the water. I knew she
+would take the first chance that offered to rid herself
+of the filth, just as she had before; but, with no swift
+water above the Cascades, there seemed small likelihood
+of her getting out-of-hand. Knowing that she
+was quite equal to making a bolt over the top of that
+terrible cataract if she hadn&#8217;t managed to effect some
+sort of purification before reaching there, I made an
+honest attempt at conciliation by landing at the first
+solid beach I came to and giving her oily sides a good
+swabbing down with a piece of carpet. That seemed
+to mollify the temperamental lady a good deal, but
+just the same I knew her too well to take any chances.</p>
+
+<p>Of all the great rivers in the world, there are only
+two that have had the audacity to gouge a course
+straight through a major range of mountains. These<span class="pagenum">[Pg 372]</span>
+are the Brahmaputra, which clove a way through the
+Himalaya in reaching the Bay of Bengal from Tibet,
+and the Columbia, which tore the Cascades asunder
+in making its way to the Pacific. But the slow process
+of the ages by which the great Asian river won its
+way to the sea broke its heart and left it a lifeless
+thing. It emerges from the mountains with barely
+strength enough to crawl across the most dismal of
+deltas to lose its identity in the brackish estuaries at
+its many insignificant mouths. The swift stroke by
+which the Cascades were parted for the Columbia
+left &#8220;The Achilles of Rivers&#8221; unimpaired in vigour.
+It rolls out of the mountains with a force which endless
+ćons have not weakened to a point where it was
+incapable of carrying the silt torn down by its erosive
+actions far out into the sea. It is the one great
+river that does not run for scores, perhaps hundreds,
+of miles through a flat, monotonous delta; the one
+great stream that meets the ocean strength for
+strength. The Nile, the Niger, the Amazon, the
+Yangtse, the Mississippi&mdash;all of the other great rivers&mdash;find
+their way to the sea through miasmic swamps;
+only the Columbia finishes in a setting worthy of that
+in which it takes its rise. Nay, more than that. Superlative
+to the last degree as is the scenery along the
+Columbia, from its highest glacial sources in the
+Rockies and Selkirks right down to the Cascades,
+there is not a gorge, a vista, a panorama, a cascade
+of which I cannot truthfully say: &#8220;That reminds me
+of something I have seen before.&#8221; The list would
+include the names of most of the scenic wonders that
+the world has come to know as the ultimate expression<span class="pagenum">[Pg 373]</span>
+of the grand and the sublime; but in time my record
+of comparisons would be complete. But for the distinctive
+grandeur of that fifty miles of cliff-walled
+gorge where the Columbia rolls through its Titan-torn
+rift in the Cascades, I fail completely to find a
+comparison. It is unique; without a near-rival of its
+kind.</p>
+
+<p>Because so many attempts&mdash;all of them more or
+less futile&mdash;have been made to describe the Cascade
+Gorge of the Columbia, I shall not rush in here with
+word pictures where even railway pamphleteers have
+failed. The fact that several of the points I attained
+in the high Selkirks are scarcely more than explored,
+and that many stretches I traversed of the upper
+river are very rarely visited, must be the excuse for
+such essays at descriptions as I have now and then
+been tempted into in the foregoing chapters. That
+excuse is not valid in connection with the Cascade
+Gorge, and, frankly, I am mighty glad of the chance
+to side-step the job. I must beg leave, however, to
+make brief record of an interesting &#8220;scenic coincidence&#8221;
+that was impressed on my mind the afternoon
+that I pulled through the great chasm of the Cascades.</p>
+
+<p>It was a day of sunshine and showers, with the
+clouds now revealing, now concealing the towering
+mountain walls on either hand. The almost continuous
+rains of the last four days had greatly augmented
+the flow of the streams, and there was one time, along
+toward evening, that I counted seven distinct waterfalls
+tumbling over a stretch of tapestried cliff on the
+Oregon side not over two miles in length. And while
+these shimmering ribbons of fluttering satin were still<span class="pagenum">[Pg 374]</span>
+within eye-scope, a sudden shifting of the clouds uncovered
+in quick succession three wonderful old volcanic
+cones&mdash;Hood, to the south, Adams, to the north,
+and a peak which I think must have been St. Helens
+to the west. Instantly the lines of Tennyson&#8217;s <i>Lotos
+Eaters</i> came to my mind.</p>
+
+<div class="poem" style="width: 28em;">
+<span class="i0">&#8220;A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke,</span>
+<span class="i0">Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go;</span>
+<span class="i0">And some thro&#8217; wavering lights and shadows broke,</span>
+<span class="i0">Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.</span>
+<span class="i0">They saw the gleaming river seaward flow</span>
+<span class="i0">From the inner land: far off, three mountain-tops,</span>
+<span class="i0">Three silent pinnacles of aged snow,</span>
+<span class="i0">Stood sunset-flushed; and, dew&#8217;d with showery drops,</span>
+<span class="i0">Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse.&#8221;</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Tennyson, of course, was writing of some tropic
+land thirty or forty degrees south of Oregon, for in
+the next verse he speaks of palms and brings the
+&#8220;mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters&#8221; swimming
+about the keel; and yet there is his description, perfect
+to the last, least word, of what any one may see
+in a not-too-cloudy day from the right point on the
+lower Columbia.</p>
+
+<p>The Hood and the White Salmon flow into the
+Columbia almost opposite each other, the former from
+Mount Hood, to the south, and the latter from Mount
+Adams, to the north. White Salmon, perched on the
+mountains of the Washington side, is, so far as I can
+recall, the &#8220;Swiss-iest&#8221; looking village in America.
+At close range it would doubtless lose much of its
+picturesqueness, but from the river it is a perfect bit<span class="pagenum">[Pg 375]</span>
+of the Tyrol or the Bernese-Oberland. The Hood
+River Valley is one of the very richest in all the West,
+running neck-and-neck with Yakima and Wenatchee
+for the Blue Ribbon honours of Northwestern apple
+production. It is also becoming a dairying centre of
+considerable importance. I was genuinely sorry that
+my &#8220;through&#8221; schedule made it impossible to visit
+a valley of which I had heard so much and so favourably.</p>
+
+<p>Nearing the Cascades, I headed over close to the
+Oregon bank for a glimpse of the famous &#8220;sunken
+forest.&#8221; This is one of the strangest sights on the
+lower river. For a considerable distance I pulled
+along the stumps of what had once been large
+forest trees, the stubby boles showing plainly through
+the clear water to a very considerable depth. There
+is some division of opinion as to whether these trees
+were submerged following the damming up of the
+river by the slide which formed the Cascades, or
+whether they have slid in from the mountainside at a
+later date. As there is still enough of a riverward
+earth-movement to necessitate a realignment of the
+rails on the south bank of the Cascades, it is probable
+that the latter is the correct theory. The self-preservative
+character of Oregon pine is proverbial, but it
+hardly seems reasonable to believe that it would last
+through the very considerable geologic epoch that
+must have elapsed since the Cascades were formed.</p>
+
+<p>Hugging the Oregon shore closely, I pulled down
+toward the head of the Cascades canal. The water
+continued almost lake-like in its slackness even after
+the heavy rumble of the fall began to beat upon the<span class="pagenum">[Pg 376]</span>
+air. I was taking no chances of a last-minute bolt
+from the still restive <i>Imshallah</i>, however, and skirted
+the sandy bank so closely that twice I found myself
+mixed up in the remains of the past season&#8217;s salmon-traps.
+Passing a big sawmill, I entered the canal and
+kept rowing until I came plump up against the lofty
+red gates. An astonishingly pretty girl who peered
+down from above said she didn&#8217;t know what a lock-master
+was (being only a passenger waiting for the
+steamer herself), but thought a man hammering on
+the other side of the gate looked like he might be
+something of that kind. She was right. The lock-master
+said he would gladly put me through, but
+would be greatly obliged if I would wait until he
+locked down the steamer, as he was pretty busy at the
+moment. That would give me half an hour to go
+down and size up the tail of the Cascades, which I
+would have to run immediately on coming out at the
+foot of the lock.</p>
+
+<p>There is a fall of twenty-five feet at the Cascades,
+most of it in the short, sharp pitch at the head. It is
+this latter stretch that is avoided by the canal and
+locks, the total length of which is about half a mile.
+The two lock chambers are identical in dimensions,
+each being ninety feet by four hundred and sixty-five
+in the clear. They were opened to navigation in 1896,
+and were much used during the early years of the
+present century. With the extension of the railways,
+(especially with the building of the &#8220;North-bank&#8221;
+line), and the improvement of the roads, with
+the incidental increase of truck-freighting, it became
+more and more difficult for the steamers to operate<span class="pagenum">[Pg 377]</span>
+profitably even on the lower river. One after another
+they had been taken off their runs, until the <i>J. N.
+Teal</i>, for which I was now waiting, was the last
+steamer operating in a regular service on the Columbia
+above Portland.</p>
+
+<p>Opening the great curving gates a crack, the lock-master
+admitted <i>Imshallah</i> to the chamber, from
+where&mdash;in the absence of a ladder&mdash;I climbed up fifty
+feet to the top on the beams of the steel-work. That
+was a pretty stiff job for a fat man, or rather one who
+had so recently been fat. I was down to a fairly
+compact two hundred and twenty by now, but even
+that required the expenditure of several foot-tons of
+energy to lift it out of that confounded hole. The
+main fall of the Cascades was roaring immediately on
+my right, just beyond the narrow island that had been
+formed when the locks and canal were constructed.
+It was indeed a viciously-running chute, suggesting to
+me the final pitch of the left-hand channel of Rock
+Island Rapids rather than Grand Rapids, to which it
+is often compared. I had heard that on rare occasions
+steamers had been run down here at high water; at the
+present stage it looked to me that neither a large nor
+a small boat would have one chance in a hundred of
+avoiding disaster.</p>
+
+<p>The canal and locks avoided that first heavy fall of
+the Cascades completely, but the swift tumble of
+waters below was quite rough enough to make a preliminary
+survey well worth while. The steamer
+channel was on the Washington side, so that it was
+necessary for a boat to head directly across the current
+immediately on emerging from the lower lock<span class="pagenum">[Pg 378]</span>
+chamber. The Oregon side of the river was thick with
+rocks right away round the bend, with not enough
+clear water to permit the passage of even a skiff. My
+course, therefore, would have to be the same as that
+of the steamer&mdash;just as sharply across to the opposite
+side as oars would take me. I had put <i>Imshallah</i>
+through worse water than that a score of times, and,
+while it wasn&#8217;t the sort of a place where one would
+want to break an oar or even catch a &#8220;crab,&#8221; there was
+no reason to believe that we should have the least
+trouble in pulling across the hard-running swirls.
+Of course, if <i>Imshallah</i> really was still smarting under
+the indignity of that oil-bath.... But no&mdash;I honestly
+think there was nothing of distrust of my well-tried
+little skiff behind my sudden change of plans. Rather,
+I should say, it was due to the fact that a remark of the
+lock-master had brought me to a sudden realization
+that I now arrived at what I had always reckoned as
+my ultimate objective&mdash;tide-water.</p>
+
+<p>I had been planning to run on four miles farther to
+Bonneville that afternoon, in the hope of being able
+to pull through the forty miles of slackening water to
+Vancouver the following day. There I would get a
+tug to take the skiff up the Willamette to Portland,
+where I intended to leave her. As some of the finest
+scenery on the Columbia is passed in the twenty miles
+below the Cascades, this promised me another memorable
+day on the river&mdash;provided that there was only
+an occasional decent interval between showers. It
+was the lock-master&#8217;s forecast of another rainy day,
+together with his assurance that the foot of the locks
+was generally rated as the head of tide-water, that<span class="pagenum">[Pg 379]</span>
+prompted me to change my mind a few moments before
+I was due to pull out again to the river, and book
+through to Portland on the <i>Teal</i>.</p>
+
+<p>With the idea of avoiding the wash of the steamer,
+I pulled down to the extreme lower end of the locks
+before she entered, taking advantage of the interval
+of waiting to trim carefully and look to my oars for
+the pull across the foot of the Cascades. I was intending
+to let the <i>Teal</i> lock out ahead of me, and then pull
+as closely as possible in her wake, so as to have her
+below me to pick up the pieces in case anything went
+wrong. It was close to twilight now, with the sodden
+west darkening early under the blank grey cloud-mass
+of another storm blowing up-river from the sea.
+If that impetuous squall could have curbed its impatience
+and held off a couple of minutes longer, it
+might have had the satisfaction of treating me to a
+good soaking, if nothing more. As it was, I flung up
+my hands and <i>kamerad-ed</i> at the opening pelt of the
+big rain-drops. Speaking as one Columbia River
+skipper to another, I hailed the Captain of the <i>J. N.
+Teal</i> and asked him if he would take me and my boat
+aboard.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Where bound?&#8221; he bawled back.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Portland,&#8221; I replied.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Aw right. Pull up sta&#8217;bo&#8217;d bow lively&mdash;&#8217;fore gate
+open!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A dozen husky roustabouts, urged on by an impatient
+Mate, scrambled to catch the painter and give us
+a hand-up. I swung over the side all right, but <i>Imshallah</i>,
+hanging back a bit, came in for some pretty
+rough pulling and hauling before they got her on<span class="pagenum">[Pg 380]</span>
+deck. The two or three of her planks that were
+started in the melée constituted about the worst injury
+the little lady received on the whole voyage.</p>
+
+<p>And so <i>Imshallah</i> and I came aboard the <i>J. N.
+Teal</i> to make the last leg of our voyage as passengers.
+The gates were turning back before I had reached
+the upper deck, and a few minutes later the powerfully-engined
+old stern-wheeler went floundering
+across the foam-streaked tail of the Cascades and off
+down the river. Castle Rock&mdash;nine hundred feet
+high and sheer-walled all around&mdash;was no more than
+a ghostly blur in the darkness as we slipped by in the
+still rapidly moving current. Multnomah&#8217;s majesty
+was blanked behind the curtain of night and a driving
+rain, and only a distant roar on the port beam told
+where one of the loveliest of American waterfalls took
+its six-hundred-foot leap from the brink of the southern
+wall of the river. Cape Horn and Rooster
+Rock were swathed to their foundations in streaming
+clouds.</p>
+
+<p>Once the <i>Teal</i> was out on the comparatively open
+waters of the lower river, the Captain came down for
+a yarn with me&mdash;as one Columbia skipper to another.
+He had spent most of his life on the Snake and lower
+Columbia, but he seemed to know the rapids and canyons
+below the Canadian line almost reef by reef, and
+all of the old skippers I had met by reputation. He
+said that he had never heard of any one&#8217;s ever having
+deliberately attempted to run the Cascades in anything
+smaller than a steamer, although an endless lot
+of craft had come to grief by getting in there by accident.
+The only time a man ever went through in a<span class="pagenum">[Pg 381]</span>
+small boat and came out alive was about ten years
+ago. That lucky navigator, after drinking most of
+a Saturday night in the town, came down to the river
+in the dim grey dawn of a Sunday, got into his boat
+and pushed off. It was along toward church-time
+that a ferry-man, thirty miles or more down river,
+picked up a half filled skiff. Quietly sleeping in the
+stern-sheets, with nothing but his nose above water,
+was the only man that ever came through the Cascades
+in a small boat.</p>
+
+<p>The Captain looked at me with a queer smile after
+he told that story. &#8220;I don&#8217;t suppose you were heeled
+to tackle the Cascades just like that?&#8221; he asked finally.</p>
+
+<p>And so, for the last time, I was taken for a boot-legger.
+But no&mdash;not quite the last. I believe it was
+the porter at Hotel Portland who asked me if&mdash;ahem!&mdash;if
+I had got away with anything from Canada.
+And for all of that incessant trail of smoke, no fire&mdash;or
+practically none.</p>
+
+<p>The day of my arrival in Portland I delivered <i>Imshallah</i>
+up to the kindest-faced boat-house proprietor
+on the Willamette and told him to take his time about
+finding her a home with some sport-loving Oregonian
+who knew how to treat a lady right and wouldn&#8217;t
+give her any kind of menial work to do. I told him I
+didn&#8217;t want to have her work for a living under any
+conditions, as I felt she had earned a rest; and to impress
+upon whoever bought her that she was high-spirited
+and not to be taken liberties with, such as
+subjecting her to garbage shower-baths and similar
+indignities. He asked me if she had a name, and I
+told him that she hadn&#8217;t&mdash;any more; that the one she<span class="pagenum">[Pg 382]</span>
+had been carrying had ceased to be in point now her
+voyage was over. It had been a very appropriate
+name for a boat on the Columbia, though, I assured
+him, and I was going to keep it to use if I ever made
+the voyage again.</p>
+
+<p>Portland, although it is not directly upon the Columbia,
+has always made that river distinctively its
+own. I had realized that in a vague way for many
+years, but it came home to me again with renewed
+force now that I had arrived in Portland after having
+had some glimpse of every town and village from the
+Selkirks to the sea. (Astoria and the lower river I
+had known from many steamer voyages in the past.)
+Of all the thousands living on or near the Columbia,
+those of Portland still struck me as being the
+ones who held this most strikingly individual of all the
+world&#8217;s rivers at most nearly its true value. With
+Portlanders, I should perhaps include all of those
+living on the river from Astoria to The Dalles. These,
+too, take a mighty pride in their great river, and regard
+it with little of that distrustful reproach one remarks
+so often on the upper Columbia, where the
+settlers see it bearing past their parched fields the
+water and the power that would mean the difference
+to them between success and disaster. When this
+stigma has been wiped out by reclamation (as it soon
+will be), without a doubt the plucky pioneers of the
+upper Columbia will see in their river many beauties
+that escape their troubled eyes to-day.</p>
+
+<p>The early Romans made some attempt to give expression
+to their love of the Tiber in monuments and
+bridges. It would be hard indeed to conceive of any<span class="pagenum">[Pg 383]</span>thing
+in marble or bronze, or yet in soaring spans of
+steel, that would give adequate expression to the pride
+of the people of the lower Columbia in their river; and
+so it is a matter of felicitation that they have sought to
+pay their tribute in another way. There was inspiration
+behind the conception of the idea of the Columbia
+Highway, just as there was genius and rare imagination
+in the carrying out of that idea. I have said
+that the Cascade Gorge of the Columbia is a scenic
+wonder apart from all others; that it stands without
+a rival of its kind. Perhaps the greatest compliment
+that I can pay to the Columbia Highway is to say
+that it is worthy of the river by which it runs.</p>
+
+<p class="title">(THE END)</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg 384]</span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p class="title">TRANSCRIBER NOTES:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>Alternate spellings and archaic words have been retained.</p>
+
+<p>page 82: "experienced" changed to "inexperienced" (Roos was young and
+inexperienced).</p>
+
+<p>page 96: added closing quotation mark which was missing in the original ("... than some
+the old girl&#8217;s had.").</p>
+
+<p>page 147: "rifflles" changed to "riffles" (four or five riffles below).</p>
+
+<p>page 160: "Lientenant" changed to "Lieutenant" (Lieutenant Thomas W. Symons).</p>
+
+<p>page 163: "avenue" changed to "Avenue" (Fifth Avenue).</p>
+
+<p>page 300: "spilts" changed to "splits" (the river splits upon).</p>
+
+<p>page 315: "goddes" changed to "goddess" (this goddess of the Columbia).</p>
+
+<p>page 320: "staight" changed to "straight" (straight on through to).</p>
+
+<p>page 331: "a" added to sentence for continuity (We were going to have a run for
+our money).</p>
+
+<p>page 366: added "and" (Miss S&mdash;&mdash; and I).</p>
+
+<p>page 380: "of" changed to "or" (The two or three of her planks).</p>
+
+<p>page 380: "mélee" changed to "melée" (that were started in the melée).</p></blockquote>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Down the Columbia, by Lewis R. Freeman
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,10999 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Down the Columbia, by Lewis R. Freeman
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Down the Columbia
+
+Author: Lewis R. Freeman
+
+Release Date: December 9, 2011 [EBook #38249]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOWN THE COLUMBIA ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Pat McCoy, Greg Bergquist and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+DOWN THE COLUMBIA
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff
+
+MT. SIR DONALD, WHICH DRAINS FROM ALL SIDES TO THE COLUMBIA]
+
+
+
+
+    DOWN THE COLUMBIA
+
+    BY
+
+    LEWIS R. FREEMAN
+
+
+    AUTHOR OF "IN THE TRACKS OF THE TRADES,"
+    "HELL'S HATCHES," ETC.
+
+
+    WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
+    FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
+
+
+    [Illustration: Publisher's logo]
+
+
+    NEW YORK
+    DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
+    1921
+
+
+
+
+    COPYRIGHT 1921
+    By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC.
+
+    The Quinn & Boden Company
+
+    BOOK MANUFACTURERS
+    RAHWAY      NEW JERSEY
+
+
+
+
+    TO
+    C. L. CHESTER
+
+    Hoping he will find in these pages some compensation for
+    the fun he missed in not being along.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+The day on which I first conceived the idea of a boat trip down the
+Columbia hangs in a frame all its own in the corridors of my memory. It
+was a number of years ago--more than a dozen, I should say. Just
+previously I had contrived somehow to induce the Superintendent of the
+Yellowstone National Park to grant me permission to attempt a winter
+journey on ski around this most beautiful of America's great
+playgrounds. He had even sent a Government scout along to keep, or help,
+me out of trouble. We were a week out from the post at Mammoth Hot
+Springs.
+
+Putting the rainbow revel of the incomparable Canyon behind, we had
+crossed Yellowstone Lake on the ice and fared onward and upward until we
+came at last to the long climb where the road under its ten feet of snow
+wound up to the crest of the Continental Divide. It was so dry and cold
+that the powdery snow overlying the crust rustled under our ski like
+autumn leaves. The air was diamond clear, so transparent that distant
+mountain peaks, juggled in the wizardry of the lens of the light, seemed
+fairly to float upon the eyeball.
+
+At the summit, where we paused for breath, an old Sergeant of the Game
+Patrol, letting down a tin can on a string, brought up drinks from an
+air-hole which he claimed was teetering giddily upon the very ridge-pole
+of North America.
+
+"If I dip to the left," he said, suiting the action to the word, "it's
+the Pacific I'll be robbing of a pint of Rocky Mountain dew; while if I
+dip to the right it's the Atlantic that'll have to settle back a notch.
+And if I had a string long enough, and a wing strong enough, to cast my
+can over there beyond Jackson's Hole," he went on, pointing
+southeasterly to the serrated peaks of the Wind River Mountains, "I
+could dip from the fount of the Green River and keep it from feeding the
+Colorado and the Gulf of California by so much."
+
+That led me to raise the question of boating by river from the Great
+Divide to the sea, and the Scout, who knew something of the Madison,
+Jefferson and Gallatin to the east, and of the Salmon, Clearwater and
+Snake to the west, said he reckoned the thing could be done in either
+direction provided a man had lots of time and no dependent family to
+think of and shake his nerve in the pinches.
+
+The old Sergeant agreed heartily. River boating was good, he said,
+because it was not opposed to Nature, like climbing mountains, for
+instance, where you were bucking the law of gravity from start to
+finish. With a river it was all easy and natural. You just got into your
+boat and let it go. Sooner or later, without any especial effort on your
+part, you reached your objective. You might not be in a condition to
+appreciate the fact, of course, but just the same you got there, and
+with a minimum of hard work. Some rivers were better for boating than
+others for the reason that you got there quicker. The Snake and the
+Missouri were all very well in their way, but for him, he'd take the
+Columbia. There was a river that started in mountains and finished in
+mountains. It ran in mountains all the way to the sea. No slack water in
+all its course. It was going somewhere all the time. He had lived as a
+kid on the lower Columbia and had trapped as a man on the upper
+Columbia; so he ought to know. _There_ was a "he" river if there ever
+was one. If a man really wanted to travel from snowflake to brine and
+not be troubled with "on-wee" on the way, there was no stream that ran
+one-two-three with the Columbia as a means of doing it.
+
+That night, where we steamed in the black depths of a snow-submerged
+Government "Emergency" cabin, the Sergeant's old Columbia memories
+thawed with the hunk of frosted beef he was toasting over the sheet-iron
+stove. He told of climbing for sheep and goat in the high Kootenay, of
+trailing moose and caribou in the valleys of the Rockies, and finally of
+his years of trapping on the creeks and in the canyons that run down to
+the Big Bend of the Columbia; of how he used to go down to Kinbasket
+Lake in the Fall, portaging or lining the three miles of tumbling
+cascades at Surprise Rapids, trap all winter on Sullivan Creek or Middle
+River, and then come out in the Spring to Revelstoke, playing
+ducks-and-drakes with his life and his scarcely less valuable catch of
+marten, mink and beaver running the riffles at Rock Slide, Twelve Mile
+and the terrible _Dalles des Morts_. He declared that there were a
+hundred miles of the Big Bend of the Columbia that had buffaloed to a
+fare-ye-well any equal stretch on any of the great rivers of North
+America for fall, rocks and wild rip-rarin' water generally. But the
+dread Rapids of Death and the treacherous swirls and eddies of
+Revelstoke Canyon were not the last of swift water by a long shot. Just
+below the defile of the Arrow Lakes the white caps began to rear their
+heads again, and from there right on down through the seven hundred
+miles and more to tide-water below the Cascade Locks in Oregon there was
+hardly a stretch of ten miles without its tumble of rapids, and mostly
+they averaged not more than three or four miles apart.
+
+"She's sure some 'he' river," the old chap concluded as he began to
+unroll his blankets, "going somewhere all the time, tumbling over itself
+all the way trying to beat itself to the finish."
+
+Confusing as the Sergeant was with his "he" and "she" and "it" as to the
+gender of the mighty Oregon, there was no question of the fascination of
+the pictures conjured up by his descriptions of that so-well-called
+"Achilles of Rivers." Before I closed my eyes that night I had promised
+myself that I should take the first opportunity to boat the length of
+the Columbia, to follow its tumultuous course from its glacial founts to
+the salt sea brine, to share with it, to jostle it in its "tumble to get
+there first."
+
+I held by that resolve for more than a dozen years, although, by a
+strange run of chance, I was destined to have some experience of almost
+every one of the great rivers of the world before I launched a boat upon
+the Columbia. My appetite for swift water boating had grown by what it
+fed on. I had come more and more to the way of thinking of my
+Yellowstone companion who held that boating down rivers was good because
+it was not opposed to Nature, "like mountain climbing, for instance,
+where you bucked the law of gravity all the way." In odd craft and
+various, and of diverse degree of water worthiness, I had trusted to
+luck and the law of gravity to land me somewhere to seaward of numerous
+up-river points of vantage to which I had attained by means of travel
+that ranged all the way from foot and donkey-back to elephant and auto.
+The Ichang gorges of the Yangtze I had run in a _sampan_ manned by a
+yelling crew of Szechuan coolies, and the Salween and Irawadi below the
+Yunnan boundary in weird Burmese canoes whose crews used their legs as
+well as their arms in plying their carved paddles. I had floated down
+the Tigris from Diarbekir to Mosul on a _kalek_ of inflated sheepskins,
+and the Nile below the Nyanzas in a cranky craft of zebra hide, whose
+striped sides might have suggested the idea of modern marine camouflage.
+On the middle Niger I had used a condemned gunboat's life-raft, and on
+the Zambesi a dugout of saffron-tinted wood so heavy that it sank like
+iron when capsized. And it had been in native dugouts of various crude
+types that I had boated greater or lesser lengths of the swifter upper
+stretches of the Orinoco, Amazon and Parana.
+
+But through it all--whether I was floating in a reed-wrapped _balsa_ on
+Titacaca or floundering in a pitch-smeared _gufa_ on the
+Euphrates--pictures conjured up by remembered phrases of the old
+ex-trapper keep rising at the back of my brain. "The big eddy at the
+bend of Surprise Rapids, where you go to look for busted boats and dead
+bodies;" "the twenty-one mile of white water rolling all the way from
+Kinbasket Lake to Canoe River;" "the double googly intake at the head
+of Gordon Rapid;" "the black-mouthed whirlpool waiting like a wild cat
+at the foot of _Dalles des Morts_"--how many times had I seen all these
+in fancy! And at last the time came when those pictures were to be made
+real--galvanized into life.
+
+It was well along toward the end of last summer that my friend C. L.
+Chester, whose work in filming the scenic beauties of out-of-the-way
+parts of the world has made the name Chester-Outing Pictures a byword on
+both sides of the Atlantic, mentioned that he was sending one of his
+cameramen to photograph the sources of the Columbia in the Selkirks and
+Rockies of western Canada. Also that he was thinking of taking his own
+holiday in that incomparably beautiful region. He supposed I knew that
+there were considerable areas here that had barely been explored, to
+saying nothing of photographed. This was notably so of the Big Bend
+country, where the Columbia had torn its channel between the Rockies and
+Selkirks and found a way down to the Arrow Lakes. He was especially
+anxious to take some kind of a boat round the hundred and fifty miles of
+canyon between Beavermouth and Revelstoke and bring out the first movies
+of what he had been assured was the roughest stretch of swift water on
+any of the important rivers of the world. Was there, by any chance, a
+possibility that my plans and commitments were such that I would be free
+to join him in the event that he made the trip personally?
+
+As a matter of fact there were several things that should have prevented
+my breaking away for a trip to the upper Columbia in September, not the
+least among which was a somewhat similar trip I had already planned for
+the Grand Canyon of the Colorado that very month. But the mention of the
+Big Bend was decisive. "I'll go," I said promptly. "When do you start?"
+
+It was finally arranged that I should go on ahead and engage men and
+boats for the Big Bend part of the trip, while Chester would endeavour
+to disentangle himself from business in Los Angeles and New York in time
+to join his cameraman and myself for a jaunt by packtrain to the Lake of
+the Hanging Glaciers. The latter is one of the high glacial sources of
+the Columbia in the Selkirks, and Chester, learning that it had never
+been photographed, desired especially to visit it in person. Returning
+from our visit to the source of the river, we planned to embark on the
+boating voyage around the Big Bend. It was not until business finally
+intervened to make it impossible for Chester to get away for even a
+portion of the trip which he had been at such trouble to plan, that I
+decided to attempt the voyage down the Columbia as I had always dreamed
+of it--all the way from the eternal snows to tide-water. At Chester's
+suggestion, it was arranged that his cameraman should accompany me
+during such portion of the journey as the weather was favourable to
+moving picture work.
+
+Our preliminary work and exploration among the sources of the river over
+(this was carried on either on foot or by packtrain, or in runs by canoe
+over short navigable stretches of the upper river), we pushed off from
+Beavermouth, at the head of the Big Bend. For this most arduous part of
+the voyage there were four in the party, with a big double-ended boat
+specially built for rough water. Further down, for a considerable
+stretch, we were three, in a skiff. Then, for a couple of hundred miles,
+there were four of us again, manning a raft and a towing launch. After
+that we were two--just the cameraman and myself, with the skiff. Him I
+finally dropped at the foot of Priest Rapids, fifty miles above Pasco,
+and the last two hundred and fifty miles down to Portland I rode alone.
+This "solo" run--though a one-man boat crew is kept rather too busy in
+swift water to have much time for enjoying the scenery--was far from
+proving the least interesting period of the journey.
+
+So far as I have been able to learn, my arrival in Portland marked the
+end of the first complete journey that has been made from the glacial
+sources of the Columbia to tide-water. David Thompson, scientist and
+explorer for the Northwest Company, racing against the Astor sea
+expedition to be first to establish a post at the mouth of the Columbia,
+boated down a very large part of the navigable part of the river over a
+hundred years ago. I have found no evidence, however, that he penetrated
+to the glacial fields in the Selkirks above Windermere and Columbia Lake
+from which spring the main feeders of the upper river. Thompson's, and
+all of the other voyages of the early days of which there is authentic
+record, started from Boat Encampment, where the road from the plains and
+Montreal led down to the Columbia by the icy waters of Portage River,
+or, as it is now called, Wood River. Thus all of the old Hudson Bay and
+Northwest voyageurs ran only the lower seventy-five miles of the Big
+Bend, and avoided what is by far its worst water--Surprise Rapids and
+the twenty-one miles of cascades below Kinbasket Lake. Ross Cox,
+Alexander Ross and Franchiere, whose diaries are the best commentaries
+extant upon early Columbia history, had no experience of the river above
+Boat Encampment. Lewis and Clark, and Hunt, with the remnants of the
+Astor transcontinental party, boated the river only below the Snake, and
+this was also true of Whitman and the other early missionaries and
+settlers. Fremont made only a few days' journey down the river from the
+Dalles.
+
+Of recent down-river passages, I have been able to learn of no voyageur
+who, having rounded the Big Bend, continued his trip down to the lower
+Columbia. The most notable voyage of the last three or four decades was
+that of Captain F. P. Armstrong and J. P. Forde, District Engineer of
+the Department of Public Works of Nelson, British Columbia, who,
+starting at the foot of the Lower Arrow Lake in a Peterboro canoe, made
+the run to Pasco, just above the mouth of the Snake, in ten days. As
+Captain Armstrong already knew the upper Columbia above the Arrow Lakes
+from many years of steamboating and prospecting, and as both he and Mr.
+Forde, after leaving their canoe at Pasco, continued on to Astoria by
+steamer, I am fully convinced that his knowledge of that river from
+source to mouth is more comprehensive than that of any one else of the
+present generation. This will be, perhaps, a fitting place to
+acknowledge my obligation to Captain Armstrong (who accompanied me in
+person from the mouth of the Kootenay to the mouth of the Spokane) for
+advice and encouragement which were very considerable factors in the
+ultimate success of my venture. To Mr. Forde I am scarcely less indebted
+for his courtesy in putting at my disposal a copy of his invaluable
+report to the Canadian Government on the proposal to open the Columbia
+to through navigation to the Pacific Ocean.
+
+Compared to the arduous journeys of the old Astorian and Hudson Bay
+voyageurs on the Columbia, my own trip--even though a considerably
+greater length of river was covered than by any of my predecessors--was
+negligible as an achievement. Only in rounding the Big Bend in Canada
+does the voyageur of to-day encounter conditions comparable to those
+faced by those of a hundred, or even fifty years ago who set out to
+travel on any part of the Columbia. For a hundred miles or more of the
+Bend, now just as much as in years long gone by, an upset with the loss
+of an outfit is more likely than not to spell disaster and probably
+tragedy. But in my own passage of the Big Bend I can claim no personal
+credit that those miles of tumbling water were run successfully. I was
+entirely in the hands of a pair of seasoned old river hands, and merely
+pulled an oar in the boat and did a few other things when I was told.
+
+But it is on the thousand miles of swiftly flowing water between the
+lower end of the Big Bend and the Pacific that conditions have changed
+the most in favour of the latter day voyageur. The rapids are, to be
+sure, much as they must have appeared to Thompson, Ross, Franchiere and
+their Indian contemporaries. The few rocks blasted here and there on the
+lower river in an attempt to improve steamer navigation have not greatly
+simplified the problems of the man in a rowboat or canoe. Nor is an
+upset in any part of the Columbia an experience lightly to be courted
+even to-day. Even below the Big Bend there are a score of places I could
+name offhand where the coolest kind of an old river hand, once in the
+water, would not have one chance in ten of swimming out. In half a
+hundred others he might reckon on an even break of crawling out alive.
+But if luck were with him and he _did_ reach the bank with the breath in
+his body, then his troubles would be pretty well behind him. Below the
+Canadian border there is hardly ten miles of the river without a farm, a
+village, or even a town of fair size. Food, shelter and even medical
+attention are not, therefore, ever more than a few hours away, so that
+the man who survives the loss of his boat and outfit is rarely in
+serious straits.
+
+But in the case of the pioneers, their troubles in like instance were
+only begun. What between hostile Indians and the loss of their only
+means of travel, the chances were all against their ever pulling out
+with their lives. The story of how the vicious cascade of the _Dalles
+des Morts_ won its grisly name, which I will set down in its proper
+place, furnishes a telling instance in point.
+
+It is a callous traveller who, in strange lands and seas, does not
+render heart homage to the better men that have gone before him. Just as
+you cannot sail the Pacific for long without fancying that Cook and
+Drake and Anson are sharing your night watches, so on the Columbia it is
+Thompson and Cox and Lewis and Clark who come to be your guiding
+spirits. At the head of every one of the major rapids you land just as
+you know they must have landed, and it is as through their eyes that you
+survey the work ahead. And when, rather against your better judgment,
+you decide to attempt to run a winding gorge where the sides are too
+steep to permit lining and where a portage would mean the loss of a
+day--you know that the best of the men who preceded you must have
+experienced the same hollowness under the belt when they were forced to
+the same decision, for were they not always gambling at longer odds than
+you are? And when, elate with the thrill of satisfaction and relief that
+come from knowing that what had been a menacing roar ahead has changed
+to a receding growl astern, you are inclined to credit yourself with
+smartness for having run a rapid where Thompson lined or Ross Cox
+portaged, that feeling will not persist for long. Sooner or later--and
+usually sooner--something or somebody will put you right. A broken oar
+and all but a mess-up in an inconsiderable riffle was all that was
+needed to quench the glow of pride that I felt over having won through
+the roughly tumbling left-hand channel of Rock Island Rapids with only a
+short length of lining. And it was a steady-eyed old river captain who
+brought me back to earth the night I told him--somewhat boastfully, I
+fear--that I had slashed my skiff straight down the middle of the final
+pitch of Umatilla Rapids, where Lewis and Clark had felt they had to
+portage.
+
+"But you must not forget," he said gently, with just the shadow of a
+smile softening the line of his firm lips, "that Lewis and Clark had
+something to lose besides their lives--that they had irreplaceable
+records in their care, and much work still to do. It was their duty to
+take as few chances as possible. But they never let the risk stop them
+when there wasn't any safer way. When you are pulling through Celilo
+Canal a few days from now, and being eased down a hundred feet in the
+locks, just remember that Lewis and Clark put their whole outfit down
+the Tumwater and Five-Mile Rapids of the Dalles, in either of which that
+skiff of yours would be sucked under in half a minute."
+
+Bulking insignificantly as an achievement as does my trip in comparison
+with the many Columbia voyages, recorded and unrecorded, of early days,
+it still seems to me that the opportunity I had for a comprehensive
+survey of this grandest scenically of all the world's great rivers gives
+me warrant for attempting to set down something of what I saw and
+experienced during those stirring weeks that intervened between that
+breathless moment when I let the whole stream of the Columbia trickle
+down my back in a glacial ice-cave in the high Selkirks, and that
+showery end-of-the-afternoon when I pushed out into tide-water at the
+foot of the Cascades.
+
+It is scant enough justice that the most gifted of pens can do to Nature
+in endeavouring to picture in words the grandest of her manifestations,
+and my own quill, albeit it glides not untrippingly in writing of
+lighter things, is never so inclined to halt and sputter as when I try
+to drive it to its task of registering in black scrawls on white paper
+something of what the sight of a soaring mountain peak, the depth of a
+black gorge with a white stream roaring at the bottom, or the morning
+mists rising from a silently flowing river have registered on the
+sensitized sheets of my memory. Superlative in grandeur to the last
+degree as are the mountains, glaciers, gorges, waterfalls, cascades and
+cliffs of the Columbia, it is to my photographs rather than my pen that
+I trust to convey something of their real message.
+
+If I can, however, pass on to my readers some suggestion of the keenness
+of my own enjoyment of what I experienced on the Columbia--of the sheer
+_joie de vivre_ that is the lot of the man who rides the running road;
+it will have not been in vain that I have cramped my fingers and bent my
+back above a desk during several weeks of the best part of the
+California year. Robert Service has written something about
+
+    "Doing things just for the doing,
+        Letting babblers tell the story...."
+
+Shall I need to confess to my readers that the one cloud on the seaward
+horizon during all of my voyage down the Columbia was brooding there as
+a consequence of the presentiment that, sooner or later, I should have
+to do my own babbling?
+
+PASADENA, July, 1921.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                                         PAGE
+
+       INTRODUCTION                                                 vi
+
+     I PREPARING FOR THE BIG BEND                                    1
+
+    II UP HORSE THIEF CREEK                                         20
+
+   III AT THE GLACIER                                               48
+
+    IV THE LAKE OF THE HANGING GLACIERS                             63
+
+     V CANAL FLATS TO BEAVERMOUTH                                   77
+
+    VI THROUGH SURPRISE RAPIDS                                      92
+
+   VII KINBASKET LAKE AND RAPIDS                                   134
+
+  VIII BOAT ENCAMPMENT TO REVELSTOKE                               160
+
+    IX REVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE                                   192
+
+     X RAFTING THROUGH HELL GATE                                   235
+
+    XI BY LAUNCH THROUGH BOX CANYON                                267
+
+   XII CHELAN TO PASCO                                             286
+
+  XIII PASCO TO THE DALLES                                         323
+
+   XIV THE HOME STRETCH                                            360
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  Mt. Sir Donald, which drains from all sides to the Columbia
+                                                       _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                           FACING PAGE
+
+  Mt. Assiniboine, near the headwaters of the Columbia              10
+
+  Twin Falls, Takakaw Falls, two great cataracts of the
+  Columbia watershed                                                11
+
+  The "turning-in" scene shot in silhouette                         38
+
+  "Reverse" of the "going-to-bed" shot                              38
+
+  On the Horse Thief Trail                                          39
+
+  A dead-fall on the trail                                          39
+
+  Looking toward the entrance of the ice cave                       52
+
+  Where the Hanging Glacier is about to fall                        53
+
+  My shower bath in an ice cave                                     58
+
+  Warming up after my glacial shower bath                           58
+
+  Ross and Harmon. Dragon moraine in distance                       59
+
+  The horses in the mouth of the ice cave                           59
+
+  Looking across the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers                   66
+
+  The Lake of the Hanging Glaciers, taken from the ice
+  walls, looking north                                              67
+
+  The face of the Hanging Glacier                                   72
+
+  Where my party foregathered with Harmon's on the shore
+  of the Lake of the Hanging Glacier                                73
+
+  Old Hudson Bay cart at Beavermouth                                80
+
+  My first push-off at the head of canoe navigation on the
+  Columbia                                                          80
+
+  Opening scene of the "Farmer" picture                             81
+
+  Old stern wheelers at Golden                                      81
+
+  A quiet stretch of the Columbia near Golden                       81
+
+  Arrival of our boat at Beavermouth                                96
+
+  Our first camp at Beavermouth                                     96
+
+  The remains of a sunken forest                                    96
+
+  Trapper's cabin where we found shelter for the night              97
+
+  Where we landed above Surprise Rapids                             97
+
+  Where we tied up at "Eight mile"                                  97
+
+  "Shooting" the first bit of lining at Surprise Rapids            122
+
+  The camp where the roar of the rapids deafened us                122
+
+  Where Steinhof was drowned                                       122
+
+  Where Andy just missed drowning in Surprise Rapids               123
+
+  Looking through the pines at Surprise Rapids                     123
+
+  Head of second fall of Surprise Rapids                           123
+
+  Blackmore and the ling that refused to "register"                142
+
+  The winter, with pike-pole just before lining Death Rapids       142
+
+  Andy and I pulling down Kinbasket Lake                           143
+
+  Our wettest camp, at Kinbasket Lake                              156
+
+  The old ferry tower above Canoe River                            156
+
+  Where we tied up at Kinbasket Lake                               157
+
+  The bridge which the Columbia carried a hundred miles and
+  placed across another stream                                     157
+
+  Lining down to the head of Death Rapids                          157
+
+  Trapper's cabin being undermined by stream                       168
+
+  The camp above Twelve-Mile                                       168
+
+  Landing at sunset above Canoe River                              169
+
+  Andy and Blackmore swinging the boat into the head of
+  Rock Slide Rapids                                                169
+
+  The big rollers, from 15 to 20 feet from hollow to crest, at
+  head of Death Rapids                                             169
+
+  Looking across to Boat Encampment                                180
+
+  "Wood smoke at twilight" above Twelve-Mile                       180
+
+  Lining down Rock Slide Rapids                                    181
+
+  When the Columbia took half of my riding breeches                181
+
+  Bonnington Falls of the Kootenay                                 198
+
+  Plastered log cabin in the Doukhobor village                     198
+
+  Trucking the skiff through Kettle Falls                          199
+
+  Twilight in the gorge at Kettle Falls                            199
+
+  Waiting for the fog to lift above Bishop's Rapids                210
+
+  Ross and Armstrong registering "gloom"                           210
+
+  The "intake" at the Little Dalles                                211
+
+  Where we started to line the Little Dalles                       211
+
+  Map of the Upper Columbia                                        236
+
+  A "close-up" of Ike building his raft                            237
+
+  My fifty pound salmon                                            237
+
+  Ike riding a log                                                 256
+
+  Ike on the mooring line of the raft                              256
+
+  Raft in tow of launch near mouth of San Poil                     257
+
+  Ike at the sweep below Hell Gate                                 257
+
+  The suspension bridge at Chelan Falls                            270
+
+  Old River veterans on the landing at Potaris. (Capt. McDermid
+  on left, Ike Emerson on right)                                   270
+
+  Night was falling as we headed into Box Canyon                   271
+
+  The Columbia above Box Canyon                                    271
+
+  A rocky cliff near head of Lake Chelan                           288
+
+  Rainbow Falls, 350 feet high, above head of Lake Chelan          288
+
+  Wenatchee under the dust cloud of its speeding autos             289
+
+  Head of Rock Island Rapids                                       289
+
+  The picture that cost me a wetting                               310
+
+  The wreck of the "Douglas"                                       310
+
+  We cooked our breakfast in the galley of the wreck of the
+  "Douglas"                                                        311
+
+  A rocky cliff above Beverly                                      311
+
+  Lifted drawbridge on Celilo Canal                                354
+
+  Tumwater Gorge of the Grand Dalles                               354
+
+  "Imshallah" in the lock at Five-Mile                             355
+
+  "Imshallah" half way through the Celilo Canal                    355
+
+  Palisade Rock, lower Columbia River                              362
+
+  Multnomah Falls, Columbia River Highway, near Portland           363
+
+  City of Portland with Mt. Hood in the distance                   370
+
+  Bridge on Columbia Highway near Portland, Oregon                 371
+
+
+
+
+DOWN THE COLUMBIA
+
+
+
+
+DOWN THE COLUMBIA
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+PREPARING FOR THE BIG BEND
+
+
+The itinerary of our Columbia trip as originally planned in Los Angeles
+called, first, for an expedition to the source of the river, next, a
+voyage by boat around the Big Bend from Beavermouth to Revelstoke, and,
+finally, if there was time and good weather held, a voyage of indefinite
+length on toward the sea. As the trip to the glaciers was largely a
+matter of engaging a good packer well in advance, while there was no
+certainty of getting any one who would undertake the passage of the Big
+Bend, it was to the latter that we first directed our attention. Chester
+wired the Publicity Department of the Canadian Pacific and I wrote
+friends in various parts of British Columbia. The C. P. R. replied that
+they had requested their Sub-Divisional Superintendent at Revelstoke to
+institute inquiries for boatmen in our behalf. The only one of my
+friends who contributed anything tangible stated that "while the
+Columbia above Golden and below Revelstoke was admirably suited to
+pleasure boating, any attempt to run the Big Bend between those points
+would result in almost certain disaster."
+
+As this appeared to be about the extent of what we were likely to learn
+from a distance, I decided to start north at once to see what could be
+arranged on the ground. Victoria yielded little save some large scale
+maps, and even these, they assured me in the Geographic Department of
+the B. C. Government where I secured them, were very inaccurate as to
+detail. The Big Bend region, it appeared, had never been surveyed north
+of the comparatively narrow zone of the C. P. R. grant. Several old
+hunting friends whom I met at the Club, although they had ranged the
+wildernesses of the Northwest from the Barren Lands to Alaska, spoke of
+the Big Bend as a veritable _terra incognita_.
+
+"It's said to be a great country for grizzly," one of them volunteered,
+"but too hard to get at. Only way to get in and out is the Columbia, and
+that is more likely to land you in Kingdom Come than back in
+Civilization. Best forget about the Big Bend and go after sheep and goat
+and moose in the Kootenays."
+
+At Kamloops I was told of an Indian who had gone round the Big Bend the
+previous May, before the Spring rise, and come out not only with his own
+skin, but with those of seven grizzlies. I was unable to locate the
+Indian, but did find a white man who had made the trip with him. This
+chap spent half an hour apparently endeavouring to persuade me to give
+up the trip on account of the prohibitive risk (my experience on other
+rivers, he declared, would be worse than useless in such water as was to
+be encountered at Surprise, Kinbasket and Death Rapids) and about an
+equal amount of time trying to convince me that my life would be
+perfectly safe if only I would engage him and his Indian and confide it
+to their care. As the consideration suggested in return for this
+immunity figured out at between two and three times the rate we had been
+expecting to pay for boatmen, I had to decline to take advantage of it.
+
+Finally, in Revelstoke, through the efforts of T. C. McNab of the
+Canadian Pacific, who had been at considerable trouble to line up
+possible candidates for a Big Bend trip, I met Bob Blackmore. After that
+things began moving toward a definite end.
+
+"You won't find old Bob Blackmore an active church-worker," I was told
+in Revelstoke, "and at one time he had the reputation of being the
+smoothest thing in the way of a boot-legger in this part of B. C. But he
+drinks little himself, is a past-master of woodcraft, a dead shot, and
+has twice the experience of swift-water boating of any man on the upper
+Columbia. In spite of the fact that he has undergone no end of hardship
+in his thirty years of packing, hunting, prospecting, trapping and
+boating all over the West, he's as hard to-day at fifty odd as most men
+are at thirty. Because he dished a boatload of freight last year
+somewhere up river, there are a few who are saying that old Bob
+Blackmore is losing his grip. Don't believe it. He was never better in
+his life than he is right now, and if you can persuade him to run your
+show round the Big Bend you're in luck. Once you start, you'll come
+right on round to Revelstoke all right. No fear on that score. But if
+you have old Bob Blackmore you'll stand a jolly lot better chance of
+arriving on top of the water."
+
+I found Bob Blackmore at his river-side home in the old town--what had
+been the metropolitan centre of Revelstoke in the days when it was the
+head of navigation of steamers from below the Arrow Lakes, and before
+the railway had come to drag settlement a mile northeastward and away
+from the Columbia. He was picking apples with one hand and slapping
+mosquitoes with the other--a grey-haired, grey-eyed man of middle
+height, with a muscular torso, a steady stare, and a grip that I had to
+meet half way to save my fingers. He might have passed for a well-to-do
+Middle Western farmer except for his iron-grey moustaches, which were
+long and drooping, like those affected by cowboy-town sheriffs in the
+movies.
+
+I knew at once that this was the man I wanted, and my only doubt was as
+to whether or not he felt the same way about me. They had told me in
+town that Blackmore, having some means and being more or less
+independent, never went out with a man or an outfit he did not like. I
+felt that it was I who was on approval, not he. I need not have worried,
+however. In this instance, at least, Bob Blackmore's mind was made up in
+advance. It was the movies that had done it.
+
+"The C. P. R. people wrote me that you might be wanting me for the
+Bend," he said genially after I had introduced myself, "and on the
+chance that we would be hitching up I have put my big boat in the water
+to give her a good soaking. I've figured that she's the only boat on the
+upper river that will do for what you want. I reckon I know them all.
+She'll carry three or four times as much as the biggest Peterboro.
+Besides, if you tried to go round in canoes, you'd be portaging or
+lining in a dozen places where I would drive this one straight through.
+With any luck, and if the water doesn't go down too fast, I'd figure on
+going the whole way without taking her out of the river at more'n one
+place, and maybe not there."
+
+"So you're willing to go ahead and see us through," I exclaimed
+delightedly. "They told me in the town that you'd probably need a lot of
+persuading, especially as you've been saying for the last two or three
+years that you were through with the Bend for good and all."
+
+Blackmore grinned broadly and somewhat sheepishly. "So I have," he said.
+"Fact is, I've never yet been round the Bend that I didn't tell myself
+and everybody else that I'd never try it again. I really meant it the
+last time, which was three or four years ago. And I've really meant it
+every time I said it right up to a few days back, when I heard that you
+wanted to take a movie machine in there and try and get some pictures.
+If that was so, I said to myself, it was sure up to me to do what I
+could to help, for there's scenery in there that is more worth picturing
+than any I've come across in thirty years of knocking around all over
+the mountain country of the West. So I'm your man if you want me. Of
+course you know something of what you're going up against in bucking the
+Bend?"
+
+"Yes," I replied a bit wearily. "I've been hearing very little else for
+the last week. Let's talk about the scenery."
+
+"So they've been trying to frighten you out of it," he said with a
+sympathetic smile. "They always do that with strangers who come here to
+tackle the Bend. And mostly they succeed. There was one chap they
+couldn't stop, though. He was a professor of some kind from
+Philadelphia. Fact is, he wasn't enough frightened. That's a bad thing
+with the Columbia, which isn't to be taken liberties with. I buried him
+near the head of Kinbasket Lake. We'll see his grave when we come down
+from Surprise Rapids. I'll want to stop off for a bit and see if the
+cross I put up is still standing. He was...."
+
+"_Et tu Brute_," I muttered under my breath. Then, aloud: "Let's look at
+the boat."
+
+Already this penchant of the natives for turning the pages of the Big
+Bend's gruesome record of death and disaster was getting onto my nerves,
+and it was rather a shock to find even the quiet-spoken, steady-eyed
+Blackmore addicted to the habit. Afterwards, when I got used to it, I
+ceased to mind. As a matter of fact, the good souls could no more help
+expatiating on what the Big Bend had done to people who had taken
+liberties with it than an aviator who is about to take you for a flight
+can help leading you round back of the hangar and showing you the
+wreckage of his latest crash. It seems to be one of the inevitable
+promptings of the human animal to warn his brother animal of troubles
+ahead. This is doubtless the outgrowth of the bogies and the "don'ts"
+which are calculated to check the child's explorative and investigative
+instincts in his nursery days. From the source to the mouth of the
+Columbia it was never (according to the solicitous volunteer advisers
+along the way) the really dangerous rapids that I had put behind me.
+These were always somewhere ahead--usually just around the next bend,
+where I would run into them the first thing in the morning. Luckily, I
+learned to discount these warnings very early in the game, and so saved
+much sleep which it would have been a real loss to be deprived of.
+
+Blackmore led the way back through his apple orchard and down a stairway
+that descended the steeply-sloping river bank to his boat-house. The
+Columbia, a quarter of a mile wide and with just a shade of grey
+clouding its lucent greenness to reveal its glacial origin, slid swiftly
+but smoothly by with a purposeful current of six or seven miles an hour.
+A wing-dam of concrete, evidently built to protect the works of a
+sawmill a bit farther down stream, jutted out into the current just
+above, and the boat-house, set on a raft of huge logs, floated in the
+eddy below.
+
+There were two boats in sight, both in the water. Blackmore indicated
+the larger one of the pair--a double-ender of about thirty feet in
+length and generous beam--as the craft recommended for the Big Bend
+trip. "I built her for the Bend more than fifteen years ago," he said,
+tapping the heavy gunwale with the toe of his boot. "She's the only boat
+I know that has been all the way round more than once, so you might say
+she knows the road. She's had many a hard bump, but--with any luck--she
+ought to stand one or two more. Not that I'm asking for any more than
+can be helped, though. There's no boat ever built that will stand a
+head-on crash 'gainst a rock in any such current as is driving it down
+Surprise or Kinbasket or Death Rapids, or a dozen other runs of swift
+water on the Bend. Of course, you're going to hit once in a while, spite
+of all you can do; but, if you're lucky, you'll probably kiss off
+without staving in a side. If you're not--well, if you're not lucky, you
+have no business fooling with the Bend at all.
+
+"Now what I like about this big boat of mine," he continued, taking up
+the scope of the painter to bring her in out of the tug of the current,
+"is that she's a lucky boat. Never lost a man out of her--that is,
+directly--and only one load of freight. Now with that one (indicating
+the smaller craft, a canoe-like double-ender of about twenty feet) it's
+just the other way. If there's trouble around she'll have her nose into
+it. She's as good a built boat as any on the river, easy to handle up
+stream and down--but unlucky. Why, only a few weeks ago a lad from the
+town borrowed her to have a bit of a lark running the ripple over that
+dam there. It's covered at high water, and just enough of a pitch to
+give the youngsters a little excitement in dropping over. Safe enough
+stunt with any luck at all. But that boat's not lucky. She drifted on
+sidewise, caught her keel and capsized. The lad and the two girls with
+him were all drowned. They found his body a week or two later. All his
+pockets were turned wrong-side-out and empty. The Columbia current most
+always plays that trick on a man--picks his pockets clean. The bodies of
+the girls never did show up. Probably the sand got into their clothes
+and held them down. That's another little trick of the Columbia. She's
+as full of tricks as a box of monkeys, that old stream there, and you've
+got to keep an eye lifting for 'em all the time if you're going to
+steer clear of trouble."
+
+"It won't be the first time I've had my pockets picked," I broke in
+somewhat testily. "Besides, if you're going to charge me at the rate
+that Indian I heard of in Kamloops demanded, there won't be anything
+left for the Columbia to extract."
+
+That brought us down to business, and I had no complaint to make of the
+terms Blackmore suggested--twelve dollars a day for himself and boat, I
+to buy the provisions and make my own arrangements with any additional
+boatmen. I already had sensed enough of the character of the work ahead
+to know that a good boatman would be cheap at any price, and a poor one
+dear if working only for his grub. Blackmore was to get the big boat in
+shape and have it ready to ship by rail to Beavermouth (at the head of
+the Bend and the most convenient point to get a craft into the river)
+when I returned from the source of the Columbia above Windermere.
+
+Going on to Golden by train from Revelstoke, I looked up Captain F. P.
+Armstrong, with whom I had already been in communication by wire. The
+Captain had navigated steamers between Golden and Windermere for many
+years, they told me at C. P. R. headquarters in Revelstoke, and had also
+some experience of the Bend. He would be unable to join me for the trip
+himself, but had spoken to one or two men who might be induced to do so.
+In any event his advice would be invaluable.
+
+I shall have so much to say of Captain Armstrong in the account of a
+later part of my down-river voyage that the briefest introduction to a
+man who has been one of the most picturesque personalities in the
+pioneering history of British Columbia will suffice here. Short,
+compactly but cleanly built, with iron-grey hair, square, determined jaw
+and piercing black eyes, he has been well characterized as "the biggest
+little man on the upper Columbia." Although he confessed to sixty-three
+years, he might well have passed for fifty, a circumstance which
+doubtless had much to do with the fact that he saw three years of active
+service in the transport service on the Tigris and Nile during the late
+war. Indeed, as became apparent later, he generally had as much reserve
+energy at the end of a long day's paddling as another man I could
+mention who is rather loath to admit forty.
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff
+
+MT. ASSINIBOINE, NEAR THE HEADWATERS OF THE COLUMBIA]
+
+[Illustration: TWIN FALLS]
+
+[Illustration: TAKAKAW FALLS
+
+TWO GREAT CATARACTS OF THE COLUMBIA WATERSHED]
+
+Captain Armstrong explained that he was about to close the sale of one
+of his mines on a tributary of the upper Columbia, and for that reason
+would be unable to join us for the Big Bend trip, as much as he would
+have enjoyed doing so. In the event that I decided to continue on down
+the Columbia after circling the Bend, it was just possible he would be
+clear to go along for a way. He spoke highly of Blackmore's ability as a
+river man, and mentioned one or two others in Golden whom he thought
+might be secured. Ten dollars a day was the customary pay for a boatman
+going all the way round the Bend. That was about twice the ordinary wage
+prevailing at the time in the sawmills and lumber camps. The extra five
+was partly insurance, and partly because the work was hard and really
+good river men very scarce. It was fair pay for an experienced hand.
+A poor boatman was worse than none at all, that is, in a pinch, while a
+good one might easily mean the difference between success and disaster.
+And of course I knew that disaster on the Bend--with perhaps fifty miles
+of trackless mountains between a wet man on the bank and the nearest
+human habitation--was spelt with a big D.
+
+So far as I can remember, Captain Armstrong was the only one with whom I
+talked in Golden who did not try to dramatize the dangers and
+difficulties of the Big Bend. Seemingly taking it for granted that I
+knew all about them, or in any case would hear enough of them from the
+others, he turned his attention to forwarding practical plans for the
+trip. He even contributed a touch of romance to a venture that the rest
+seemed a unit in trying to make me believe was a sort of a cross between
+going over Niagara in barrel and a flight to one of the Poles.
+
+"There was a deal of boot-legging on the river between Golden and Boat
+Encampment during the years the Grand Trunk was being built," he said as
+we pored over an outspread map of the Big Bend, "for that was the first
+leg of the run into the western construction camps, where the sale of
+liquor was forbidden by law. Many and many a boatload of the stuff went
+wrong in the rapids. This would have been inevitable in any case, just
+in the ordinary course of working in such difficult water. But what made
+the losses worse was the fact that a good many of the bootleggers always
+started off with a load under their belts as well as in their boats. Few
+of the bodies were ever found, but with the casks of whisky it was
+different, doubtless because the latter would float longer and resist
+buffeting better. Cask after cask has kept turning up through the years,
+even down to the present, when B. C. is a comparative desert. They are
+found in the most unexpected places, and it's very rare for a party to
+go all the way round the Bend without stumbling onto one. So bear well
+in mind you are not to go by anything that looks like a small barrel
+without looking to see if it has a head in both ends. If you have time,
+it will pay you to clamber for a few hours over the great patch of drift
+just below Middle River on Kinbasket Lake. That's the one great
+catch-all for everything floatable that gets into the river below
+Golden. I've found just about everything there from a canary bird cage
+to a railway bridge. Failing there (which will only be because you don't
+search long enough), dig sixteen paces northwest by compass from the
+foundation of the west tower of the abandoned cable ferry just above
+Boat Encampment."
+
+"How's that again!" I exclaimed incredulously. "Sure you aren't
+confusing the Big Bend with the Spanish Main?"
+
+"If you follow my directions," replied the Captain with a grin, "you'll
+uncover more treasure for five minutes' scratching than you'd be likely
+to find in turning over the Dry Tortugas for five years. You see, it was
+this way," he went on, smiling the smile of a man who speaks of
+something which has strongly stirred his imagination. "It was only a few
+weeks after Walter Steinhoff was lost in Surprise Rapids that I made
+the trip round the Bend in a Peterboro to examine some silver-lead
+prospects I had word of. I had with me Pete Bergenham (a first-class
+river man; one you will do well to get yourself if you can) and another
+chap. This fellow was good enough with the paddle, but--though I didn't
+know it when I engaged him--badly addicted to drink. That's a fatal
+weakness for a man who is going to work in swift water, and especially
+such water as you strike at Surprise and the long run of Kinbasket
+Rapids. The wreckage of Steinhoff's disaster (Blackmore will spin you
+the straightest yarn about that) was scattered all the way from the big
+whirlpool in Surprise Rapids down to Middle River, where they finally
+found his body. We might easily have picked up more than the one
+ten-gallon cask we bumped into, floating just submerged, in the shallows
+of the mud island at the head of Kinbasket Lake.
+
+"I didn't feel quite right about having so much whisky along; but the
+stuff had its value even in those days, and I would have felt still
+worse about leaving it to fall into the hands of some one who would be
+less moderate in its use than would I. I knew Pete Bergenham was all
+right, and counted on being able to keep an eye on the other man. That
+was just where I fell down. I should have taken the cask to bed with me
+instead of leaving it in the canoe.
+
+"When the fellow got to the whisky I never knew, but it was probably
+well along toward morning. He was already up when I awoke, and displayed
+unwonted energy in getting breakfast and breaking camp. If I had known
+how heavily he had been tippling I would have given him another drink
+before pushing off to steady his nerve. That might have held him all
+right. As it was, reaction in mind and body set in just as we headed
+into that first sharp dip below the lake--the beginning of the
+twenty-one miles of Kinbasket Rapids. At the place where the bottom has
+dropped out from under and left the channel blocked by jagged rocks with
+no place to run through, he collapsed as if kicked in the stomach, and
+slithered down into the bottom of the canoe, blubbering like a baby. We
+just did manage to make our landing above the cascade. With a less
+skilful man than Bergenham at the stern paddle we would have failed, and
+that would have meant that we should probably not have stopped for good
+before we settled into the mud at the bottom of the Arrow Lakes.
+
+"Even after that I could not find it in my heart to dish for good and
+all so much prime whisky. So I compromised by burying it that night,
+after we had come through the rapids without further mishap, at the spot
+I have told you of. That it was the best thing to do under the
+circumstances I am quite convinced. The mere thought that it was still
+in the world has cheered me in many a thirsty interval--yes, even out on
+the Tigris and the Nile, when there was no certainty I would ever come
+back to get it again.
+
+"And now I'm going to tell you how to find it, for there's no knowing if
+I shall ever have a chance to go for it myself. If you bring it out to
+Revelstoke safely, we'll split it fifty-fifty, as they say on your side
+of the line. All I shall want to know is who your other boatmen are
+going to be. Blackmore is all right, but if any one of the men whom he
+takes with him is a real drinker, you'd best forget the whole thing. If
+it's an 'all-sober' crew, I'll give you a map, marked so plainly that
+you can't go wrong. It will be a grand haul, for it was Number One
+Scotch even when we planted it there, and since then it has been ageing
+in wood for something like ten years. I suppose you'll be keen to
+smuggle your dividend right on down into the 'The Great American
+Desert'?" he concluded with a grin.
+
+"Trust me for that," I replied with a knowing shake of my head. "I
+didn't spend six months writing up opium smuggling on the China Coast
+for nothing." Then I told him the story of the Eurasian lady who was fat
+in Amoy and thin in Hongkong, and who finally confessed to having
+smuggled forty pounds of opium, three times a week for five years, in
+oiled silk hip- and bust-pads.
+
+"You must have a lot of prime ideas," said the Captain admiringly. "You
+ought to make it easy, especially if you cross the line by boat. How
+would a false bottom ... but perhaps it would be safer to float it down
+submerged, with an old shingle-bolt for a buoy, and pick it up
+afterwards."
+
+"Or inside my pneumatic mattress," I suggested. "But perhaps it would
+taste from the rubber." By midnight we had evolved a plan which could
+not fail, and which was almost without risk. "The stuff's as good as in
+California," I told myself before I went to sleep--"and enough to pay
+all the expenses of my trip in case I should care to bootleg it, which
+I won't."
+
+Captain Armstrong's mention of the Steinhoff disaster was not the first
+I had heard of it. The chap with whom I had talked in Kamloops had
+shown me a photograph of a rude cross that he and his Indian companion
+had erected over Steinhoff's grave, and in Revelstoke nearly every one
+who spoke of the Bend made some reference to the tragic affair. But here
+in Golden, which had been his home, the spectacularity of his passing
+seemed to have had an even more profound effect. As with everything else
+connected with the Big Bend, however, there was a very evident tendency
+to dramatize, to "play up," the incident. I heard many different
+versions of the story, but there was one part, the tragic finale, in
+which they all were in practical agreement. When his canoe broke loose
+from its line, they said, and shot down toward the big whirlpool at the
+foot of the second cataract of Surprise Rapids, Steinhoff, realizing
+that there was no chance of the light craft surviving the maelstrom,
+coolly turned round, waved farewell to his companions on the bank, and,
+folding his arms, went down to his death. Canoe and man were sucked
+completely out of sight, never to be seen again until the fragments of
+the one and the battered body of the other were cast up, weeks later,
+many miles below.
+
+It was an extremely effective story, especially as told by the local
+member in the B. C. Provincial Assembly, who had real histrionic talent.
+But somehow I couldn't quite reconcile the Nirvanic resignation implied
+by the farewell wave and the folded arms with the never-say-die,
+cat-with-nine-lives spirit I had come to associate with your true
+swift-water boatman the world over. I was quite ready to grant that the
+big sockdolager of a whirlpool below the second pitch of Surprise
+Rapids was a real all-day and all-night sucker, but the old river hand
+who gave up to it like the Kentucky coons at the sight of Davy
+Crockett's squirrel-gun wasn't quite convincing. That, and the iterated
+statement that Steinhoff's canoe-mate, who was thrown into the water at
+the same time, won his way to the bank by walking along the bottom
+_beneath_ the surface, had a decidedly steadying effect on the erratic
+flights to which my fancy had been launched by Big Bend yarns generally.
+There had been something strangely familiar in them all, and finally it
+came to me--Chinese _feng-shui_ generally, and particularly the legends
+of the sampan men of the portage villages along the Ichang gorges of the
+Yangtze. The things the giant dragon lurking in the whirlpools at the
+foot of the rapids would do to the luckless ones he got his back-curving
+teeth into were just a slightly different way of telling what the good
+folk of Golden claimed the Big Bend would do to the hapless wights who
+ventured down its darksome depths.
+
+Now that I thought of it in this clarifying light, there had been
+"dragon stuff" bobbing up about almost every stretch of rough water I
+had boated. Mostly it was native superstition, but partly it was small
+town pride--pride in the things their "Dragon" had done, and would do.
+Human nature--yes, and river rapids, too--are very much the same the
+world over, whether on the Yangtze, Brahmaputra or upper Columbia.
+
+That brought the Big Bend into its proper perspective. I realized that
+it was only water running down hill after all. Possibly it was faster
+than anything I had boated previously, and certainly--excepting the
+Yukon perhaps--colder. A great many men had been drowned in trying to
+run it; but so had men been drowned in duck-ponds. But many men had gone
+round without disaster, and that would I do, _Imshallah_. I always liked
+that pious Arab qualification when speaking of futurities. Later I
+applied the name--in fancy--to the skiff in which I made the voyage down
+the lower river.
+
+Yes, undoubtedly the most of the yarns and the warnings were "dragon
+stuff" pure and simple, but Romance remained. A hundred miles of river
+with possible treasure lurking in every eddy, and one place where it
+_had_ to be! I felt as I did the first time I read "Treasure Island,"
+only more so. For that I had only _read_, and now I was going to search
+for myself--yes, and I was going to find, too. It was a golden sunset in
+more ways than one the evening before I was to leave for the upper
+river. Barred and spangled and fluted with liquid, lucent gold was the
+sky above hills that were themselves golden with the tints of early
+autumn. And in the Northwest there was a flush of rose, old rose that
+deepened and glowed in lambent crimson where a notch between the
+Selkirks and Rockies marked the approximate location of historic Boat
+Encampment. "Great things have happened at Boat Encampment," I told
+myself, "and its history is not all written." Then: "Sixteen paces
+northwest by compass from the foundation of the west tower of the
+abandoned cable ferry...." Several times during dinner that evening I
+had to check myself from humming an ancient song. "What's that about,
+'_Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of rum_'?" queried the mackinaw drummer from
+Winnipeg who sat next me. "I thought you were from the States. I don't
+quite see the point."
+
+"It's just as well you don't," I replied, and was content to let it go
+at that.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+UP HORSE THIEF CREEK
+
+
+When I started north from Los Angeles toward the end of August Chester,
+held up for the moment by business, was hoping to be able to shake free
+so as to arrive on the upper Columbia by the time I had arrangements for
+the Big Bend voyage complete. We would then go together to the Lake of
+the Hanging Glaciers before embarking on the Bend venture. Luck was not
+with him, however. The day I was ready to start on up river from Golden
+I received a wire stating that he was still indefinitely delayed, and
+that the best that there was now any chance of his doing would be to
+join me for the Bend. He had ordered his cameraman to Windermere, where
+full directions for the trip to the glaciers awaited him. He hoped I
+would see fit to go along and help with the picture, as some "central
+figure" besides the guides and packers would be needed to give the
+"story" continuity. I replied that I would be glad to do the best I
+could, and left for Lake Windermere by the next train. Few movie stars
+have ever been called to twinkle upon shorter notice.
+
+One is usually told that the source of the Columbia is in Canal Flats, a
+hundred and fifty miles above Golden, and immediately south of a
+wonderfully lovely mountain-begirt lake that bears the same name as the
+river. This is true in a sense, although, strictly speaking, the real
+source of the river--the one rising at the point the greatest distance
+from its mouth--would be the longest of the many mountain creeks which
+converge upon Columbia Lake from the encompassing amphitheatre of the
+Rockies and Selkirks. This is probably Dutch Creek, which rises in the
+perpetual snow of the Selkirks and sends down a roaring torrent of
+grey-green glacier water into the western side of Columbia Lake.
+Scarcely less distant from the mouth of the Columbia are the heads of
+Toby and Horse Thief creeks, both of which bring splendid volumes of
+water to the mother river just below Lake Windermere.
+
+It was the presence of the almost totally unknown Lake of the Hanging
+Glaciers near the head of the Horse Thief Creek watershed that was
+responsible for Chester's determination to carry his preliminary
+explorations up to the latter source of the Columbia rather than to one
+slightly more remote above the upper lake. We had assurance that a
+trail, upon which work had been in progress all summer, would be
+completed by the middle of September, so that it would then be possible
+for the first time to take pack-horses and a full moving-picture outfit
+to one of the rarest scenic gems on the North American continent, the
+Lake of the Hanging Glaciers. To get the first movies of what is claimed
+to be the only lake in the world outside of the polar regions that has
+icebergs perpetually floating upon its surface was the principal object
+of Chester in directing his outfit up Horse Thief Creek. My own object
+was to reach one of the several points where the Columbia took its rise
+in the glacial ice, there to do a right-about and start upon my
+long-dreamed-of journey from snowflake to brine.
+
+It is a dozen years or more since one could travel the hundred miles of
+the Columbia between Golden and Lake Windermere by steamer. The
+comparatively sparse population in this rich but thinly settled region
+was not sufficient to support both rail and river transport, and with
+the coming of the former the latter could not long be maintained. Two or
+three rotting hulks on the mud by the old landing at Golden are all that
+remain of one of the most picturesque steamer services ever run, for
+those old stern-wheelers used to flounder up the Columbia to Windermere,
+on through Mud and Columbia Lakes to Canal Flats, through a log-built
+lock to the Kootenay watershed, and then down the winding canyons and
+tumbling rapids of that tempestuous stream to Jennings, Montana. Those
+were the bonanza days of the upper Columbia and Kootenay--such days as
+they have never seen since nor will ever see again. I was to hear much
+of them later from Captain Armstrong when we voyaged a stretch of the
+lower river together.
+
+There is a train between Golden and Windermere only three times a week.
+It is an amiable, ambling "jerk-water," whose conductor does everything
+from dandling babies to unloading lumber. At one station he held over
+for five minutes to let me run down to a point where I could get the
+best light on a "reflection" picture in the river, and at another he ran
+the whole train back to pick up a basket of eggs which had been
+overlooked in the rush of departure. The Canadian Pacific has the happy
+faculty of being all things to all men. Its main line has always
+impressed me as being the best-run road I have ever travelled on in any
+part of the world, including the United States. One would hardly
+characterize its little country feeders in the same words, but even
+these latter, as the instances I have noted will bear out, come about as
+near to being run for the accommodation of the travelling public as
+anything one will ever find. There is not the least need of hurrying
+this Golden-Windermere express. It stops over night at Invermere anyway,
+before continuing its leisurely progress southward the next morning.
+
+Chester's cameraman met me with a car at the station, and we rode a mile
+to the hotel at Invermere, on the heights above the lake. His name was
+Roos, he said--Len H. Roos of N. Y. C. It was his misfortune to have
+been born in Canada, he explained, but he had always had a great
+admiration for Americans, and had taken out his first papers for
+citizenship. He could manage to get on with Canadians in a pinch, he
+averred further; but as for Britishers--no "Lime-juicers" for him, with
+their "G'bly'me's" and afternoon teas. I saw that this was going to be a
+difficult companion, and took the occasion to point out that, since he
+was going to be in Canada for some weeks, it might be just as well to
+bottle up his rancour against the land of his birth until he was back on
+the other side of the line and had completed the honour he intended to
+do Uncle Sam by becoming an American citizen. Maybe I was right, he
+admitted thoughtfully; but it would be a hard thing for him to do, as
+he was naturally very frank and outspoken and a great believer in
+saying just what he thought of people and things.
+
+He was right about being outspoken. He had also rather a glittering line
+of dogma on the finer things of life. Jazz was the highest form of music
+(he ought to know, for had he not played both jazz and grand opera when
+he was head drummer of the Galt, Ontario, town band?); the Mack Sennett
+bathing comedy was his _belle ideal_ of kinematic art; and the
+newspapers of William Hearst were the supreme development of journalism.
+This latter he knew, because he had done camera work for a Hearst
+syndicate himself. I could manage to make a few degrees of allowance for
+jazz and the Mack Sennett knockabouts under the circumstances, but the
+deification of Hearst created an unbridgeable gulf. I foresaw that
+"director" and "star" were going to have bumpy sledding, but also
+perceived the possibility of comedy elements which promised to go a long
+way toward redeeming the enforced partnership from irksomeness, that is,
+if the latter were not too prolonged. That it could run to six or seven
+weeks and the passage of near to a thousand miles of the Columbia
+without turning both "director" and "star" into actual assassins, I
+would never have believed. Indeed, I am not able to figure out even now
+how it could have worked out that way. I can't explain it. I merely
+state the fact.
+
+Walter Nixon, the packer who was to take us "up Horse Thief," had been
+engaged by wire a week previously. His outfit had been ready for several
+days, and he called at the hotel the evening of my arrival to go over
+the grub list and make definite plans. As there were only two of us, he
+reckoned that ten horses and two packers would be sufficient to see us
+through. The horses would cost us two dollars a day a head, and the
+packers five dollars apiece. The provisions he would buy himself and
+endeavour to board us at a dollar and a half apiece a man. This footed
+up to between thirty-five and forty dollars a day for the outfit,
+exclusive of the movie end. It seemed a bit stiff offhand, but was
+really very reasonable considering present costs of doing that kind of a
+thing and the thoroughly first-class service Nixon gave us from
+beginning to end.
+
+Nixon himself I was extremely well impressed with. He was a fine
+up-standing fellow of six feet or more, black-haired, black-eyed,
+broad-shouldered and a swell of biceps and thigh that even his
+loose-fitting mackinaws could not entirely conceal. I liked
+particularly his simple rig-out, in its pleasing contrast to the
+cross-between-a-movie-cowboy-and-a-Tyrolean-yodeler garb that has come
+to be so much affected by the so-called guides at Banff and Lake Louise.
+Like the best of his kind, Nixon was quiet-spoken and leisurely of
+movement, but with a suggestion of powerful reserves of both vocabulary
+and activity. I felt sure at first sight that he was the sort of a man
+who could be depended upon to see a thing through whatever the
+difficulties, and I never had reason to change my opinion on that score.
+
+It was arranged that night that Nixon should get away with the pack
+outfit by noon of the next day, and make an easy stage of it to the
+Starbird Ranch, at the end of the wagon-road, nineteen miles out from
+Invermere. The following morning Roos and I would come out by motor and
+be ready to start by the time the horses were up and the packs on. That
+gave us an extra day for exploring Windermere and the more imminent
+sources of the Columbia.
+
+Roos' instructions from Chester called for a "Windermere Picture," in
+which should be shown the scenic, camping, fishing and hunting life of
+that region. The scenic and camping shots he had already made; the fish
+and the game had eluded him. I arrived just in time to take part in the
+final scurry to complete the picture. The fish to be shown were trout,
+and the game mountain sheep and goat, or at least that was the way Roos
+planned it at breakfast time. When inquiry revealed that it would take a
+day to reach a trout stream, and three days to penetrate to the haunts
+of the sheep and goats, he modified the campaign somewhat to conform
+with the limited time at our disposal. Close at hand in the lake there
+was a fish called the squaw-fish, which, floundering at the end of a
+line, would photograph almost like a trout, or so the hotel proprietor
+thought. And the best of it was that any one could catch them. Indeed,
+at times one had to manoeuvre to keep them from taking the bait that
+was meant for the more gamy and edible, but also far more elusive, ling
+or fresh-water cod. As for the game picture, said Roos, he would save
+time by having a deer rounded up and driven into the lake, where he
+would pursue it with a motor boat and shoot the required hunting
+pictures. He would like to have me dress like a tourist and do the
+hunting and fishing. That would break me in to adopting an easy and
+pleasing manner before the camera, so that a minimum of film would be
+spoiled when he got down to our regular work on the Hanging Glacier
+picture. It wouldn't take long. That was the advantage of "news"
+training for a cameraman. You could do things in a rush when you had to.
+
+Mr. Clelland, secretary of the Windermere Company, courteously found us
+tackle and drove us down to the outlet of the lake to catch the
+squaw-fish. Three hours later he drove us back to the hotel for lunch
+without one single fragment of our succulent salt-pork bait having been
+nuzzled on its hook. I lost my "easy and pleasing manner" at the end of
+the first hour, and Roos--who was under rather greater tension in
+standing by to crank--somewhat sooner. He said many unkind things about
+fish in general and squaw-fish in particular before we gave up the fight
+at noon, and I didn't improve matters at all by suggesting that I cut
+out the picture on a salmon can label, fasten it to my hook, and have
+him shoot me catching that. There was no sense whatever in the idea, he
+said. You had to have studio lighting to get away with that sort of
+thing. He couldn't see how I could advance such a thing seriously. As I
+had some doubts on that score myself, I didn't start an argument.
+
+In the afternoon no better success attended our effort to make the
+hunting picture,--this because no one seemed to know where a deer could
+be rounded up and driven into the lake. Again I discovered a way to
+save this situation. On the veranda of the country club there was a fine
+mounted specimen of _Ovis Canadensis_, the Canadian mountain sheep. By
+proper ballasting, I pointed out to Roos, this fine animal could be made
+to submerge to a natural swimming depth--say with the head and shoulders
+just above the water. Then a little Evinrude engine could be clamped to
+its hind quarters and set going. Forthwith the whole thing must start
+off ploughing across the lake just like a live mountain sheep. By a
+little manoeuvring it ought to be possible to shoot at an angle that
+would interpose the body of the sheep between the eye and the pushing
+engine. If this proved to be impossible, perhaps it could be explained
+in a sub-title that the extraneous machinery was a fragment of
+mowing-machine or something of the kind that the sheep had collided with
+and picked up in his flight. Roos, while admitting that this showed a
+considerable advance over my salmon-label suggestion of the morning,
+said that there were a number of limiting considerations which would
+render it impracticable. I forget what all of these were, but one of
+them was that our quarry couldn't be made to roll his eyes and register
+"consternation" and "mute reproach" in the close-ups. I began to see
+that there was a lot more to the movie game than I had ever dreamed. But
+what a stimulator of the imagination it was!
+
+As there was nothing more to be done about the hunting and fishing shots
+for the present, we turned our attention to final preparations for what
+we had begun to call the "Hanging Glacier Picture." Roos said it would
+be necessary to sketch a rough sort of scenario in advance--nothing
+elaborate like "Broken Blossoms" or "The Perils of Pauline" (we hadn't
+the company for that kind of thing), but just the thread of a story to
+make the "continuity" ripple continuously. It would be enough, he
+thought, if I would enact the role of a gentleman-sportsman and allow
+the guides and packers to be just their normal selves. Then with these
+circulating in the foreground, he would film the various scenic features
+of the trip as they unrolled. All the lot of us would have to do would
+be to act naturally and stand or lounge gracefully in those parts of the
+picture where the presence of human beings would be best calculated to
+balance effectively and harmoniously the composition. I agreed
+cheerfully to the sportsman part of my role, but demurred as to
+"gentleman." I might manage it for a scene, but for a sustained effort
+it was out of the question. A compromise along this line was finally
+effected. I engaged to act as much like a gentleman as I could for the
+opening shot, after which I was to be allowed to lapse into the seeming
+of a simple sportsman who loved scenery-gazing more than the pursuit and
+slaying of goat, sheep and bear. Roos observed shrewdly that it would be
+better to have the sportsman be more interested in scenery than game
+because, judging from our experience at Windermere, we would find more
+of the former than the latter. He was also encouragingly sympathetic
+about my transient appearance as a gentleman. "I only want about fifty
+feet of that," he said as he gave me a propitiating pat on the back;
+"besides, it's all a matter of clothes anyhow."
+
+Before we turned in that night it transpired that Chester's hope of
+being the first to show moving pictures of the Lake of the Hanging
+Glaciers to the world was probably doomed to disappointment, or, at the
+best, that this honour would have to be shared with an equally ambitious
+rival. Byron Harmon, of Banff, formerly official photographer for the
+Canadian Pacific, arrived at Invermere and announced that he was
+planning to go "up Horse Thief" and endeavour to film a number of the
+remarkable scenic features which he had hitherto tried to picture in
+vain. His schedule was temporarily upset by the fact that we had already
+engaged the best packtrain and guides available. Seasoned mountaineer
+that he was, however, this was of small moment. A few hours' scurrying
+about had provided him with a light but ample outfit, consisting of four
+horses and two men, with which he planned to get away in the morning. He
+was not in the least perturbed by the fact that Roos had practically a
+day's start of him. "There's room for a hundred cameramen to work up
+there," he told me genially; "and the more the world is shown of the
+wonders of the Rockies and the Selkirks, the more it will want to see.
+It will be good to have your company, and each of us ought to be of help
+to the other."
+
+I had some difficulty in bringing Roos to a similarly philosophical
+viewpoint. His "Hearst" training impelled him to brook no rivalry, to
+beat out the other man by any means that offered. He had the better
+packtrain, he said, to say nothing of a day's start. Also, he had the
+only dynamite and caps available that side of Golden, so that he would
+have the inside track for starting avalanches and creating artificial
+icebergs in the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers. I would like to think that
+it was my argument that, since it was not a "news" picture he was after,
+the man who took the most time to his work would be the one to get the
+best results, was what brought him round finally. I greatly fear,
+however, it was the knowledge that the generous Harmon had a number of
+flares that did the trick. He had neglected to provide flares himself,
+and without them work in the ice caves--second only in interest to the
+Lake of the Hanging Glaciers itself--would be greatly circumscribed. At
+any rate, he finally agreed to a truce, and we took Harmon out to the
+end of the road in our car the following morning. Of the latter's really
+notable work in picturing the mountains of western Canada I shall write
+later.
+
+The horses were waiting, saddled and packed, as we drove up to the
+rendezvous. The packer was a powerfully built fellow, with his straight
+black hair and high cheek bones betokening a considerable mixture of
+Indian blood. His name was Buckman--Jim Buckman. He was the village
+blacksmith of Athalmere, Nixon explained. He was making plenty of money
+in his trade, but was willing to come along at a packer's wage for the
+sake of the experience as an actor. The lure of the movies was also
+responsible for the presence of Nixon's fourteen-year-old son, Gordon,
+who had threatened to run away from home if he wasn't allowed to come
+along. He proved a useful acquisition--more than sufficiently so, it
+seemed to me, to compensate for what he did to the jam and honey.
+
+Roos called us around him and gave instructions for the "business" of
+the opening shot. Nixon and Jim were to be "picked up" taking the last
+of the slack out of a "diamond hitch," Gordon frolicking in the
+background with his dog. When the car drove up, Nixon was to take my
+saddle horse by the bridle, walk up and shake hands with me. Then, to
+make the transition from Civilization to the Primitive (movie people
+never miss a chance to use that word) with a click, I was to step
+directly from the car into my stirrups. "Get me!" admonished Roos;
+"straight from the running board to the saddle. Don't touch the ground
+at all. Make it snappy, all of you. I don't want any of you to grow into
+'foot-lice.'"
+
+My saddle horse turned out to be a stockily-built grey of over 1200
+pounds. He looked hard as nails and to have no end of endurance. But his
+shifty eye and back-laid ears indicated temperamentality, so that
+Nixon's warning that he "warn't exactly a lady's hawss" was a bit
+superfluous. "When you told me you tipped the beam at two-forty," he
+said, "I know'd 'Grayback' was the only hawss that'd carry you up these
+trails. So I brung him in, and stuffed him up with oats, and here he is.
+He may dance a leetle on his toes jest now, but he'll gentle down a lot
+by the end of a week."
+
+Whether "Grayback" mastered all of the "business" of that shot or not is
+probably open to doubt, but that he took the "Make it snappy!" part to
+heart there was no question. He came alongside like a lamb, but the
+instant I started to make my transition from "Civilization to the
+Primitive with a click" he started climbing into the car. The only click
+I heard was when my ear hit the ground. Roos couldn't have spoiled any
+more film than I did cuticle, but, being a "Director," he made a good
+deal more noise about it. After barking his hocks on the fender,
+"Grayback" refused to be enticed within mounting distance of the car
+again, so finally, with a comparatively un-clicky transition from
+Civilization to the Primitive, I got aboard by the usual route from the
+ground.
+
+The next shot was a quarter of a mile farther up the trail. Here Roos
+found a natural sylvan frame through which to shoot the whole outfit as
+it came stringing along. Unfortunately, the "Director" failed to tell
+the actors not to look at the camera--that, once and for all, the
+clicking box must be reckoned as a thing non-existent--and it all had to
+be done over again. The next time it was better, but the actors still
+had a wooden expression on their faces. They didn't look at the camera,
+but the expression on their faces showed that they were conscious of it.
+Roos then instructed me to talk to my companions, or sing, or do
+anything that would take their minds off the camera and make them appear
+relaxed and natural. That time we did it famously. As each, in turn,
+cantered by the sylvan bower with its clicking camera he was up to his
+neck "doing something." Nixon was declaiming Lincoln's Gettysburg speech
+as he had learned it from his phonograph, Gordon was calling his dog,
+Jim was larruping a straggling pinto and cursing it in fluent local
+idiom, and I was singing "Onward, Christian Soldiers!" We never had any
+trouble about "being natural" after that; but I hope no lip reader ever
+sees the pictures.
+
+After picking up Roos and his camera we made our real start. One
+pack-horse was reserved for the camera and tripod, and to prevent him
+from ranging from the trail and bumping the valuable apparatus against
+trees or rocks, his halter was tied to the tail of Nixon's saddle
+animal. Except that the latter's spinal column must have suffered some
+pretty severe snakings when the camera-carrier went through corduroy
+bridges or lost his footings in fords, the arrangement worked most
+successfully. The delicate instrument was not in the least injured in
+all of the many miles it was jogged over some of the roughest trails I
+have ever travelled.
+
+The sunshine by which the last of the trail shots was made proved the
+parting glimmer of what had been a month or more of practically unbroken
+fair weather. Indeed, the weather had been rather too fine, for, toward
+the end of the summer, lack of rain in western Canada invariably means
+forest fires. As these had been raging intermittently for several weeks
+all over British Columbia, the air had become thick with smoke, and at
+many places it was impossible to see for more than a mile or two in any
+direction. Both Roos and Harmon had been greatly hampered in their work
+about Banff and Lake Louise by the smoke, and both were, therefore,
+exceedingly anxious for early and copious rains to clear the air.
+Otherwise, they said, there was no hope of a picture of the Lake of the
+Hanging Glaciers that would be worth the film it was printed on. They
+must have rain. Their prayer was about to be answered, in full measure,
+pressed down and running over--and then some.
+
+We had been encountering contending currents of hot and cold air all the
+way up the wagon-road from Invermere and the lower valley. Now, as we
+entered the mountains, these became more pronounced, taking the form of
+scurrying "dust-devils" that attacked from flank and van without method
+or premonitory signal. The narrowing gorge ahead was packed solid with a
+sullen phalanx of augmenting clouds, sombre-hued and sagging with
+moisture, and frequently illumined with forked lightning flashes
+discharged from their murky depths. Nixon, anxious to make camp before
+the storm broke, jogged the horses steadily all through the darkening
+afternoon. It was a point called "Sixteen-mile" he was driving for, the
+first place we would reach where there was room for the tent and feed
+for the horses. We were still four miles short of our destination when
+the first spatter of ranging drops opened up, and from there on the
+batteries of the storm concentrated on us all the way.
+
+We made camp in a rain driving solidly enough to deflect the stroke of
+an axe. I shall not enlarge upon the acute discomfort of it. Those who
+have done it will understand; those who have not would never be able to.
+It was especially trying on the first day out, before the outfit had
+become shaken down and one had learned where to look for things. Nixon's
+consummate woodcraftsmanship was put to a severe test, but emerged
+triumphant. So, too, Jim, who proved himself as impervious to rain as to
+ill-temper. The fir boughs for the tent floor came in dripping, of
+course, but there were enough dry tarpaulins and blankets to blot up the
+heaviest of the moisture, and the glowing little sheet-iron stove licked
+up the rest. A piping hot dinner drove out the last of the chill, and we
+spent a snug, comfy evening listening to Nixon yarn about his
+mountaineering exploits and of the queer birds from New York and London
+whom he had nursed through strange and various intervals of moose and
+sheep-hunting in the Kootenays and Rockies. We slept dry but rather
+cold, especially Roos, who ended up by curling round the stove and
+stoking between shivers. Nixon and Jim drew generously on their own
+blanket rolls to help the both of us confine our ebbing animal heat, and
+yet appeared to find not the least difficulty in sleeping comfortably
+under half the weight of cover that left us shaking. It was all a matter
+of what one was used to, of course, and in a few days we began to
+harden.
+
+It was September tenth that we had started from Invermere, hoping at the
+time to be able to accomplish what we had set out to do in from four to
+six days. The rain which had come to break the long dry spell put a very
+different face on things, however. The eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth
+we were held in our first camp by an almost continuous downpour, which
+turned the mountain streams into torrents and raised Horse Thief till it
+lapped over the rim of the flat upon which our tent was pitched. The
+night of the thirteenth, with a sharp drop of the temperature, the rain
+turned to snow, and we crawled out on the fourteenth to find the valley
+under a light blanket of white. Then the clouds broke away and the
+sunshine and shadows began playing tag over the scarps and buttresses of
+the encompassing amphitheatre of mountains. For the first time there was
+a chance for a glimpse of the new world into which we had come. The
+transition from the cultivation and the gentle wooded slopes of
+Windermere was startling. Under the mask of the storm clouds we had
+penetrated from a smooth, rounded, pleasant country to one that was
+cliffy and pinnacled and bare--a country that was all on end, a land
+whose bones showed through. A towering Matterhorn reared its head six or
+eight thousand feet above us, and so near that slabs of rock cracked
+away from its scarred summit were lying just across the trail from the
+tent. The peaks walling in Horse Thief to the north were not so high but
+no less precipitous and barren, while to the west a jumble of splintered
+pinnacles whose bases barred the way were still lost in the witch-dance
+of the clouds. A tourist folder would have called it a "Land of Titans,"
+but Jim, leaning on his axe after nicking off a fresh back-log for the
+camp fire, merely opined it was "some skookum goat country. But not a
+patch," he added, "to what we'll be hittin' to-night if we get them
+_geesly_ hawsses rounded up in time fer a start 'fore noon."
+
+It appeared that the horses, with their grazing spoiled by the snow, had
+become restless, broken through the barrier Nixon had erected at a
+bridge just below camp, and started on the back trail for Invermere. As
+their tracks showed that they had broken into a trot immediately beyond
+the bridge, it looked like a long stern-chase, and Nixon did not reckon
+on being able to hit the trail for several hours. Roos grasped the
+occasion to make a couple of "camp life" shots his fertile brain had
+conceived the idea of during the long storm-bound days of enforced
+inaction. In one of these the "sportsman" was to go to bed in silhouette
+by candlelight. Ostensibly this was to be the shadow of a man crawling
+into his blankets _inside_ of the tent, and taken from the outside. In
+reality, however, Roos set up his camera _inside_ of the tent and shot
+the antics of the shadow the sunlight threw on the canvas when I went
+through the motions of turning in close against the _outside_ of the
+wall. This went off smartly and snappily; but I would have given much
+for a translation of the voluble comments of a passing Indian who pulled
+up to watch the agile action of the retiring "sportsman."
+
+It was while Roos was rehearsing me for this shot that Gordon must have
+heard him iterating his invariable injunction that I should not be a
+"foot-hog," meaning, I shall hardly need to explain, that I should be
+quick in my movements so as not to force him to use an undue footage of
+film. A little later I overheard the boy asking Jim what a "foot-hog"
+was. "I don't quite _kumtrux_ myself," the sturdy blacksmith-packer
+replied, scratching his head. "It sounds as if it might be suthin like
+pig's feet, but they want actin' as if they wuz ready to eat anythin',
+'less it was each other." Now that I think of it, I can see how the
+clash of the artistic temperaments of "Director" and "Star" over just
+about every one of the shots they made might have given Jim that
+impression.
+
+[Illustration: THE "TURNING-IN" SCENE SHOT IN SILHOUETTE (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: "REVERSE" OF THE "GOING-TO-BED" SHOT (_below_)]
+
+[Illustration: ON THE HORSE THIEF TRAIL]
+
+[Illustration: A DEAD-FALL ON THE TRAIL]
+
+The other shot we made that morning was one which Roos had labelled as
+"Berry Picking and Eating" in his tentative scenario. The "sportsman"
+was to fare forth, gather a bowlful of raspberries, bring them back to
+camp, put sugar and condensed milk on them, and finally eat them, all
+before the camera. I objected to appearing in this for two reasons: for
+one, because berry-picking was not a recognized out-door sport, and, for
+another, because I didn't like raspberries. Roos admitted that
+berry-picking was not a sport, but insisted he had to have the scene to
+preserve his continuity. "Gathering and eating these products of
+Nature," he explained, "shows how far the gentleman you were in the
+first scene has descended toward the Primitive. You will be getting more
+and more Primitive right along, but we must register each step on the
+film, see?" As for my distaste for raspberries, Roos was quite willing
+that, after displaying the berries heaped in the bowl in a close-up, I
+should do the real eating with strawberry jam. It was that last which
+overcame my spell of "temperament." Both Roos and Gordon already had me
+several pots down in the matter of jam consumption, and I was glad of
+the chance to climb back a notch.
+
+We found raspberry bushes by the acre but, thanks to the late storm,
+almost no berries. This didn't matter seriously in the picking shot, for
+which I managed to convey a very realistic effect in pantomime, but for
+the heaped-high close-up of the bowl it was another matter. One scant
+handful was the best that the four of us, foraging for half an hour,
+could bring in. But I soon figured a way to make these do. Opening a
+couple of tins of strawberry jam into the bowl, I rounded over smoothly
+the bright succulent mass and then made a close-set raspberry mosaic of
+one side of it. That did famously for the close-up. As I settled back
+for the berry-eating shot Roos cut in sharply with his usual: "Snappy
+now! Don't be a foot-hog!" Gordon, who had been digging his toe into the
+mud for some minutes, evidently under considerable mental stress, lifted
+his head at the word. "Hadn't you better say 'jam-hog', Mr. Roos?" he
+queried plaintively.
+
+"I'm afraid it wouldn't be any use," was the dejected reply. Roos was
+right. At the word "Action!" I dug in with my spoon on the unpaved side
+of the bowl of jam, and several turns before the crank ceased revolving
+there was nothing left but a few daubed raspberries and several broad
+red smears radiating from my mouth. Roos tossed the two empty jam tins
+into the murky torrent of Horse Thief Creek and watched them bob away
+down stream. "You're getting too darn primitive," he said peevishly.
+
+It was nearly eleven o'clock before Nixon came with the horses; but we
+had camp struck and the packs made, so there was little delay in taking
+the trail. The bottom of the valley continued fairly open for a few
+miles, with the swollen stream serpentining across it, turned hither and
+thither by huge logjams and fortress-like rock islands. Where the North
+Fork came tumbling into the main creek in a fine run of cascades there
+was a flat several acres in extent and good camping ground. Immediately
+above the valley narrowed to a steep-sided canyon, and continued so all
+the way up to the snow and glacier-line. The trail from now on was badly
+torn and washed and frequently blocked with dead-falls. Or rather it had
+been so blocked up to a day or two previously. Now I understood the
+reason for Nixon's complaisance when Harmon's outfit, travelling in the
+rain, had passed our camp a couple of days before. "Don't worry, sonny,"
+he had said in comforting the impetuous Roos; "we won't lose any time,
+and we will save a lot of chopping." And so it had worked out. Harmon's
+men had cut the dead-falls out of the whole twelve miles of trail
+between North Fork and the Dragon-Tail Glacier.
+
+Even so it was a beastly stretch of trail. The stream, completely
+filling the bottom of the gorge, kept the path always far up the side of
+the mountain. There were few dangerous precipices, but one had always to
+be on the lookout to keep his head from banging on dead-falls just high
+enough to clear a pack, and which, therefore, no one would take the
+trouble to cut away. The close-growing shrubbery was dripping with
+moisture, and even riding second to Nixon, who must have got all the
+worst of it, I found myself drenched at the end of the first half mile.
+Riding through wet underbrush can wet a man as no rain ever could. No
+waterproof ever devised offers the least protection against it; nothing
+less than a safe deposit vault on wheels could do so.
+
+Streams, swollen by the now rapidly melting snow, came tumbling
+down--half cataract, half cascade--all along the way. At the worst
+crossings these had been roughly bridged, as little footing for men or
+horses was afforded by the clean-swept rock. Only one crossing of the
+main stream was necessary. It was a good natural ford at low water, but
+quite out of the question to attempt at high. We found it about
+medium--a little more than belly deep and something like an eight-mile
+current. With a foot more water it would have commenced to get
+troublesome; with another two feet, really dangerous. That prospect,
+with the rapidly rising water, was reserved for our return trip.
+
+Such a road was, of course, wonderfully picturesque and colourful, and
+Roos, with a quick eye for an effective composition, made the most of
+his opportunities for "trail shots." A picture of this kind, simple
+enough to look at on the screen, often took half an hour or more to
+make. The finding of a picturesque spot on the trail was only the
+beginning. This was useless unless the light was right and a
+satisfactory place to set up the tripod was available. When this latter
+was found, more often than not a tree or two had to be felled to open up
+the view to the trail. Then--as the party photographed had to be
+complete each time, and with nothing to suggest the presence of the
+movie camera or its operator--Roos' saddle horse and the animal carrying
+his outfit had to be shuttled along out of line and tied up where they
+would not get in the picture. This was always a ticklish operation on
+the narrow trails, and once or twice the sheer impossibility of
+segregating the superfluous animals caused Roos to forego extremely
+effective shots.
+
+The mountains became higher and higher, and steeper and steeper, the
+farther we fared. And the greater the inclines, the more and more
+precarious was the hold of the winter's snow upon the mountainsides. At
+last we climbed into a veritable zone of avalanches--a stretch where,
+for a number of miles, the deep-gouged troughs of the snow-slides
+followed each other like the gullies in a rain-washed mudbank.
+Slide-time was in the Spring, of course, so the only trouble we
+encountered was in passing over the terribly violated mountainsides. If
+the trail came to the track of an avalanche far up on the mountainside,
+it meant descending a cut-bank to the scoured bedrock, click-clacking
+along over this with the shod hooves of the horses striking sparks at
+every step for a hundred yards or more, and then climbing out again. If
+the path of the destroyer was encountered low down, near the river, the
+way onward led over a fifty-feet-high pile of upended trees, boulders
+and sand. In nearly every instance one could see where the slides had
+dammed the stream a hundred feet high or more, and here and there were
+visible swaths cut in the timber of the further side, where the buffer
+of the opposite mountain had served to check the onrush.
+
+The going for the horses was hard at all times, but worst perhaps where
+the dam of a slide had checked the natural drainage and formed a
+bottomless bog too large for the trail to avoid. Here the hard-blown
+animals floundered belly deep in mud and rotten wood, as did also their
+riders when they had to slide from the saddles to give their mounts a
+chance to reach a solid footing. The polished granite of the runways of
+the slide was almost as bad, for here the horses were repeatedly down
+from slipping. My air-treading, toe-dancing "Grayback" of the morning
+was gone in the back and legs long before we reached the end. My weight
+and the pace (Nixon was driving hard to reach a camping place before a
+fresh gathering of storm clouds were ready to break) had proved too much
+for him. The fighting light was gone from his eye, his head was between
+his legs, and his breath was expelled with a force that seemed to be
+scouring the lining from his bleeding nostrils. Dropping back to slacken
+his girths and breathe him a moment before leading him up the last long
+run of zigzags, I heard the sobbing _diminuendo_ of the packtrain die
+out in the sombre depths above. It was like the shudder of sounds that
+rise through a blow-hole where the sea waves are pounding hard on the
+mouth of a subterranean grotto.
+
+I had developed a warm and inclusive sympathy for "Grayback" before I
+reached the crest of that final shoulder of mountain we had to surmount,
+but lost most of it on the slide back to the valley when, in lieu of
+anything else to hand as he found himself slipping, he started to canter
+up my spine. I found Nixon and Jim throwing off packs on a narrow strip
+of moss-covered bottom between the drop-curtain of the fir-covered
+mountainside and the bank of the creek. It was practically the only
+place for a camp anywhere in the closely-walled valley. Slide-wreckage
+claimed all the rest of it. An upward trickle of lilac smoke a half mile
+above told where Harmon's outfit had effected some sort of lodgment, but
+it was on a _geesly_ slither of wet side-hill, Nixon said, and badly
+exposed to the wind that was always sucking down from the glacier.
+
+The moss underfoot was saturated with water, but with an hour of
+daylight and pines close at hand this was a matter of small moment. We
+were well under cover by the time the snuffer of the darkness clapped
+sharply down, and with a good day's supply of wood for stove and
+camp-fire piled up outside the tent. Not having stopped for lunch on the
+trail, we were all rather "peckish" (to use Nixon's expression) by the
+time dinner was ready. After that there was nothing much to bother
+about. Nixon told goat hunting stories all evening, putting a fresh edge
+on his axe the while with a little round pocket whetstone. A Canadian
+guide is as cranky about his private and personal axe as a Chicago
+clothing drummer is about his razors. So it was only to be expected that
+Nixon took it a bit hard when Roos had employed his keenly whetted
+implement to crack open a hunk of quartz with. That was the reason,
+doubtless, why most of his stories had to do with the fool escapades of
+various of the _geesly_ (that was Nixon's favourite term of contempt,
+and a very expressive one it was) tenderfeet he had guided. But one of
+his yarns (and I think a true one) was of a time that he was caught by a
+storm at ten thousand feet in the Rockies and had to spend the night on
+the rocks a mile above the timber-line. Lightly dressed and without a
+blanket, the only protection he had from a temperature many degrees
+below freezing was from the carcasses of the two freshly-shot goats that
+had lured him there. Splitting these down the middle with his hunting
+knife, he had covered himself with them, entrails and all, in the hope
+that the remaining animal heat would keep him alive till daylight. Man
+and goat were frozen to one stiff mass by morning, but the man had still
+enough vitality to crack himself loose and descend to his camp. The
+exposure and hardship some of these northwest mountaineers have survived
+is almost beyond belief.
+
+I went to sleep with the sizzle of snowflakes on the dying embers of the
+camp-fire in my ears, and awoke to find the tent roof sagging down on my
+ear under the weight of a heavy night's fall. The storm was over for the
+moment, but the clouds were still lurking ominously above the glacier,
+and there was little light for pictures. Harmon, crossing the several
+channels of the creek on fallen logs, came over later in the day. He had
+been storm-bound ever since his arrival, he said, and had done nothing at
+all in taking either stills or movies yet. But fires and smoke were
+finished for the year now, he added philosophically, and it was his
+intention to remain until he got what he was after. Before he left he
+told me something of his work. "Stills," it appeared, were the main
+thing with him; his movie work was carried on merely as a side-line to
+pay the expenses of trips he could not otherwise afford. He had been
+photographing in the Selkirks and Rockies for a dozen years, and he
+would not be content to rest until the sets of negatives--as nearly
+perfect as they could be made--of every notable peak and valley of
+western Canada. Then he was going to hold a grand exhibition of mountain
+photographs at Banff and retire. The Lake of the Hanging Glaciers was
+one of the very few great scenic features he had never photographed, and
+he only hoped he would be able to do it justice. The fine reverence of
+Harmon's attitude toward the mountains that he loved was completely
+beyond Roos' ken. "I never worries about not doing 'em justice--not for
+a minute. What does worry me is whether or not these cracked up lakes
+and glaciers are going to turn out worth my coming in to do justice to.
+Get me?" "Yes, I think so," replied the veteran with a very patient
+smile.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+AT THE GLACIER
+
+
+Snow flurries kept us close to camp all that day. The next one, the
+sixteenth, was better, though still quite hopeless for movie work. After
+lunch we set out on foot for the big glacier, a mile above, from which
+the creek took its life. The clouds still hung too low to allow anything
+of the mountains to be seen, but one had the feeling of moving in a long
+narrow tunnel through which a cold jet of air was constantly being
+forced. A few hundred yards above our camp was a frightful zone of riven
+trees mixed with gravel and boulders. It was one of the strangest, one
+of the savagest spots I ever saw. It was the battle ground of two rival
+avalanches, Nixon explained, two great slides which, with the impetus of
+six or eight thousand feet of run driving uncounted millions of tons of
+snow and earth, met there every spring in primeval combat. No man had
+ever seen the fantastic onslaught (for no man could reach that point in
+the springtime), but it was certain that the remains of it made a mighty
+dam all the way across the valley. Then the creek would be backed up
+half way to the glacier, when it would accumulate enough power to sweep
+the obstruction away and scatter it down to the Columbia.
+
+Straight down the respective paths of the rival slides, and almost
+exactly opposite each other, tumbled two splendid cascades. The hovering
+storm clouds cut off further view of them a few hundred feet above the
+valley, but Nixon said that they came plunging like that for thousands
+of feet, from far up into the belt of perpetual snow. The one to the
+east (which at the moment seemed to be leaping straight out of the heart
+of a sinister slaty-purple patch of cumulonimbus) drained the Lake of
+the Hanging Glaciers; that to the west a desolate rock and ice-walled
+valley which was rimmed by some of the highest summits in the Selkirks.
+Our road to the lake would be wet with the spray of the former for a
+good part of the distance.
+
+We were scrambling through a land of snow-slides all the way to the
+glacier. For the first half mile patches of stunted fir survived here
+and there, due to being located in the lee of some cliff or other rocky
+outcrop which served to deflect the springtime onslaughts from above;
+then all vegetation ceased and nothing but snow-churned and ice-ground
+rock fragments remained. All along the last quarter of a mile the
+successive stages of the glacier's retreat were marked by great heaps of
+pulverized rock, like the tailings at the mouth of a mine. Only the face
+of the glacier and the yawning ice caves were visible under the
+cloud-pall. The queerly humped uplift of the "dragon" moraine could be
+dimly guessed in the shifting mists that whirled and eddied in the icy
+draughts from the caves.
+
+Our principal object in going up to the grottoes on so inclement a day
+was to experiment with our dynamite on the ice, with a view to turning
+our knowledge to practical use in making artificial icebergs for the
+movies in the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers. Selecting what looked like
+a favourable spot at the base of what seemed a "fracturable" pinnacle of
+grey-green ice, we dug a three-feet-deep hole with a long-handled
+chisel, pushed in two sticks of sixty per cent. dynamite, tamped it hard
+with snow after attaching a lengthy fuse, touched a match to the latter
+and retired to a safe distance. The result, to put it in Roos' latest
+imported slang, was an "oil can," which connotes about the same thing as
+fizzle, I took it. There's a deal of kick in two sticks of "sixty per"
+set off in rock, but here it was simply an exuberant "whouf" after the
+manner of a blowing porpoise. A jet of soft snow and ice shot up some
+distance, but the pinnacle never trembled. And the hole opened up was
+smooth-sided and clean, as if melted out with hot water. Not the
+beginning of a crack radiated from it. Jim opined that a slower burning
+powder might crack ice, but there was certainly no hope of "sixty per"
+doing the trick. It was evident that we would have to find some other
+way of making artificial icebergs. We did. We made them of rock. But I
+won't anticipate.
+
+It snowed again in the night, snowed itself out for a while. The
+following morning it was warm and brilliantly clear, and for the first
+time there was a chance to see what sort of a place it was to which we
+had entered. For a space the height and abruptness of the encompassing
+walls seemed almost appalling; it was more like looking up out of an
+immeasurably vast crater than from a valley. All around there were
+thousands of feet of sheer rocky cliff upon which no snow could effect a
+lodgment; and above these more thousands of feet solid with the
+glittering green of glacial ice and the polished marble of eternal
+snow. The jagged patch of sky was a vivid imperial blue, bright and
+solid-looking like a fragment of rich old porcelain. The morning sun,
+cutting through the sharp notches between the southeastern peaks, was
+dappling the snow fields of the western walls in gay splashes of flaming
+rose and saffron, interspersed with mottled shadows of indigo and deep
+purple. Reflected back to the still shadowed slopes of the eastern
+walls, these bolder colours became a blended iridescence of amethyst,
+lemon and pale misty lavender. The creek flowed steely cold, with fluffs
+of grey-wool on the riffles. The tree patches were black, dead funereal
+black, throwing back no ray of light from their down-swooping branches.
+The air was so clear that it seemed almost to have assumed a palpability
+of its own. One imagined things floating in it; even that it might
+tinkle to the snip of a finger nail, like a crystal rim.
+
+In movies as in hay-making, one has to step lively while the sun shines.
+This was the first good shooting light we had had, and no time was lost
+in taking advantage of it. Long before the sun had reached the bottom of
+the valley we were picking our way up toward the foot of the glacier,
+this time on horseback. Early as we had started, the enterprising Harmon
+had been still earlier. He was finishing his shots of the face of the
+glacier and the mouth of the ice caves as we came up. He would now leave
+the field clear for Roos for an hour, he said, while he climbed to the
+cliffs above the glacier to make a goat-hunting picture. That finished,
+he would return and, by the light of his flares both parties could
+shoot the interior of the ice caves. Before starting on his long climb,
+Harmon briefly outlined the scenario of his "goat" picture, part of
+which had already been shot. Two prospectors--impersonated by his guide
+and packer--having been in the mountains for many weeks without a change
+of diet, had become terribly sick of bacon. Finally, when one of them
+had disgustedly thrown his plate of it on the ground, even the camp dog,
+after a contemptuous sniff, had turned his back. He had had no trouble
+in getting the men to register "disgust," Harmon explained, but that
+"contemptuous sniff" business with the dog was more difficult. After
+their voracious Airedale pup had wolfed three plates of bacon without
+paying the least heed to the director's attempts to frighten him off at
+the psychological moment, they had tried thin strips of birch-bark,
+trimmed to represent curling rashers. Even these the hungry canine had
+persisted in licking, probably because they came from a greasy plate.
+Finally Harmon hit upon the expedient of anointing the birch-bark
+rashers with some of the iodine carried as an antiseptic in the event of
+cuts and scratches. "If the pup ate it, of course it would die," he
+explained; "but that would be no more than he deserved in such a case."
+But the plan worked perfectly. After his first eager lick, the outraged
+canine had "sniffed contemptuously" at the pungent fumes of the iodine,
+and then backed out of the picture with a wolfish snarl on his lifted
+lip.
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff
+
+LOOKING TOWARD THE ENTRANCE OF THE ICE CAVE]
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff
+
+WHERE THE HANGING GLACIER IS ABOUT TO FALL]
+
+Then the packer registered "fresh meat hunger" ("cut-in" of a butcher
+shop to be made later), immediately after which the guide pointed to the
+cliffs above the camp where some wild goats were frisking. By the aid
+of his long-distance lens, Harmon had shot the goats as they would
+appear through the binoculars the guide and packers excitedly passed
+back and forth between them. And now they were going forth to shoot the
+goats. Or rather they were going forth to "shoot" the goats, for these
+had already been shot with a rifle. In order to avoid loss of time in
+packing his cumbersome apparatus about over the cliffs, Harmon had sent
+out Conrad, his Swiss guide, the previous afternoon, with orders to
+shoot a goat--as fine a specimen as possible--and leave it in some
+picturesque spot where a re-shooting could be "shot" with the camera
+when the clouds lifted. The keen-eyed Tyrolese had experienced little
+difficulty in bringing down two goats. One of these--a huge "Billy"--he
+had left at the brink of a cliff a couple of thousand feet above the big
+glacier, and the other--a half-grown kid--he had brought into camp to
+cut up for the "meat-guzzling" shots with which guide, packer and canine
+were to indulge in as a finale. It was a cleverly conceived "nature"
+picture, one with a distinct "educational" value; or at least it was
+such when viewed from "behind the camera." Roos was plainly jealous over
+it, but, as he had no goats of his own, and as Harmon's goat was hardly
+likely to be "borrowable" after bouncing on rock pinnacles for a
+thousand feet, there was nothing to do about it. He would have to make
+up by putting it over Harmon on his "glacier stuff," he said
+philosophically. And he did; though it was only through the virtuosity
+of his chief actor.
+
+Harmon had confined his glacier shots to one of his party riding up
+over the rocks, and another of it grouped at the entrance of the largest
+cave and looking in. Being an old mountaineer, he was disinclined to
+take any unnecessary chances in stirring up a racket under hanging ice.
+Roos was new to the mountains, so didn't labour under any such handicap.
+His idea was to bring the whole outfit right up the middle of the stream
+and on into the cave. The approach and the entrance into the mouth of
+the cave were to be shot first from the outside, and then, in
+silhouette, from the inside.
+
+Nixon, pointing out that the roof of the cave had settled two or three
+feet since we were there yesterday and that the heat seemed to be
+honeycombing all the lower end of the glacier pretty badly, said that he
+didn't like the idea of taking horses inside, but would do so if it
+would make a better picture that way. He was quite willing to take
+chances if there was any reason for it. But what he did object to was
+trying to take the horses up the middle of the stream over big boulders
+when it would be perfectly plain to any one who saw the picture that
+there was comparatively smooth going on either side. "You can easy break
+a hawss' leg in one of them _geesly_ holes," he complained; "but the
+loss of a hawss isn't a patch to what I'd feel to have some guy that
+I've worked with see the pictur' and think I picked that sluiceway as
+the best way up."
+
+Roos replied with a rush of technical argument in which there was much
+about "continuity" and "back-lighting," and something about using the
+"trick crank so that the action can be speeded up when it's run." Not
+knowing the answer to any of this, Nixon finally shrugged his shoulders
+helplessly and signalled for Jim to bring up the horses. There was no
+need of a "trick crank" to speed up the action in the stream, for that
+glacial torrent, a veritable cascade, had carried away everything in its
+course save boulders four or five feet high. Nixon, in a bit of a
+temper, hit the ditch as though he were riding a steeplechase. So did
+Jim and Gordon. All three of them floundered through without mishap.
+"Grayback" tried to climb up on the tip of a submerged boulder, slipped
+with all four feet at once and went over sidewise. I kicked out my
+stirrups, but hit the water head first, getting considerably rolled and
+more than considerably wet. To Roos' great indignation, this occurred
+just outside the picture, but he had the delicacy not to ask me to do it
+over again.
+
+Taking the horses inside the cave was a distinctly ticklish performance,
+though there could be no question of its effectiveness as a picture.
+Roos set up a hundred feet in from the fifty-feet-wide, twenty-feet-high
+mouth and directed us to ride forward until a broad splashing jet of
+water from the roof blocked our way, and then swing round and beat it
+out. "Beat it out snappy!" he repeated. "Get me?" "Yep, _I_ got you,"
+muttered Nixon; "you're in luck if nothin' else does."
+
+The ice that arched above the entrance looked to me like the salt-eaten
+packing round an ice-cream can as we pushed up and under it. The horses
+could hardly have noticed this, and it must have been their
+instincts--their good sound horse-sense--that warned them that a dark
+hole full of hollow crackings and groanings and the roar of falling
+water was no place for self-respecting equines to venture. It took a
+deal of spurring and swearing to force them inside, and most of the
+linear distance gained was covered in circles on their hind legs. It was
+old "Grayback" whose nerves gave way first; he that started the stampede
+back to light and sunshine. There was no question but what we "beat it
+snappy."
+
+Roos came out rubbing his hands gleefully. "That photographed like a
+million dollars," he cried with enthusiasm. "Now just one thing
+more...." And forthwith he revealed what had been in his heart ever
+since he chanced onto that "natural shower bath" in the cave the
+previous afternoon. No one could deny that it was a natural shower bath.
+And since it _was_ a natural shower bath, what could be more natural
+than for some one to take a shower under it? How would Nixon feel about
+trying it? Or Jim? He admitted that it might be something of a shock,
+but he was willing to make that all right. Would ten dollars be fair? Or
+say twenty? Or why not twenty-five? He knew Mr. Chester didn't reckon
+cost when it was a question of getting a high class, he might say a
+unique, picture. Now which should it be? Nixon, a bit snappily, said his
+rheumatism put him out of the running, and Jim was equally decided.
+Money wouldn't tempt him to go even into the Columbia at Windermere, let
+alone a liquid icicle under a glacier.
+
+And right then and there I did a thing which Roos maintained to the end
+of our partnership repaid him for all the grief and worry I had caused
+him to date, and much that was still to accrue. "Since I've got to take
+a bath and dry these wet togs out sooner or later," I said with a great
+assumption of nonchalance, "perhaps the ice cave will do as well as
+anywhere else. Just promise me you won't spring a flare on the scene,
+and build a fire to dry my clothes by...." Roos was gathering wood for a
+fire before I finished speaking. As for the flares, Harmon had not given
+him any yet. It was only a silhouette he wanted--but that would show up
+like a million dollars in the spray and ice. There never had been such a
+picture; perhaps would never be again. I wasn't joking, was I? And
+primitive....
+
+"Go on and set up," I cut in with. "I'll be there by the time you're
+ready to shoot. And don't ever let me hear you say primitive again. Oh,
+yes--and you needn't remind me to 'Be snappy!' There won't be any
+trouble on that score. Just make sure your lens is fast enough to catch
+the action."
+
+I've had many a plunge overboard off the California coast that shocked
+me more than that "natural shower bath" did, but never a one with so
+exhilarant a reaction. Stripping off my wet clothes by the fire, I
+slipped into my big hooded "lammy" coat and hippity-hopped into the
+cave. Roos, set up ten yards inside the splashing jet from the roof, was
+already standing by to shoot. At his call of "Action!" I jumped out of
+my coat and into the black, unsparkling column of water. There was a
+sharp sting to the impact, but it imparted nothing of the numbing ache
+that accompanies immersion in water a number of degrees less cold than
+this--a feeling which I came later to know only too well on the
+Columbia. Nixon had warned me against tempting Providence again by
+making any unnecessary racket in the cave, but it was no use. No one
+could have the fun that I was having and not holler. It was against
+nature. Whooping like a Comanche, I continued my hydro-terpsichorean
+revel until a muffled "Nuff" from Roos called a halt. He had come to the
+end of his roll. I have been in more of a shiver coming out of the
+Adriatic at the Lido in August than I was when I ambled back to dry off
+by the fire and the sunshine. Glowing with warmth, I even loafed along
+with my dressing, as one does at Waikiki.
+
+"You'd make a fortune pulling the rough stuff in the movies," Roos
+exclaimed, patting me on the back. "You've got everything the real
+gripping cave-man _has_ to have--size, beef, a suggestion of brutal,
+elemental force, primitive...." I chucked a burning brand at him and
+went over to borrow Nixon's glass. A shot from far up the cliffs told
+that Harmon's "goat-hunt" was in full cry. The real thrill of the day
+was about to come off; rather more of a thrill, indeed, than any one was
+prepared for, Harmon included.
+
+[Illustration: MY SHOWER BATH IN AN ICE CAVE]
+
+[Illustration: WARMING UP AFTER MY GLACIAL SHOWER BATH]
+
+[Illustration: ROSS AND HARMON. DRAGON MORAINE IN DISTANCE (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: THE HORSES IN THE MOUTH OF THE ICE CAVE (_below_)]
+
+While we had been filming our "cave stuff" Harmon had finished setting
+the stage for his picture. He had two shots to make--one of his packers
+firing at the goat at the top of the cliff, and the other of the body of
+the goat falling to the glacier. Conrad, the Tyrolean, climbing like a
+fly, had scaled the face of the cliff and was standing by for the signal
+to start the goat "falling." The shot which had attracted my
+attention had been the packer discharging his rifle at the goat, which
+had been propped up in a life-like position, as though peering down onto
+the glacier. Harmon was still cranking when I got him in focus, while
+the packer had jumped to his feet and was executing a _pas seul_
+evidently intended to convey the impression he had made a hit. A curl of
+blue smoke from his rifle was still floating in the air. They had
+contrived that effective little touch by dribbling a bit of melted
+butter down the barrel before firing. Smokeless powder is hardly
+"tell-tale" enough for movie work.
+
+Harmon now moved over and set up at the foot of the cliff, apparently to
+get as near as possible to the point where the goat was going to hit. As
+the sequel proves, he judged his position to a hair. Now he made his
+signal. I saw the flutter of his handkerchief. The goat gave a
+convulsive leap, and then shot straight out over the brink of the cliff.
+From where we stood I could plainly see the useful Conrad "pulling the
+strings," but from where Harmon was set up this would hardly show. He
+was too careful to overlook a point like that in a "nature picture." The
+white body caromed sharply off a couple of projecting ledges, and then,
+gathering momentum, began to describe a great parabola which promised to
+carry it right to the foot of the cliff.
+
+I had kept my eyes glued to the glass from the start, but it was Nixon's
+unaided vision which was first to catch the drift of what was impending.
+"You couldn't drive a six-hawss team 'tween the side o' Mista Ha'mon's
+head and the trail in the air that _geesly_ goat's going to make
+passing by," he said with a calculating drawl. "Not so su' you could
+squeeze a pack-hawss through." Then, a couple of seconds later: "No'
+ev'n a big dawg." And almost immediately: "By Gawd, it's going to get
+him!"
+
+And that surely was what it looked like, to every one at least but the
+calmly cranking Harmon. He went on humping his back above the finder,
+and I could see the even rise and fall of his elbow against the snow.
+The dot of white had become a streak of grey, and it was the swift
+augmentation of this in his finder which finally (as he told me later)
+caused Harmon suddenly to duck. To me it looked as if the flying streak
+had passed right through him, but he was still there at the foot of his
+tripod after the Bolt of Wrath, striking the surface of the glacier with
+a resounding impact, threw up a fountain of pulverized snow and laid
+still. He was never quite sure whether it was the almost solid cushion
+of air or a side-swipe from a hoof or horn that joggled the tripod out
+of true. It was a near squeeze, for the flying body, which must have
+weighed all of two hundred pounds, was frozen hard as a rock. Conrad
+came staggering down with the remnants of the battered trunk over his
+shoulders. Only the heart and liver were fit to eat. The rest was a
+sausage of churned meat and bone splinters. There was no question about
+its fall having limbered it up.
+
+The illumination of the cave by the calcium flares was beautiful beyond
+words to describe, or at least so I was told. The first one was a
+failure, through the outward draught of air carrying the smoke back
+onto the cameras. I had set this off in a side gallery, about a hundred
+yards in from the mouth, with the idea of throwing a sort of concealed
+back light. Foolishly opening my eyes while the calcium was burning, I
+was completely blinded by the intense glare and did not regain my sight
+for several minutes. Harmon's packer, who held the next flare set
+off--this time to the leeward of the cameras--had still worse luck. A
+flake of the sputtering calcium kicked back up his sleeve and inflicted
+a raw, round burn with half the colours of the spectrum showing in its
+concentric rings of singed cuticle. The chap displayed astonishing nerve
+in refusing to relinquish his grip on the handle of the flare and thus
+ruin the picture. I most certainly would never have done so myself. Roos
+described the glittering ice walls as a "veritable Aladdin's Cave of
+jewels," and only regretted that he couldn't have had that lighting on
+my shower-bath.
+
+That night we tried a camp-fire scene by flare. Roos set up on the
+further bank of the side channel of the creek which flowed past the
+tent. Between the door of the tent and the water a hole was dug in such
+a way that light from it would shine on a group in front of the tent but
+not on the lens of the camera. The glow from a flare burning in this
+hole represented the camp-fire. I was supposed to stroll up and tell a
+jovial story to Nixon, Jim and Gordon, who were to be "picked up"
+already seated around the fire. I made my entrance very snappily, but,
+unluckily, the blanket roll upon which I sat down spread out and let me
+back against the corner of the glowing sheet-iron stove, which was set
+up just inside the tent opening. Seeing I had not rolled out of the
+picture, Roos shouted for me to carry on, as it was the last flare. So,
+with the reek of burning wool rising behind me, I did carry on, making
+plausible gestures intended to convey the idea that the bit of comedy
+was just a humorous piece of by-play of my own. I carried on for
+something over half a minute. The only circumstance that prevented my
+carrying on my back the print of the corner of the stove for the rest of
+my days was the fact that the combined thicknesses of my duffle coat,
+lumberman's shirt, sweater and heavy woollen undershirt were interposed
+to absorb the heat. The duffle coat was the worst sufferer, coming out
+with a bar-sinister branded most of the way through its half inch of
+pressed brown wool.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE LAKE OF THE HANGING GLACIERS
+
+
+It was now neck-or-nothing with the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers
+picture. Having already been out much longer than we had expected to be,
+there were left only provisions for two days. Nixon had suggested making
+a hurried trip out and bringing in fresh supplies, but as the time set
+by Chester for his arrival for the Big Bend trip was already past, I did
+not feel warranted in prolonging the present jaunt any further. If the
+morrow was fair all would be well; if not, the main object of our trip
+would be defeated.
+
+By great good luck the clear weather held. There was not a cloud
+hovering above the mountains at daybreak the following morning, and we
+got away for an early start to make the most of our opportunity. Nixon
+himself had run and cut out the trail to the Lake earlier in the summer,
+but horses had never been taken over it. Though it was extremely steep
+in pitches, our maiden passage was marked with few difficulties. Much to
+Nixon's surprise and satisfaction, only one big dead-fall had been thrown
+down to block the way, and our enforced halt here gave Roos the
+opportunity for a very effective "trail shot." He also got some striking
+"back-lighting stuff" at spots along the interminable cascade that was
+tumbling and bounding beside the trail. The elevation of our camp on the
+creek was something like six thousand feet, and that of the Lake of the
+Hanging Glaciers a bit under eight thousand. The trail is between three
+and four miles long, and we were rather over two hours in making the
+climb. There were several halts out of this; steady plugging would do it
+much quicker.
+
+Timber-line was passed half a mile below the lake, the last of the trees
+being left behind in a wonderful little mountain park studded with
+gnarled pines and still bright with late wild flowers. The autumn
+colouring here was a marvellous chromatic revel in dull golds and soft,
+subdued browns--the shedding tamaracks and the dying meadow grasses.
+
+Clambering on foot up a steep-sided hillock that appeared to be an
+ancient glacial moraine augmented by many slides, we suddenly found
+ourselves on the edge of the high-water level of the lake. The
+transition from the flower-strewn meadow to a region of almost Arctic
+frigidity was practically instantaneous--the matter of a half dozen
+steps. One moment we were climbing in a cliff-walled valley, with rocky
+buttresses and pinnacles soaring for thousands of feet on either side,
+and with brown-black gravel and thinning brown-grey bunch grass under
+foot and ahead; the next, as we gained the crest of the old terminal
+moraine, the landscape opened up with a blinding flash and we were
+gazing at a sparkling emerald lake clipped in the embrace of an
+amphitheatre of glaciers and eternal snow, and floating full of icebergs
+and marble-mottled shadows. The "Hanging Glacier"--perhaps a mile wide
+across its face, and rearing a solid wall of ice a couple of hundred
+feet in the sheer--closed the further or southeastern end of the lake.
+Behind the glacier was a cliff of two thousand feet or more in height.
+It appeared to be almost solid ice and snow, but must have been heavily
+underlaid with native rock to maintain its abruptness as it did. Higher
+still a snow-cap, bright and smooth as polished marble, extended to the
+crest of the range and formed a glittering line against the cobalt of
+the sky. Of all the scenic gems of the North American continent, I
+recall none which is so well entitled to the characterization of
+"unique" as this white-flaming little jewel of the high Selkirks.
+
+The lake was now rapidly receding to its winter low-water level, and to
+reach its brink we had to press on across three hundred yards of black
+boulders which were evidently covered in the time of the late spring
+floods. Ordinarily one would have expected the worst kind of rough and
+slippery walking here, but, to my great surprise, the great rocks were
+set as solid and as level as a pavement of mosaic. The reason for this
+became plain when we approached the water, where a flotilla of small
+icebergs, rising and falling to the waves kicked up by the brisk breeze
+drawing down the lake, were steadily thump-thumping the bottom with dull
+heavy blows which could be felt underfoot a hundred yards away. This
+natural tamping, going on incessantly during the months of high-water,
+was responsible for the surprising smoothness of the rocky waste
+uncovered by the winter recession. The great boulders had literally been
+hammered flat.
+
+The icebergs, which were formed by the cracking off of the face of the
+great glacier filled half of the lake. They varied in size from almost
+totally submerged chunks a few feet in diameter to huge floating islands
+of several hundred. They were of the most fantastic shapes, especially
+those which had been longest adrift and therefore most exposed to the
+capricious action of the sun. By and large, the effect was that of a
+Gargantuan bowl sprinkled with puffy white popcorn. But if one took his
+time and searched carefully enough there were very few things of heaven
+or earth that were not represented in the amazing collection. One berg,
+floating on another, had been reduced by the sun to the seeming of a
+gigantic view camera--box, bellows and lens. A number of famous groups
+of statuary were there, but of course very much in the rough. "The
+Thinker" was perhaps the best of these, but even Rodin would have wanted
+to do a bit more "finishing" on the glacial cave-man humped up on his
+icy green pedestal. Roos, who had never heard of Rodin, said it reminded
+him of me drying out after my shower-bath in the ice-cave. His facile
+imagination also discovered something else. He had once seen a picture
+of "Lohengrin's Farewell" in a Victrola record price-list, and there was
+a much sun-licked hunk of ice, very near the shore, which suggested the
+barge to him, swans and all. I saw the barge all right, but the Pegasus
+of my imagination had to have some spurring before he would take the
+"swan" hurdle.
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff
+
+LOOKING ACROSS THE LAKE OF THE HANGING GLACIERS]
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff
+
+THE LAKE OF THE HANGING GLACIERS, TAKEN FROM THE ICE WALLS, LOOKING
+NORTH]
+
+It was Roos' idea that I should swim off, clamber over the side of the
+barge, lassoo the "near" swan with a piece of pack-rope to represent
+reins, and let him shoot me as "Lohengrin." It wouldn't exactly run
+into the "continuity" of the "sportsman" picture, he admitted; but he
+thought that Chester might use it, with a lot of other odds and ends,
+under some such title as "Queer People in Queer Places." The idea
+appealed to me strongly. "Lohengrin's Farewell" had always moved me
+strangely; and here was a chance actually to appear in the classic role!
+"You bet I'll do it," I assented readily. "What shall I wear?" The
+"Shining Armour," which we both seemed to connect with "Lohengrin,"
+happened to be one of the things not brought up in our saddle-bags that
+morning. We were in a hot discussion as to the best manner of
+improvising a helmet and cuirass out of condensed milk and sardine tins,
+when Nixon, asking if we knew that the sun only shone about three hours
+a day in that "_geesly_ crack in the hills," dryly opined that we should
+take our pictures of the lake while there was plenty of light. That
+sounded sensible, and we started feverishly to hurry through with the
+routine grind so as to be free to do proper justice to "Lohengrin." As
+Fate would have it, however, that which was presently revealed to me of
+the ways of fresh-water icebergs quenched effectually my desire to swim
+off and take liberties with the capricious things at close quarters.
+
+After making a number of scenic shots, Roos announced that he was ready
+to go ahead with the "falling iceberg" stuff. As it was quite out of the
+question making our way along the base of the cliffs on either side of
+the lake to the face of the glacier in the limited time at our disposal,
+and, moreover, as we had already demonstrated the impossibility of
+making artificial icebergs with "sixty per" dynamite, it became
+necessary to improvise something closer at hand. It was Roos' idea that
+a piece of cliff cracked off into the lake might produce the effect
+desired, especially if "cut" with discrimination. "Here's the way it
+goes," he explained. "The cracked off rock plunks down into the lake
+right into the middle of a bunch of floating icebergs. I starts cranking
+at the splash, and with the bergs all rolling about and bumping into
+each other no one can tell but what it was one of them that really
+started it. Then I'll pick you up hopping up and down on the bank and
+registering 'surprise' and 'consternation'; and then follow with a
+close-up of you standing on that high rock, looking down on the quieting
+waves with folded arms. Now you register 'relief' and finally a sort of
+'awed wonder.' Then you take a big breath and raise your eyes to the
+face of the glacier. You keep right on registering 'awed wonder' (only
+more intense) and as I fade you out you shake your head slowly as if the
+mighty mysteries of Nature were beyond your understanding. Get me? They
+ought to colour the film for that dark blue in the laboratory (I could
+tell 'em just the solution to make that ice look cold), and the
+sub-title ought to be 'The Birth of an Iceberg,' and...."
+
+"Jim's the midwife, is he?" I cut in. "Yes, I get you. Tell him to
+uncork some of that 'sixty per' 'Twilight Sleep' of his and I'll stand
+by for the christening."
+
+After a careful technical examination of the terrain, Jim, chief "Powder
+Monkey," located what he thought was a favourable spot for operations
+and started to enlarge a thin crack in the cliff to make it take five
+sticks of dynamite. That was more than half of our remaining stock; but
+Roos was insisting on a big iceberg, and plenty of powder was the best
+way to insure success. It must have been the tamping that was at the
+bottom of the trouble, for moss and damp earth are hardly solid enough
+to deflect the kick of the dynamite in the desired direction. At any
+rate, although there was a roaring detonation, the mighty force released
+was expended outward rather than inward. The face of the cliff hardly
+shivered, and only an inconsiderable trickle of broken rocks and sand
+slid down into the lake. Too sore to take more than hostile notice of
+Nixon's somewhat rough and ready little _mot_ about the "'Birth o' the
+Iceberg' turning out a _geesly_ miscarriage," Roos clapped the cap over
+his lens, unscrewed the crank and began taking his camera off its
+tripod. That rather hasty action was responsible for his missing by a
+hair what I am certain was the greatest opportunity ever presented to a
+moving picture operator to film one of the most stupendous of Nature's
+manifestations.
+
+The roar of the detonating dynamite reverberated for half a minute or
+more among the cliffs and peaks, and it was just after the last roll had
+died out that a renewed rumble caused me to direct a searching gaze to
+the great wall of ice and snow that towered above the farther end of the
+lake. For an instant I could not believe my eyes. It could not be
+possible that the whole mountainside was toppling over! And yet that was
+decidedly the effect at a first glance. From the rim of the snow-cap
+down to the back of the glacier--a mile wide and two thousand feet
+high--there was one solid, unbroken Niagara of glittering, coruscant ice
+and snow. Like a curtain strung with diamonds and pearls and opals it
+streamed, while the shower of flaming colours was reflected in the
+quivering waters of the lake in fluttering scarves of sun-shot scarlet,
+in tenuous ribbons of lavender, jade and primrose. It was only when the
+last shreds of this marvellous banner had ceased to stream (at the end
+of thirty or forty seconds perhaps) that I saw what it was that had
+caused it. The whole hair-poised brink of the great snow-cap--sharply
+jolted, doubtless, by the explosion of the dynamite--had cracked away
+and precipitated itself to the glacier level, nearly half a mile below.
+The shock to the latter appeared to have had the effect of jarring it
+sufficiently to crack down great blocks all along its face. The glacier
+had, in fact, been shocked into giving birth to a whole litter of real
+icebergs where, nearer at hand, we had failed dismally in our efforts to
+incubate even an artificial one. As glacial obstetricians it appeared
+that we still had much to learn.
+
+Roos made a great effort to get his camera set up again in time to make
+it record something of the wonderful spectacle. He was just too late,
+however. Only a few thin trickles of snow were streaking the face of the
+cliff when he finally swung his powerful tele-photo lens upon it, and
+even these had ceased before he had found his focus. It was no end of a
+pity. I saw several of the great _valangas_ started by the Austrian and
+Italian artillery in the Dolomites, and, previous to that, what I had
+thought were very considerable slides on Aconcagua and Chimborazi, in
+the Andes, and on Kinchinjunga and among the hanging ice-fields above
+the Zoji-la in the Himalayas. But any half dozen of the greatest of
+these would have been lost in that mighty avalanche of ice and snow that
+we saw descend above the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers. Nixon, with a
+lifetime spent in the Selkirks and Rockies, said he had never seen
+anything to compare with it.
+
+Jim, reporting that he still had three sticks of dynamite in hand, said
+he reckoned there might be a better chance of starting an "iceberg" on
+the southern side of the lake than on the northern one, where we had
+failed to accomplish anything. The southern slope was even more
+precipitous than the northern, he pointed out, and he had his eye on a
+rock which looked as if a charge might turn it over and start it
+rolling. "You never can tell what you may be startin' among a bunch o'
+tiltin' rocks like them 'uns," he said hopefully. Nixon's muttered "That
+ain't no _geesly_ hooch dream" might have meant several things; but I
+took it that he intended to imply that there was too much "unstable
+equilibrium" along that southern shore to make it the sort of a place
+that a neurasthenic would seek out for a rest cure. I felt the same way
+about it, only more so; but Roos' disappointment over what he had
+already missed was so keen that neither of us had the heart to interpose
+any objections when he told Jim to go ahead and see what he could do. As
+two sticks of dynamite were already promised to Harmon, the trick, if it
+came off, would have to be pulled with one. Spitting tobacco juice on
+the taffy-like cylinder for luck, Jim clambered off up the cliff and
+planted it under his "likely rock," Roos meantime setting up in a
+favourable position below.
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff
+
+THE FACE OF THE HANGING GLACIER]
+
+[Illustration: Courtesy of Byron Harmon, Banff
+
+WHERE MY PARTY FOREGATHERED WITH HARMON'S ON THE SHORE OF THE LAKE OF
+THE HANGING GLACIER]
+
+Whether Jim's "tobaccanalian libation" had anything to do with it or
+not, this time luck was with us. The sharp blast kicked Jim's rock up on
+one ear, where it teetered for a second or two indecisively before
+rolling over sidewise and coming down kerplump on a huge twenty-ton cube
+of basalt that no one would have thought of moving with a barrel of
+giant. It wasn't so much what the little rock did as the way it did it.
+The big block gave a sort of a quiver, much as a man awakening from a
+doze would stretch his arms and yawn, and when it quivered a lot of
+loose stuff slipped away from beneath and just let it go. It lumbered
+along at an easy roll for a bit, and then increased its speed and
+started jumping. Its first jump was no more than a nervous little hop
+that served to hurdle it clear of a length of flat ledge that reached
+out to stop its downward progress. A second later it had hit its stride,
+so that when it struck the water there had been nothing but rarefied air
+trying to stop it for two hundred feet. Down it went, pushing a column
+of compressed _aqua pura_ ahead of it and sucking a big black hole along
+in its wake. It was when that column of compressed water spouted up
+again and tried to chase its tail down the hole it had come out of that
+things began to happen, for it found something like a dozen fat icebergs
+crowding in and trying to insinuate their translucent bulks into the
+same opening. And of course they made a tremendous fuss about it. When
+an iceberg found that it couldn't get in standing up, it forthwith
+lay down on its side, or even rolled over on its back; which didn't help
+it in the least after all, for the very good reason that all the other
+icebergs were adopting the same tactics. And so Roos, who was cranking
+steadily all the time, got his "Birth of an Iceberg" picture after all.
+
+When the bergs ceased butting their heads off against each other Roos
+shot me in the scenes where I registered "consternation," "relief" and
+"awed wonder," and our hard-striven-for Lake of the Hanging Glaciers
+picture was complete. There was just a bit of a hitch at the "awed
+wonder" fade-out, though, but that was Roos' fault in trying to
+introduce a "human touch" by trying to make Gordon's dog perch up beside
+me on the crest of a hatchet-edged rock. The pup sat quietly wagging his
+tail until the moment came for me to lift up mine eyes unto the hills
+and increase the tenseness of my "awed wonder" registration. Then the
+altitude began to affect his nerves and he started doing figure "8's"
+back and forth between my precariously planted feet. As a natural
+consequence, when Roos started in on his "fade-out" I was seesawing my
+arms wildly to maintain my balance, talking volubly, and
+registering--well, what would a temperamental movie star be registering
+while in the act of telling a dog and a man what he thought of them for
+their joint responsibility in all but pitching him off a
+twenty-foot-high rock into a vortex of tumbling icebergs? Again (unless
+this part of the film has been discreetly cut in the studio before
+exhibition) I beg the indulgence of lip-readers.
+
+The lake was deeply shadowed before we were finally at liberty to take
+up again the sartorics of "Lohengrin"; but it was not that fact, nor yet
+the not entirely prohibitive difficulty of making shining armour out of
+tin cans, that nipped that classic conception in the bud. Rather it was
+the astonishing unstable-mindedness displayed by the bergs when impinged
+upon from without. Of the hundred or more hunks of floating ice within a
+five-hundred-yard radius of the point where our artificial berg had hit
+the water, only a half dozen or so of the broadest and flattest
+continued to expose the same profiles they had presented before the big
+splash. Most of the others had turned over and over repeatedly, and one,
+which seemed to "hang" in almost perfect balance, continued slowly
+revolving like a patent churn. "Lohengrin's Barge," half a mile distant
+from the heart of the "birth splash" and lapped by but the lightest of
+expiring waves, was rolling drunkenly to port and starboard as though in
+the trough of the seas of a typhoon. It looked ready to turn turtle at a
+touch, and there were too many angular projections on it--especially
+about the "swans"--to make even a man who aspired to grand opera care to
+court lightly the experience of tangling himself up in the wreck.
+
+Descending to the timber-line meadow where the horses had been left, we
+found Harmon had brought up his outfit and pitched his tent midway of an
+enchanting vista framed in green-black pines and golden tamaracks, and
+with a wonderful background for "camp shots" both up and down the
+valley. There he was going to make his base, he said, until he found
+just the light he wanted on the Lake of the Hanging Glaciers. Then he
+hoped to get at least a negative or two that would do something
+approaching justice to so inspiring a subject. And there, working and
+waiting patiently through an almost unbroken succession of storms that
+raged in the high Selkirks for many days, he held on until he got what
+he wanted. It was in that quiet persistent way that he had been
+photographing the mountains of the Canadian West for many years, and it
+will be in that way that he will continue until he shall have attained
+somewhere near to the high goal he has set for his life's work--a
+complete photographic record of the Rockies and Selkirks. It is a
+privilege to have met an artist who works with so fine a spirit, who has
+set himself so high an ideal. A number of Harmon's scenic pictures of
+the mountains where the Columbia takes its rise are so much better than
+the best of my own of the same subjects, that I am giving them place in
+a work which it was my original intention to illustrate entirely myself.
+
+We returned to our camp at the head of Horse Thief Creek that night, and
+set out on our return to Windermere the following morning. Save for a
+rather sloppy passage of the main ford, the journey was without
+incident. With light packs, we pushed right through to the head of the
+wagon-road--something over thirty miles--the first day. The seventeen
+miles to Invermere we covered in a leisurely fashion, reaching the hotel
+at three in the afternoon of the following day, Sunday, the twentieth of
+September. Here I found a wire from Chester, stating that it had
+finally proved impossible for him to get away from business, and asking
+me to go ahead and see the Big Bend trip through without him. In the
+event I decided to continue on down the river he would be glad to have
+his cameraman accompany me as long as the weather and light were
+favourable for his work. A letter with full instructions covering the
+two pictures he desired made had already been dispatched.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+CANAL FLATS TO BEAVERMOUTH
+
+
+Chester's instructions respecting the two new pictures he wanted us to
+work on came through to Roos the day following our return to Windermere.
+One of these was to be confined entirely to the Big Bend voyage.
+Essaying again my role of "gentleman-cum-sportsman," I was to get off
+the train at Beavermouth, meet my boatman, launch the boat and start off
+down the river. The various things seen and done _en voyage_ were to
+make up the picture.
+
+In the other picture I was to play the part of a young rancher who was
+farming his hard-won clearing on the banks of the Columbia near its
+source. With the last of his crops in, he is assailed one day with a
+great longing to see the ocean. Suddenly it occurs to him that the river
+flowing right by his door runs all the way to the sea, and the sight of
+a prospector friend, about to push off with a sack of samples for the
+smelter many hundreds of miles below, suggests a means of making the
+journey. And so the two of them start off down the Columbia. What
+happened to them on their way was to be told in the picture. The
+introductory scenes of this picture were to be made somewhere in the
+vicinity of Windermere, but the thread of the story was to be picked up
+below the Arrow Lakes after the Big Bend voyage was over.
+
+Hunting "location" and rainy weather kept us four or five days in
+Windermere and vicinity, giving an opportunity we otherwise would have
+missed to meet and become acquainted with the always kindly and
+hospitable and often highly distinguished people of this beautiful and
+interesting community. From the time of David Thompson, the great
+astronomer and explorer of the Northwest Company who wintered there in
+1810, down to the present Windermere seems always to have attracted the
+right sort of people. The predominant class is what one might call the
+gentleman-farmer, with the stress perhaps on "gentleman." I mean to say,
+that is, that while a number of them have failed of outstanding
+achievement as farmers, there was none that I met who would not have
+qualified as a gentleman, and in the very best sense of the word.
+Sportsmen and lovers of the out-of-doors, there was this fine bond of
+fellowship between all of them. Nowhere have I encountered a fresher,
+more wholesome social atmosphere than that of this fine community of the
+upper Columbia.
+
+That genial and big-hearted old Scot, Randolph Bruce, I recall with
+especial affection, as must every one of the many who has known the
+hospitality of his great log lodge on a bay of the lake below Invermere.
+An Edinburgh engineer, Bruce was one of the builders of the Canadian
+Pacific, and as such an associate and intimate of Van Horne,
+O'Shaughnessy and the rest of those sturdy pioneers who pushed to
+accomplishment the most notable piece of railway construction the world
+has ever known. In love with the West by the time the railway was
+finished, he built him a home in the most beautiful spot he knew--such
+a spot as few even among the Scottish lochs could rival--and associated
+himself with various projects for the advancement of the country. At the
+present time he is the owner of the Paradise mine, one of the richest
+silver-lead properties in British Columbia, and the head of an
+enterprise which purposes to bring the Windermere region to its own
+among the grandest of the playgrounds of North America.
+
+We made the preliminary scenes for the "farmer" picture at a gem of a
+little mountain ranch in a clearing to the west of Lake Windermere.
+Shooting through one of his favourite "sylvan frames," Roos picked me up
+violently shocking hay at the end of a long narrow field which the
+labour of a young Scotch immigrant had reclaimed from the encompassing
+forest. (As a matter of fact the hay was already in shocks when we
+arrived, and I had to unshock a few shocks so as to shock them up again
+before the camera and thus give the impression that this was the last of
+my season's crop.) Then I threw up a couple of shocks for him set up at
+closer range, with more attention to "technique." (This latter came easy
+for me, as I had been pitching hay for a fortnight on my California
+ranch earlier in the summer.) Finally I stopped work, leaned on my fork
+and gazed into the distance with visioning eyes. (I was supposed to be
+thinking of the sea, Roos explained, and in the finished picture there
+would be a "cut-in" of breakers at this point.) Then I registered
+"impatience" and "restlessness," hardening to "firm resolve." At this
+juncture I threw down my fork and strode purposefully out of the right
+side of the picture. (The cabin to which I was supposed to be striding
+was really on my left, but Roos explained that some sort of a movie
+Median law made it imperative always to exit to right.) Then we went
+over to make the cabin shots.
+
+[Illustration: OLD HUDSON BAY CART AT BEAVERMOUTH (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: MY FIRST PUSH-OFF AT THE HEAD OF CANOE NAVIGATION ON THE
+COLUMBIA (_below_)]
+
+[Illustration: OPENING SCENE OF THE "FARMER" PICTURE]
+
+[Illustration: OLD STERN WHEELERS AT GOLDEN (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: A QUIET STRETCH OF THE COLUMBIA NEAR GOLDEN (_below_)]
+
+The owner of the cabin was away at the moment, but his young Scotch
+wife--a bonnie bit of a lass who might have been the inspiration for
+"Annie Laurie"--was on hand and mightily interested. She asked if I was
+Bill Hart, and Roos made the tactical error of guffawing, as though the
+idea was absurd. She was a good deal disappointed at that, but still
+very ready to help with anything calculated to immortalize her wee home
+by emblazoning it on the imperishable celluloid. First I strode into the
+cabin, but almost immediately to emerge unfolding a map. Going over to a
+convenient stump, I sat down and disposed of a considerable footage of
+"intent study." Then we made a close-up of the map--the Pacific
+Northwest--with my index finger starting at Windermere and tracing the
+course of the Columbia on its long winding way to the sea. That proved
+that there was water transit all the way to that previous cut-in of
+breakers which my visioning eyes had conjured up just before I threw
+down my fork. I stood up and gazed at the nearby river (which was really
+Lake Windermere, a mile distant), and presently stiffened to my full
+height, registering "discovery." What I was supposed to see was a
+prospector tinkering with his boat. As this latter scene could not be
+made until we had bought a boat and signed up a "prospector," all that
+was left to do here was to shoot me striding away from the cabin on the
+way to discuss ways and means with my mythical companion, and then
+striding back, getting my roll of blankets and exiting in a final
+fade-out. As we had neglected to provide a roll of blankets for this
+shot, we had to improvise one from such material as was available. I
+forget all that went to make up that fearful and wonderful package; but
+it is just as well the precariously-roped bundle didn't resolve into its
+component parts until the fade-out was pretty nearly complete.
+
+Roos tried hard to introduce "human interest" and "heart appeal" by
+staging a farewell scene with "wife and child," both of which were ready
+to hand. I was adamant, however, even when he agreed to compromise by
+leaving out the child. He was rather stubborn about it, refusing to
+admit the validity of my argument to the effect that a would-be screen
+hero who deserted so fair a wife would alienate the sympathies of the
+crowd at the outset. Finally it was decided for us. "It's too late noo,"
+cooed a wee voice in which I thought I detected both reproach and
+relief; "while ye're talkin', yon cooms Jock."
+
+It _was_ too late all right; even Roos was ready to grant that. Jock was
+about six-feet-three, and built in proportion. Also a wee bitty dour, I
+thought. At least he glowered redly under his bushy brows when he
+discovered that I had wrapped up his own and another _nicht-goon_ in my
+hastily assembled blanket-roll. If that bothered him, I hate to think
+what might have happened had he surprised that farewell scene,
+especially as Roos--with his Mack Sennett training and D. W. Griffith
+ideals--would have tried to stage it.
+
+Roos was young and inexperienced, and lacking in both finesse and
+subtlety. I granted that this wouldn't have cramped his style much in
+doing "old home town stuff;" but farther afield it was electric with
+dangerous possibilities. Driving back to the hotel I quoted to him what
+Kipling's hero in "The Man Who Would Be King" said on the subject,
+paraphrasing it slightly so he would understand. "A man has no business
+shooting farewell scenes with borrowed brides in foreign parts be he
+three times a crowned movie director," was the way I put it.
+
+It was my original intention to start the boating part of my Columbia
+trip from Golden, at the head of the Big Bend, the point at which the
+calm open reaches of the upper river give way to really swift water. The
+decision to make the push-off from Beavermouth, twenty-nine miles
+farther down, was come to merely because it was much easier to get the
+boat into the water at the latter point. There was little swift-water
+boating worthy of the name above Beavermouth. Donald Canyon was about
+the only rough water, and even that, I was assured, was not to be
+mentioned in the same breath with scores of rapids farther down the
+Bend. In the ninety miles between the foot of Lake Windermere and Golden
+there were but twenty-five feet of fall, so that the winding river was
+hardly more than a series of lagoon-like reaches, with a current of from
+one to four miles an hour. Between Columbia Lake--practically the head
+of the main channel of the river--and Mud Lake, and between the latter
+and the head of Lake Windermere, there was a stream of fairly swift
+current, but at this time of year not carrying enough water to permit
+the passage of even a canoe without much lining and portaging.
+
+From the practical aspect, therefore, I was quite content with the plan
+to start my voyage from Beavermouth. For the sake of sentiment, however,
+I _did_ want to make some kind of a push-off from the very highest point
+that offered sufficient water to float a boat at the end of September.
+This, I was assured in Invermere, would be Canal Flats, just above the
+head of Columbia Lake and immediately below the abandoned locks which at
+one time made navigation possible between the Kootenay and the Columbia.
+Although these crude log-built locks have never been restored since they
+were damaged by a great freshet in the nineties, and although the
+traffic they passed in the few years of their operation was almost
+negligible, it may be of interest to give a brief description of the
+remarkable terrain that made their construction possible by the simplest
+of engineering work, and to tell how the removal of a few shovelfuls of
+earth effected the practical insulation of the whole great range of the
+Selkirks.
+
+As a consequence of recent geological study, it has been definitely
+established that the divide between the Columbia and Kootenay rivers,
+now at Canal Flats, was originally a hundred and fifty miles farther
+north, or approximately where Donald Canyon occurs. That is to say, a
+great wall of rock at the latter point backed up a long, narrow lake
+between the Rockies on the east and the Selkirks on the west. This lake,
+unable to find outlet to the north, had risen until its waters were
+sufficiently above the lower southern barriers to give it drainage in
+that direction. At that time it was doubtless the main source of the
+Kootenay River, and its waters did not reach the Columbia until after a
+long and devious southerly course into what is now Montana, thence
+northward into Kootenay Lake, and finally, by a dizzy westerly plunge,
+into a much-extended Arrow Lake. An upheaval which carried away the dyke
+at Donald provided a northward drainage for the lake, and the divide was
+ultimately established at what is now called Canal Flats. It was a
+shifting and precarious division, however, for the Kootenay--which rises
+some distance to the northward in the Rockies and is here a sizable
+stream--discharged a considerable overflow to the Columbia basin at high
+water. It was this latter fact which called attention to the comparative
+ease with which navigation could be established between the two rivers
+by means of a canal. For an account of how this canal came to be built I
+am indebted to E. M. Sandilands, Esq., Mining Recorder for the British
+Columbia Government at Wilmer, who has the distinction of being, to use
+his own language, "the person who made the Selkirk Mts. an Island by
+connecting the Columbia and Kootenay rivers."
+
+Mr. Sandilands, in a recent letter, tells how an ex-big-game hunter by
+the name of Baillie-Grohman obtained, in 1886, a concession from the
+Provincial Government of British Columbia for 35,000 acres of land along
+the Kootenay River. In return for this he was to construct at his own
+expense a canal connecting the Columbia and Kootenay. This cut was for
+the ostensible purpose of opening up navigation between the two streams,
+but as nothing was stipulated in respect of dredging approaches the
+obligation of the concessionaire was limited to the construction of the
+canal and locks. "For this reason," writes Mr. Sandilands, who was
+working on the job at the time, "our 'Grand Canal' was practically
+useless. Nevertheless, in 1888, it was opened with due form and pomp,
+engineer, contractor and concessionaire paddling up to the lock in a
+canoe well laden with the 'good cheer' demanded by such an occasion. I
+was driving a team attached to a 'slush-scraper,' and together with a
+jovial Irish spirit who rejoiced in the name of Thomas Haggerty, was
+ordered by the foreman to scrape out the false dam holding the Kootenay
+back from the canal. This we did as long as we dared. Then I was
+deputed, with gum-boots and shovel, to dig a hole through what was left
+of the false dam, and allow the Kootenay into the canal and the
+Columbia. This being done, the fact was wired to the Provincial
+Government at Victoria ..., and the promised concession of land was
+asked for and granted. I little thought at the time," Mr. Sandilands
+concludes, "how distinguished a part I was playing, that I was making
+the Selkirk Mountains an 'Island,' a fact which few people realize to
+this day."
+
+Later a little dredging was done, so that finally, by dint of much
+"capstaning," a shallow-draught stern-wheeler was worked up to and
+through the lock and canal, and on down the Kootenay to Jennings,
+Montana. It was Captain F. P. Armstrong who performed this remarkable
+feat, only to lose the historic little craft later in one of the
+treacherous canyons of the Kootenay. His also was the distinction, after
+maintaining an intermittent service between the Columbia and Kootenay
+for a number of years, of being the captain and owner of the last boat
+to make that amazing passage.
+
+We reached Canal Flats at the end of a forty-mile auto-ride from
+Invermere. Traces of the old dredged channel were still visible running
+up from the head of Columbia Lake and coming to an abrupt end against a
+caving wall of logs which must at one time have been a gate of the
+inter-river lock. Out of the tangle of maiden hair fern which draped the
+rotting logs came a clear trickle of water, seeping through from the
+other side of the divide. This was what was popularly called the source
+of the Columbia. I could just manage to scoop the river dry with a quick
+sweep of my cupped palm.
+
+A hundred yards below the source the old channel opened out into a quiet
+currentless pool, and here I found a half-filled Peterboro belonging to
+a neighbouring farmer, which I had engaged for the first leg of my
+voyage down the Columbia. It leaked rather faster than I could bail, but
+even at that it floated as long as there was water to float it. Fifty
+yards farther down a broad mudbank blocked the channel all the way
+across, and in attempting to drag the old canoe out for the portage, I
+pulled it in two amidships. I had made my start from almost
+chock-a-block against the source, however. Sentiment was satisfied. I
+was now ready for the Bend. Groping my way back to the car through an
+almost impenetrable pall of mosquitoes, I rejoined Roos and we returned
+to Invermere.
+
+A wire from Blackmore stating that it would still be several days before
+his boat was ready for the Bend offered us a chance to make the journey
+to Golden by river if we so desired. There was nothing in it on the
+boating side, but Roos thought there might be a chance for some
+effective scenic shots. I, also, was rather inclined to favour the trip,
+for the chance it would give of hardening up my hands and pulling
+muscles before tackling the Bend. An unpropitious coincidence in the
+matter of an Indian name defeated the plan. Roos and I were trying out
+on Lake Windermere a sweet little skiff which Randolph Bruce had kindly
+volunteered to let us have for the quiet run down to Golden. "By hard
+pulling," I said, "we ought just about to make Spillimacheen at the end
+of the first day." "Spill a what?" ejaculated Roos anxiously; "you
+didn't say 'machine,' did you?" "Yes; Spillimacheen," I replied. "It's
+the name of a river that flows down to the Columbia from the Selkirks."
+"Then that settles it for me," he said decisively. "I don't want to
+spill my machine. It cost fifteen hundred dollars. I'm not
+superstitious; but, just the same, starting out for a place with a name
+like that is too much like asking for trouble to suit yours truly." And
+so we went down to Golden by train and put in the extra time outfitting
+for the Bend.
+
+Golden, superbly situated where the Kicking Horse comes tumbling down to
+join the Columbia, is a typical Western mining and lumbering town. Save
+for their penchant for dramatizing the perils of the Big Bend, the
+people are delightful. It is true that the hospitable spirit of one
+Goldenite _did_ get me in rather bad; but perhaps the fault was more
+mine than his. Meeting him on the railway platform just as he was about
+to leave for Vancouver, he spoke with great enthusiasm of his garden,
+and said that he feared some of his fine strawberries might be going to
+waste in his absence for lack of some one to eat them. I gulped with
+eagerness at that, and then told him bluntly--and truthfully--that I
+would willingly steal to get strawberries and cream, provided, of
+course, that they couldn't be acquired in some more conventional way. He
+hastened to reassure me, saying that it wouldn't be necessary to go
+outside the law in this case. "The first chance you get," he said with a
+twinkle in his eye, "just slip over and make love to my housekeeper, and
+tell her I said to give you your fill of berries and cream, and I have
+no doubt she'll provide for you."
+
+If his Vancouver-bound train had not started to pull out just then,
+perhaps he would have explained that that accursed "love stuff" formula
+was a figure of speech. Or perhaps he felt sure that I would understand
+it that way, if not at once, at least when the time came. And I would
+have, ordinarily. But my strawberry-and-cream appetite is so
+overpowering that, like the lions at feeding time, my finer
+psychological instincts are blunted where satiation is in sight. That
+was why I blurted out my hospitable friend's directions almost verbatim
+when I saw that the door of his home (to which I had rushed at my first
+opportunity) had been opened by a female. It was only after I had
+spoken that I saw that she was lean, angular, gimlet-eyed, and had
+hatred of all malekind indelibly stamped upon her dour visage. She drew
+in her breath whistlingly; then controlled herself with an effort. "I
+suppose I must give you the berries and cream," she said slowly and
+deliberately, the clearly enunciated words falling icily like the drip
+from the glacial grottoes at the head of the Columbia; "but the--the
+other matter you would find a little difficult."
+
+"Ye-es, ma'am," I quavered shiveringly, "I would. If you'll please send
+the strawberries and cream to the hotel I am quite content to have it a
+cash transaction."
+
+Considering the way that rapier-thrust punctured me through and through,
+I felt that I deserved no little credit for sticking to my guns in the
+matter of the strawberries and cream. For the rest, I was floored. The
+next time any one tries to send me into the Hesperides after free fruit
+I am going to know who is guarding the apples; and I am _not_ going to
+approach the delectable garden by the love-path.
+
+I had taken especial pains to warn Roos what he would have to expect
+from Golden in the matter of warnings about the Big Bend, but in spite
+of all, that garrulous social centre, the town pool-room, did manage to
+slip one rather good one over on him before we got away. "How long does
+it take to go round the Bend?" he had asked of a circle of trappers and
+lumber-jacks who were busily engaged in their favourite winter
+indoor-sport of decorating the pool-room stove with a frieze of tobacco
+juice. "Figger it fer yerself, sonny," replied a corpulent woodsman
+with a bandaged jaw. "If yer gets inter yer boat an' lets it go in that
+ten-twent'-thirt' mile current, it's a simpl' problum of 'rithmatick. If
+yer ain't dished in a souse-hole, yer _has_ ter make Revelstoke insider
+one day. As yer has ter do sum linin' to keep right side up, it's sum
+slower. Best time any of us makes it in is two days. But we never rushes
+it even like that 'nless we're hurryin' the cor'ner down ter sit on sum
+drownded body."
+
+As the whole court had nodded solemn acquiescence to this, and as none
+had cracked anything remotely resembling a smile, Roos was considerably
+impressed--not to say depressed. (So had I been the first time I heard
+that coroner yarn.) Nor did he find great comfort in the hotel
+proprietor's really well-meant attempt at reassurance. "Don't let that
+story bother you, my boy," the genial McConnell had said; "they _never_
+did take the coroner round the Big Bend. Fact is, there _never_ was a
+coroner here that had the guts to tackle it!"
+
+We met Blackmore at Beavermouth the afternoon of the twenty-eighth of
+September. He reported that his boat had been shipped from Revelstoke by
+that morning's way freight, and should arrive the following day. As I
+had been unable to engage a boatman in Golden, and as Blackmore had
+found only one in Revelstoke to suit him, it was decided to give me an
+oar and a pike-pole and make out the best we could without another man.
+I had brought provisions for a fortnight with me from Golden, and
+Blackmore had tents and canvases. Through the efforts of influential
+friends in Golden I had also been able to secure two bottles of prime
+Demerara rum. Knowing that I was going to pick up at least one cask of
+Scotch on the way, and perhaps two or three, I had not been very keen
+about bothering with the rum. But on the assurance that it might well be
+two or three days before any whisky was found, and that getting wet in
+the Columbia without something to restore the circulation was as good as
+suicide, I allowed myself to be persuaded. It was wonderful
+stuff--thirty per cent. over-proof; which means that it could be diluted
+with four parts of water and still retain enough potency to make an
+ordinary man blink if he tried to bolt it. We did find one man--but he
+was not ordinary by any means; far from it. I will tell about "Wild
+Bill" in the proper place.
+
+There was a wonderful _aurora borealis_ that night--quite the finest
+display of the kind I recall ever having seen in either the northern or
+southern hemispheres. Blackmore--weather-wise from long
+experience--regarded the marvellous display of lambently licking light
+streamers with mixed feelings. "Yes, it's a fine show," he said,
+following the opalescent glimmer of the fluttering pennants with a
+dubious eye; "but I'm afraid we'll have to pay through the nose for it.
+It means that in a couple of days more the rain will be streaming down
+as fast as those lights are streaming up. Just about the time we get
+well into Surprise Rapids there will be about as much water in the air
+as in the river. However, it won't matter much," he concluded
+philosophically, "for we'll be soaked anyway, whether we're running or
+lining, and rain water's ten degrees warmer than river water."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+I. RUNNING THE BEND
+
+_Through Surprise Rapids_
+
+
+We pushed off from Beavermouth at three o'clock of the afternoon of
+September twenty-ninth. We had hoped for an early start, but the
+erratically running local freight, six or eight hours behind time, did
+not arrive with our boat until noon. The introductory shots had already
+been made. Made up momentarily as a gentleman--wearing an ankle length
+polished waterproof and a clean cap, that is,--I jumped the westbound
+Limited as it slowed down on entering the yard, dropping off presently
+at the platform with a "here-I-am" expression when Roos signalled that
+the focus was right. Then I shook hands with the waiting Blackmore, and
+together we strode to the door of the station and met the
+previously-rehearsed agent. (Roos had wanted me to shake hands with the
+agent as well as with Blackmore, but I overruled him by pointing out
+that I was a "gentleman-sportsman" not a "gentleman-politician," and
+served notice on him that pump-handling must henceforth be reduced to a
+minimum.) We tried to perfect the agent in a sweeping gesture that would
+say as plainly as words "The train with your boat is just around that
+next bend, sir," but somehow we couldn't prevent his trying to elevate
+his lowly part. His lips mumbled the words we had put on them all
+right, but the gesture was a grandiose thing such as a Chesterfieldian
+footman might have employed in announcing "My Lord, the carriage waits."
+
+Roos, in all innocence, narrowly missed provoking a fight with a
+hot-tempered half-breed while he was setting up to shoot the incoming
+freight. He had an ingenious method of determining, without bending over
+his finder, just what his lens was going to "pick-up." This consisted of
+holding his arms at full length, with his thumbs placed tip to tip and
+the forefingers standing straight up. The right-angling digits then
+framed for his eye an approximation of his picture. To one not used to
+it this esoteric performance looked distinctly queer, especially if he
+chanced to be standing somewhere near the arch priest's line of vision.
+And that, as it happened, was exactly the place from which it was
+revealed to the choleric near-Shuswap section hand. I didn't need the
+breed's subsequent contrite explanation to know that, from where he had
+been standing, those twiddling thumbs and fingers, through the great
+fore-shortening of the arms, looked to be right on the end of the nose
+of the grimacing little man by the camera. Not even a self-respecting
+white man would have stood for what that twiddling connoted, let alone a
+man in whose veins flowed blood that must have been something like
+fifteen-sixteenths of the proudest of Canadian strains. Luckily, both
+Blackmore and his burly boatman were men of action. Even so, it was a
+near squeeze for both camera and cameraman. Roos emerged unscarred in
+anything but temperament. And, of course, as every one even on the
+fringes of the movies knows, the temperaments of both stars and
+directors are things that require frequent harrowing to keep them in
+good working order.
+
+Roos' filming of the unloading of the boat was the best thing he did on
+the trip. Every available man in Beavermouth was requisitioned. This
+must have been something like twenty-five or thirty. A half dozen, with
+skids and rollers, could have taken the boat off without exerting
+themselves seriously, but could hardly have "made it snappy." And action
+was what the scene demanded. There was no time for a rehearsal. The
+agent simply told us where the car would be shunted to, Blackmore
+figured out the best line from there over the embankment and through the
+woods to the river, and Roos undertook to keep up with the procession
+with his camera. Blackmore was to superintend the technical operation
+and I was ordered to see that the men "acted natural." And thus we went
+to it. The big boat, which must have weighed close to half a ton, came
+off its flat car like a paper shallop, but the resounding thwack with
+which her bows hit a switch-frog awakened Blackmore's concern. "Easy!
+Easy! Don't bust her bottom," he began shouting; while I, on the other
+side, took up my refrain of "Don't look at the camera!--make it snappy."
+The consequence of these diametrically opposed orders was that the dozen
+or more men on my side did most of the work. But even so it was
+"snappy"--very.
+
+Down the embankment we rushed like a speeding centipede, straight at the
+fine hog-proof wire fence of the C. P. R. right-of-way. That fence may
+have been hog-proof, but it was certainly not proof against the charge
+of a thirty-foot boat coming down a fifty per cent. grade pushed by
+twenty-five men. We had intended lifting over it, but our momentum was
+too great, especially after I had failed to desist from shouting "Make
+it snappy!" soon enough. The barrier gave way in two or three places, so
+that we were shedding trailing lengths of wire all the way to the river.
+On through the woods we juggernauted, Roos following in full cry. His
+city "news stuff" training was standing him in good stead, and he showed
+no less cleverness than agility in making successive "set-ups" without
+staying our progress. Only in the last fifty yards, where the going over
+the moss and pine needles was (comparatively speaking) lightning fast,
+did we distance him. Here, as there was plenty of time, he cut a hole in
+the trees and shot the launching through one of his favourite "sylvan
+frames." For the push-off shot he provided his customary heart throb by
+bringing down the station agent's three-year-old infant to wave
+farewell. That he didn't try to feature the mother prominently seemed to
+indicate that what I had said at Windermere on the subject had had some
+effect.
+
+After the "farewell" had been filmed, we landed at the fire ranger's
+cabin to pick up Roos and his camera. The ranger told us that a couple
+of trappers who had been for some weeks engaged in portaging their
+winter supplies round Surprise Rapids would be waiting for us at the
+head of the first fall in the expectation of getting the job of packing
+our stuff down to the foot. "Nothing doing," Blackmore replied
+decisively; "going straight through." The ranger grinned and shook his
+grizzled head. "You're the man to do it," he said; "but jest the same,
+I'm glad it's you and not me that has the job."
+
+The station agent came down with Roos, evidently with the cheering
+purpose of showing us the place where his predecessor and a couple of
+other men had been drowned in attempting to cross the river some months
+previously. "Only man in the boat to be picked up alive was a one-armed
+chap," he concluded impressively. "Too late now for operations on any of
+this crew," laughed Blackmore, pushing off with a pike-pole. "Besides,
+every man jack of us is going to have a two-arm job all the way." To the
+parting cheers of the mackinawed mob on the bank, he eased out into the
+current and headed her down the Bend.
+
+[Illustration: ARRIVAL OF OUR BOAT AT BEAVERMOUTH (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: OUR FIRST CAMP AT BEAVERMOUTH (_centre_)]
+
+[Illustration: THE REMAINS OF A SUNKEN FOREST (_below_)]
+
+[Illustration: TRAPPER'S CABIN WHERE WE FOUND SHELTER FOR THE NIGHT
+(_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: WHERE WE LANDED ABOVE SURPRISE RAPIDS (_centre_)]
+
+[Illustration: WHERE WE TIED UP AT "EIGHT MILE" (_below_)]
+
+Roos stationed himself in the bow, with camera set up on its shortened
+tripod, waiting to surprise any scenery caught lurking along the way.
+Blackmore steered from the stern with his seven-feet-long birch paddle.
+Andy Kitson and I, pulling starboard and port oars respectively, rubbed
+shoulders on the broad 'midship's thwart. Our outfit--a comparatively
+light load for so large a boat--was stowed pretty well aft. I saw
+Blackmore lean out to "con ship" as we got under way. "Good trim," he
+pronounced finally, with an approving nod. "Just load enough to steady
+her, and yet leave plenty of freeboard for the sloppy water. This ought
+to be a dryer run than some the old girl's had." I chuckled to myself
+over that "dryer." I hadn't told Blackmore yet what was hidden down
+Canoe River way. I had promised Captain Armstrong not to do so until I
+had ascertained that we had a teetotal crew--or one comparatively so.
+
+Andy Kitson was a big husky North-of-Irelander, who had spent twenty
+years trapping, packing, hunting, lumbering and boating in western
+Canada. Like the best of his kind, he was deliberate and sparing of
+speech most of the time, but with a fine reserve vocabulary for
+emergency use. He was careful and cautious, as all good river boatmen
+should be, but decidedly "all there" in a pinch. He pulled a good
+round-armed thumping stroke with his big oar, and took to the water (as
+has to be done so frequently on a bad stretch of "lining down") like a
+beaver. Best of all, he had a temper which nothing from a leak in the
+tent dribbling down his neck to a half hour up to his waist in ice-cold
+water seemed equal to ruffling. I liked Andy the moment I set eyes on
+his shining red gill, and I liked him better and better every day I
+worked and camped with him.
+
+As it was three-thirty when we finally pushed off, Blackmore announced
+that he would not try to make farther than "Eight-Mile" that afternoon.
+With comparatively good water all the way to the head of Surprise
+Rapids, we could have run right on through, he said; but that would
+force us to make camp after dark, and he disliked doing that unless he
+had to. In a current varying from three to eight miles an hour, we slid
+along down stream between banks golden-gay with the turning leaves of
+poplar, cottonwood and birch, the bright colours of which were
+strikingly accentuated by the sombre background of thick-growing
+spruce, hemlock, balsam and fir. Yellow, in a score of shades, was the
+prevailing colour, but here and there was a splash of glowing crimson
+from a patch of _chin-chinick_ or Indian tobacco, or a mass of dull
+maroon where a wild rose clambered over the thicket. Closely confined
+between the Rockies to the right and the Selkirks to the west, the river
+held undeviatingly to its general northwesterly course, with only the
+patchiest of flats on either side. And this was the openest part of the
+Bend, Blackmore volunteered; from the head of Surprise Rapids to the
+foot of Priest Rapids the Columbia was so steeply walled that we would
+not find room for a clearing large enough to support a single cow. "It's
+a dismal hole, and no mistake," he said.
+
+We took about an hour to run to "Eight Mile," Andy and I pulling
+steadily all the way in the deep, smoothly-running current. We tied up
+in a quiet lagoon opening out to the west--evidently the mouth of a
+high-water channel. There was a magnificent stand of fir and spruce on a
+low bench running back from the river, not of great size on account of
+growing so thickly, but amazing lofty and straight. We camped in the
+shelter of the timber without pitching a tent, Andy and Blackmore
+sleeping in the open and Roos and I in a tumble-down trapper's cabin. Or
+rather we spread our blankets in the infernal hole. As the place was
+both damp and rat-infested, we did not sleep. Roos spent the night
+chopping wood and feeding the rust-eaten--and therefore
+smoky--sheet-iron stove. I divided my time between growling at Roos for
+enticing me into keeping him company in the cabin against Blackmore's
+advice, and throwing things at the prowling rodents. It did not make for
+increased cheerfulness when I hit him on the ear with a hob-nailed boot
+that I had intended for a pair of eyes gleaming vitreously on a line
+about six inches back of his gloomily bowed head. He argued--and with
+some reason I must admit--that I had no call to draw so fine a bead
+until I was surer of my aim. Largely as a point of repartee, I told him
+not to be too certain I was not sure of my aim. But I really had been
+trying to hit the rat....
+
+I took the temperature of the air and the river water in the morning,
+finding the former to register thirty-eight degrees and the latter
+forty-one. There was a heavy mist resting on the river for a couple of
+hours after daybreak, but it was lifting by the time we were ready to
+push off. In running swift water good visibility is even more imperative
+than at sea, but as there was nothing immediately ahead to bother
+Blackmore did not wait for it to clear completely. The sun was shining
+brightly by nine-thirty, and Roos made several shots from the boat and
+one or two from the bank. One of the most remarkable sights unfolded to
+us was that of "Snag Town." Just what was responsible for this queer
+maze of upended trees it would be hard to say. It seems probable,
+however, that a series of heavy spring floods undermined a considerable
+flat at the bend of the river, carrying away the earth and leaving the
+trees still partially rooted. The broadening of the channel must have
+slowed down the current a good deal, and it appears never to have been
+strong enough to scour out below the tenaciously clinging roots. The
+former lords of the forest are all dead, of course, but still they keep
+their places, inclining down-stream perhaps twenty-degrees from their
+former proud perpendicular, and firmly anchored. It takes careful
+steering to thread the maze even in a small boat, but the current is
+hardly fast enough to make a collision of serious moment.
+
+The current quickened for a while beyond "Snag Town" and then began
+slowing again, the river broadening and deepening meanwhile. I thought I
+read the signs aright and asked Blackmore. "Yes," he replied with a
+confirmatory nod; "it's the river backing up for its big jump. Stop
+pulling a minute and you can probably hear the rapid growling even
+here." Andy and I lay on our oars and listened. There it was surely
+enough, deep and distant but unmistakable--the old familiar drum-roll of
+a big river beating for the charge. It was tremendous music--heavy,
+air-quivering, earth-shaking; more the diapason of a great cataract than
+an ordinary rapid, it seemed to me. I was right. Surprise is anything
+but an ordinary rapid.
+
+We pulled for a half hour or more down a broad stretch of slackening
+water that was more like a lake than a river. Out of the looming shadows
+of the banks for a space, mountain heights that had been cut off leaped
+boldly into view, and to left and right lifted a lofty sky-line notched
+with snowy peaks rising from corrugated fields of bottle-green glacier
+ice. Mt. Sanford, loftiest of the Selkirks, closed the end of the bosky
+perspective of Gold Creek, and the coldly chiselled pyramids of Lyell,
+Bryce and Columbia pricked out the high points on the Continental
+Divide of the Rockies. We held the vivid double panorama--or quadruple,
+really, for both ranges were reflected in the quiet water--for as long
+as it took us to pull to a beach at the narrowing lower end of the long
+lake-like stretch above the rapids, finally to lose it as suddenly as it
+had been opened to us behind the imminently-rearing river walls.
+
+The two trappers of whom the fire-ranger at Beavermouth had spoken were
+waiting for us on the bank. They had permits for trapping on a couple of
+the creeks below Kinbasket Lake, and were getting down early in order to
+lay out their lines by the time the season opened a month or so hence.
+They had been packing their stuff over the three-mile portage to the
+foot of the rapids during the last three weeks, and now, with nothing
+left to go but their canoes, were free to give us a hand if we wanted
+them. Blackmore replied that he could save time and labour by running
+and lining the rapids. "Besides," he added with a grin, "I take it these
+movie people have come out to get pictures of a river trip, not an
+overland journey." The trappers took the dig in good part, but one of
+them riposted neatly. Since he was out for furs, he said, and was not
+taking pictures or boot-legging, time was not much of an object. The
+main thing with him was to reach his destination with his winter's
+outfit. If all the river was like Surprise Rapids he would be quite
+content to go overland all the way. Neither of them made any comments on
+the stage of the water or offered any suggestions in connection with the
+job we had ahead. That was one comfort of travelling with Blackmore. In
+all matters pertaining to river work his judgment appeared to be beyond
+criticism. If he was tackling a stunt with a considerable element of
+risk in it, that was his own business. No one else knew the dangers, and
+how to avoid them, so well as he.
+
+Blackmore looked to the trim of the boat carefully before shoving off,
+putting her down a bit more by the stern it seemed to me. He cautioned
+me on only one point as we pulled across the quarter of mile to where
+the banks ran close together and the quiet water ended. "Don't never dip
+deep in the white water, and 'specially in the swirls," he said,
+stressing each word. "If you do, a whirlpool is more'n likely to carry
+your oar-blade under the boat and tear out half the side 'fore you can
+clear your oar-lock. That's the way that patched gunnel next you came to
+get smashed." As we were about at the point where it is well to confine
+all the talking done in the boat to one man, I refrained from replying
+that I had been told the same thing in a dozen or so languages, on four
+different continents, and by "skippers" with black, yellow and copper as
+well as white skins, at fairly frequent intervals during the last
+fifteen years. There were enough slips I might make, but that of dipping
+deep in rough water was hardly likely to be one of them.
+
+The rumble of the rapid grew heavier as we proceeded, but only a single
+flickering white "eyelash" revealed the imminent ambush lurking beyond
+the black rocks. The current accelerated rapidly as the walls closed in,
+but ran easily, effortlessly, unripplingly, and with an almost uncanny
+absence of swirls and eddies. "Have plenty way on her 'fore she hits
+the suds," cautioned Blackmore, and Andy and I grunted in unison as we
+leaned a few more pounds of beef onto our bending spruces. That started
+our inside elbows to bumping, but without a word each of us sidled along
+an inch or two toward his gunwale to get well set while yet there was
+time.
+
+With an easy bob--quick like a rowboat rides the bow wave of a steamer,
+but smoother, easier in its lift--we ran into the head of the rapid.
+There was a swift V-shaped chute of smooth jade-green water; then we
+slapped right into the "suds." High-headed waves slammed against the
+bows and threw spray all over the boat and far astern of it. But they
+lacked jolt. They had too much froth and not enough green water to make
+them really formidable. We were in rough but not really bad water. I
+tried to grin at Blackmore to show him I understood the situation and
+was enjoying it highly; but his eyes, pin-points of concentration under
+bent brows, were directed over my head and far in advance. Plainly, he
+was thinking as well as looking well ahead.
+
+Reassured by the smart way we were slashing through that first riffle, I
+ventured to steal a look over my shoulder. In the immediate foreground
+Roos, with his waterproof buttoned close around his neck, was shaking
+the spray out of his hair and watching for a chance to snap with his
+kodak. Ahead there was perhaps another hundred yards of about the same
+sort of water as that in which we were running; then a yeasty welter of
+white where the river disappeared round a black cliff into what seemed a
+narrow gorge. Opposite the cliff the river wall sloped slightly and was
+thickly covered with a dense growth of evergreen. The heavy roar we had
+been hearing for hours was still muffled. Evidently the main disturbance
+was somewhere beyond the bend at the cliff.
+
+The thunder of falling water grew louder as we headed down toward the
+white smother in the embrasure of the bend, and it was from Blackmore's
+lips rather than from any words I heard that I gathered that he was
+calling for "More way!" Still keeping fairly good stroke, Andy and I
+quickly had her going enough faster than the current to give the big
+paddle all the steerage "grip" Blackmore could ask for. Swinging her
+sharply to the right, he headed her past the out-reaching rock claws at
+the foot of the cliff, and, with a sudden blaze of light and an
+ear-shattering rush of sound we were into the first and worst fall of
+Surprise Rapids.
+
+That dual onslaught of light and sound had something of the paralyzing
+suddenness of that which occurs when a furnace door is thrown wide and
+eye and ear are assailed at the same instant with the glare and the roar
+from within. One moment we were running in a shadowed gorge with a heavy
+but deadened and apparently distant rumble sounding somewhere ahead; the
+next we were in the heart of a roar that fairly scoured our ear-drums,
+and blinking in a fluttering white light that seemed to sear the
+eyeballs. The one hurried glance that I threw behind me as I began
+floundering on the end of my kicking oar photographed an intensely vivid
+picture on my memory.
+
+What had been merely a swiftly-flowing river with a streak of silver
+riffles down the middle had changed to a tumultuous tumble of cascades
+that gleamed in solid white from bank to bank like the churned snow of a
+freshly descended avalanche. There was no green water whatever; not even
+a streak that was tinged with green. All that relieved the coruscating,
+sun-silvered tumble of whiteness were the black tips of jutting
+bedrock, sticking up through the foam they had churned. The deeply
+shadowed western wall, hanging above the river like a dusky pall, served
+only to accentuate by contrast the intense white light that danced above
+the cascade. It was as though the golden yellow had been filtered out of
+the sunlight in the depths, and only the pure blue-white of calcium
+reflected back into the atmosphere.
+
+Heavy as was the fall of the river over the stretch we had now entered,
+I could just make out a point perhaps a half mile farther down where it
+dropped out of sight entirely. That, I told myself, must be the place
+where there was an unbroken reef of bedrock all the way across the
+stream, and where there was an abrupt drop of eight or ten feet. A great
+throbbing rumble cutting into the slightly higher-keyed roar that
+already engulfed us also seemed to indicate that the steepest pitch had
+not yet been reached. I had, of course, seen worse water than this, but
+certainly had never (as appeared to be the case now) been irretrievably
+committed to running it. I had heard that it was quite unrunnable in any
+kind of a boat, it certainly looked unrunnable, and I seemed to have the
+impression that Blackmore had said he was not intending to run it. Yet
+here we were into it, and without (so far as I could see) anything to do
+but drive ahead. However, that was Blackmore's affair....
+
+The rather smart team-work which Andy and I had maintained for a while
+dissolved like the morning mists as we banged in among the walloping
+rollers at the head of the real cascade. Both of us were in
+difficulties, but his round-armed thumping stroke seemed rather more
+true to form than the shattered remnants of my fine straight-armed
+slide-and-recover, with its dainty surface-skimming "feather." Nothing
+but the sharpest of dabs with the tip of an oar can get any hold in a
+current of fifteen to twenty miles an hour, and the short, wristy pull
+(which is all there is time for) doesn't impart a lot of impulse to a
+thirty-foot boat. That, and the staggering buffets on the bows, for it
+was solid, lumpy water that was coming over us now, quickly reduced our
+headway. (Headway _through_ the current, I mean; our headway floating
+_in_ the current was terrific.) This was, of course, a serious handicap
+to Blackmore, as it deprived him of much of the steerage-way upon which
+he was dependent for quick handling of the boat. The difficulty of
+maintaining steerage-way in rough water with oars makes a bow as well as
+a stern paddle very desirable in running bad rapids. The bow paddler can
+keep a very sharp lookout for rocks immediately ahead, and, in a pinch,
+can jerk the boat bodily to one side or the other, where oarsmen have to
+_swing_ it. However, Blackmore knew just what he was going up against,
+and had made the best disposition possible of his available crew.
+
+I was too busy keeping myself from being bucked off the thwart by my
+floundering oar to steal more than that first hurried look over my
+shoulder. It was not my concern what was ahead anyway. All I had to do
+was to take a slap at the top of a wave every time I saw a chance, and
+be ready to back, or throw my weight into a heavy stroke, when Blackmore
+needed help to turn her this way or that. My signal--a jerk of the
+steersman's head to the left--came sooner than I expected. It looked a
+sheer impossibility to drive through the maze of rocks to the bank, yet
+that--after a long, anxious look ahead--was evidently what he had
+decided to attempt. As it was my oar he called on, I knew it was the
+right or east bank, a sharply sloping reach of black bedrock littered
+with water-scoured boulders.
+
+By the way Blackmore was leaning onto his paddle I knew that he needed
+all the pull I could give him to bring her round. Swinging back hard, I
+threw every pound I had onto my oar. For an instant the lack of
+resistance as the blade tore through foam nearly sent me reeling
+backwards; then it bit into solid water, and, under impulse of oar and
+paddle, the boat pivoted through more than half a quadrant and shot
+straight for the bank. Right in where the black rock tips were scattered
+like the raisins in a pudding he headed her. There was no room to use
+the oars now, but she still carried more than enough way to send her to
+the bank. Or rather, it would have carried her through if the course
+had been clear. Missing two or three rocks by inches, she rasped half
+her length along another, and onto a fourth--lurking submerged by a
+foot--she jammed full tilt. It was her port bow that struck, and from
+the crash it seemed impossible that she could have escaped holing. Andy
+went over the side so suddenly that, until I saw him balancing on a rock
+and trying to keep the boat from backing off into the current, I thought
+he had been thrown overboard by the impact. Thumping her bow with his
+boot, he reported her leaking slightly but not much damaged. Then,
+swinging her round into an eddy, he jumped off into the waist-deep water
+and led her unresistingly up against the bank. It was astonishing to see
+so wild a creature so suddenly become tame.
+
+We would have to "line down" from here to the foot of the first fall,
+Blackmore said. While Roos was setting up his camera the veteran
+explained that he could have run four or five hundred yards farther
+down, right to the brink of the "tip off," but that he preferred getting
+in out of the wet where he had a good landing. I agreed with him
+heartily--without putting it in words. But if that was his idea of a
+"good landing place," I hoped he would continue to avoid bad ones.
+
+The basic principles of "lining down" are the same on all rivers. Where
+water is too rough to run, it is the last resort before portaging. As
+generally practised, one man, walking along the bank, lets the boat down
+with a line, while another--or as many others as are available--keeps it
+off the rocks with poles. "Lining" can be effected more rapidly and with
+much less effort if one man remains in the boat and fends off with his
+pole from there. This is much the better method where the fall is not
+too great and the water comparatively warm. On the upper Columbia, where
+the breaking away of a boat from a line means its almost inevitable loss
+with all on board, it is resorted to only when absolutely necessary, and
+when a man of great experience is handling the line. It takes a natural
+aptitude and years of experience for a man to master all the intricacies
+of "lining." I shall not endeavour to enumerate even the few that I am
+familiar with; but the one thing beyond all others to avoid is letting
+the bow of the boat swing outwards when the stern is held up by a rock.
+This brings the full current of the river against its up-stream side,
+exerting a force that a dozen men could not hold against, let alone one
+or two. As Blackmore was noted for his mastery of the "lining" game,
+however, we had no apprehension of trouble in this department.
+
+Nothing of the outfit save the moving picture camera was removed from
+the boat at this juncture. Coiling his line--something over a hundred
+feet of half-inch Manila hemp--over his left arm, Blackmore signalled
+Andy to shove off. Paying out the line through his right hand, he let
+the eddy carry the boat out into the drag of the current. Armed with
+long pike-poles, Andy and I ran on ahead to keep it clear of the banks
+as it swung in. This was easy enough as long as we had only the bank to
+contend with. But almost immediately the trouble which makes Surprise
+Rapids one of the nastiest stretches on any river in the world to line
+began to develop. This came from the submerged rocks which crop up all
+along between the banks and the deeper water of mid-channel.
+
+Pulling her up and releasing her with a hand that reminded me of that of
+a consummate natural horseman, Blackmore nursed the boat along and
+managed to avoid most of these obstructions. But every now and then she
+would wedge between a close-set pair of boulders and resist the force of
+the current to drive her on. At such times it was up to Andy and me to
+wade in and try to dislodge her with our poles. Failing this, we had to
+wade out still farther and lift her through. Andy always took the lead
+in this lifting business, claiming that it required a lot of experience
+to know just the instant to stop shoving at the boat as she began to
+move, and start bracing against the current to keep from getting carried
+away. I have no doubt he was right. In any event he would never let me
+come out until he had tugged and hauled for several minutes trying to
+budge her alone, and even then--notwithstanding his four or five inches
+less of height--he always took his station in the deepest hole. Two or
+three times, shaking himself like a Newfoundland, he came out wet to the
+armpits with the icy water. As the sun was beating hotly upon the rocks,
+however, neither of us felt the cold much that afternoon. A few days
+later it was another story.
+
+We made something like eight or nine hundred yards before we
+stopped--right to the head of the roaring chute that ran down to the
+sheer drop-off. Roos--always at his best when there was plenty of
+unpremeditated action going on, so that "directorial" worries sat
+lightly on him--followed us closely all the way. It was hard enough
+keeping one's footing on those ice-slippery boulders at all; how he
+managed it with something like a hundred pounds of camera and tripod
+over his shoulder and a bulky case in one hand is more than I can
+figure. But he did it, keeping close enough so that he got just about
+everything without having to ask us to do it over again. This latter was
+a good deal of a comfort, especially in those waist-deep-in-the-Columbia
+lifting stunts. I had always hated "lining down," even in the tropics,
+and I already saw that what we had ahead wasn't going to modify my
+feelings for the better.
+
+At the head of that rough-and-tumble cascade leading to the fall,
+Blackmore decided that we would have to unload the boat completely
+before trying to let her down. It was always bad business there at the
+best, he said, and the present stage of water made the rocks quite a bit
+worse than when either higher or lower. If we hustled, there ought to be
+time to get through before dark, and then a half mile run would take us
+to a good camping place near the head of the second fall. Here Roos
+intervened to point out that the sun was already behind the western
+wall, and asking if it wouldn't be possible to camp where we were. He
+wanted to keep the "continuity" of this particular piece of "lining"
+unbroken, and would need good light to finish it in. Blackmore said he
+could manage the camp if we thought our ear-drums would stand the roar.
+
+So we unloaded the boat, and Blackmore leading her into the quietest
+pool he could find, moored her for the night. As there was a couple of
+feet of "lop" even there, this was rather a nice operation. With lines
+to stern and bow, and held off from the rocks on either side by lashed
+pike-poles, she looked for all the world like some fractious horse that
+had been secured to prevent its banging itself up against the sides of
+its stall. It was a beastly job, carrying the fifteen or twenty heavy
+parcels of the outfit a hundred yards over those huge polished boulders
+to the bit of sand-bar where camp was to be pitched. My old
+ankles--endlessly sprained during my football days--protested every step
+of my several round trips, and I congratulated myself that I had had the
+foresight to bring leather braces to stiffen them. Reeking with
+perspiration after I had thrown down my last load, I decided to use the
+river for a bath that I would have to take anyway on shifting from my
+wet clothes. The half-glacial water was not a lot above freezing, of
+course; but that is of small moment when one has plenty of animal heat
+stored up to react against it. My worst difficulty was from the
+bumpiness of my rocky bathing pool, which also had a rather troublesome
+undercurrent pulling out toward the racing chute of the main channel.
+Blackmore, pop-eyed with astonishment, came down to watch the show. It
+was the first time he had ever seen a man take a voluntary bath in
+Surprise Rapids, he said. And all the others--the involuntary
+bathers--they had picked up later in Kinbasket Lake.
+
+That was about the most restricted space I can recall ever having camped
+in. The great boulders of the high-water channel extended right up to
+the foot of the mountain wall and neither the one nor the other afforded
+enough level space to set a doll's house. A four-by-six patch of sand
+was the most extensive area that seemed to offer, and, doubling this in
+size by cutting away a rotting spruce stump and a section of fallen
+birch, there was just enough room for the little shed-tent. It was a
+snug and comfortable camp, though, and highly picturesque, perched as it
+was almost in the spray of the cascade. The noise was the worst thing,
+and we would have had to stay there even longer than we did to become
+quite used to it. All of us were shouting in each other's ears for days
+afterwards, and even trying to converse in signs in the idyllic quietude
+of Kinbasket Lake.
+
+The storm which Blackmore's seer-like vision had descried in the
+blue-green auroral flutters of a couple of nights previously arrived
+quite on schedule. Although the western sky had glowed for half an hour
+after sunset with that supposedly optimistic tinge of primrose and
+terra-cotta, it was pouring before midnight, and the next morning there
+was truly almost as much water in the air as in the river. Pictures were
+out of the question, so there was nothing to do but hang on until the
+weather cleared. Leaving Roos whittling and Andy struggling to divert a
+swelling young river that was trying to sluice away the sand on which
+the tent was pitched, Blackmore and I pulled on our waterproofs and
+clambered a mile through the woods to a camp of C. P. R. engineers.
+Blackmore wanted to get an extra axe; I to get some further data on the
+fall of the river. We found a crude cable-ferry thrown across just below
+the foot of the big fall, and a rough, boggy path from the eastern end
+of it took us to the camp of three or four comfortable cabins.
+
+The Canadian Pacific, I learned--both on account of the high and
+increasing cost of its oil fuel and because of the trouble experienced
+in clearing their tunnels from smoke--was contemplating the
+electrification of all of its mountain divisions. There were numerous
+high falls along the line where power could be economically developed,
+but it was not considered desirable that the scenic beauty of these
+should be marred by diversion. Besides the Columbia, in a hundred miles
+of the Big Bend, offered the opportunity for developing more
+hydro-electric energy than all the west of Canada could use in the next
+twenty years. The Surprise Rapids project alone would provide far more
+power than the Canadian Pacific could use for traction, and it was
+expected that there would be a large surplus for municipal and
+industrial uses along the line. "All this, of course," the engineer at
+the camp explained, "in the event the company decides to go ahead with
+the development. Raising the money will probably be the greatest
+difficulty, and in the present state of the financial market it is hard
+to see how much can be done for two or three years. In the meantime we
+are measuring the flow of the river every day, and will have accurate
+data to go by when the time for construction comes."
+
+I learned that the total length of Surprise Rapids was three and a third
+miles, in which distance there was a fall of nearly one hundred feet.
+The greatest drop was in that stretch which we were waiting to "line,"
+where there was a fall of twenty-one feet in seven hundred and fifty. At
+the second cascade there was a fall of fifteen feet in twelve hundred,
+and at the third, twenty-five feet in twenty-five hundred. It was
+planned to build the dam across the very narrow canyon near the foot of
+the lower fall, making it of such a height that a lake would be backed
+up as far as Beavermouth, incidentally, of course, wiping out the whole
+of Surprise Rapids. "They can't wipe it out any too soon to suit me,"
+Blackmore commented on hearing this. "It'd have saved me a lot of work
+and many a wetting if they'd wiped it out twenty year ago. And that's
+saying nothing of the men drownded there. It was that big whirlpool down
+through the trees there that did for Walter Steinhoff."
+
+We had left the camp now and were picking our way down the narrow trail
+to the foot of the second fall. I had been waiting to hear Blackmore
+speak of Steinhoff for two reasons: first, because I was curious to know
+how much truth there was in those dramatic versions of his death I had
+heard in Golden, and also because the subject would lead up naturally to
+that of the buried whisky. This latter was rather too delicate a matter
+to broach offhand, and I had therefore been carefully watching for a
+favourable opening. Now that it had come, I was quick to take advantage
+of it.
+
+"Tell me about Steinhoff," I said. "He was on some kind of a
+boot-legging stunt, wasn't he?" I was just a bit diffident about
+bringing up that drink-running business, for although I had been told
+that Blackmore was a smooth hand at the game himself, I had a sort of
+sneaking idea that it was the kind of a thing a man ought to be
+sensitive about, like having had smallpox or a sister in the movies. I
+need not have worried, however. "You bet he was boot-legging," Blackmore
+replied; "and so was I. Both outfits heading for _Tete Jaune Cache_ on
+the Grand Trunk, and racing to get there first. That was what got him
+into trouble--trying to catch up with me after I had passed him by
+running and lining the first fall (the one we are doing the same way
+now) while he had portaged. I reckon it was his first intention to
+portage all the way to the foot of the second fall, but when he saw me
+slip by in the water he put in his canoes at the foot of the first fall
+and came after me."
+
+We had come out above the river now, and I saw a savage stretch of
+foam-white water falling in a roaring cascade to a mighty whirlpool that
+filled all of the bottom of the steeply-walled amphitheatre formed by a
+right-angling bend of the Columbia. Thirty feet or more above the
+present level of the whirlpool were the marks of its swirling scour at
+mid-summer high-water. Awesome enough now (and it was not any the less
+so to me since we still had to take the boat through it), I could see at
+once that, with the power of the floods driving it round and round at
+turbine speed, it must indeed be a veritable thing of terror. It was
+into this whirlpool, as well as others at Revelstoke Canyon and Death
+Rapids, that whole uprooted pines were said to be sucked in flood-time,
+to reappear only as battered logs many miles below. There seemed hardly
+enough water there at the present to make this possible; but the story
+was at least credible to me now, which was more than it had been
+previously.
+
+"So this is your 'All Day Sucker,'" I remarked carelessly, in a studied
+attempt to keep Blackmore from noting how greatly the savage maelstrom
+had impressed me. Seeing through the bluff, he grinned indulgently and
+resumed his story of Steinhoff as soon as we had moved far enough round
+the whirlpool to make his voice comfortably heard above the roar of the
+cascade. A line had parted--sawed through in working round a rocky point
+a few hundred yards above--and Steinhoff's big Peterboro was swept out
+into the current. Striking a rock, it turned over and threw him into the
+water. He made a brave effort to swim out, keeping his head above water
+most of the way down the cascade. The whirlpool had been too much for
+him, however. He was fighting hard to keep up when he was carried into
+the vortex and sucked under. Blackmore took no stock in the story of the
+dramatic gesture of farewell. "A man don't pull that grand opry stuff
+with the cold of the Columbia biting into his spine," was the way he put
+it.
+
+Then I told him about the whisky--spoke to him as a son to his father.
+And he, meeting me point for point in all seriousness of spirit,
+answered as father to son. He thought there was little chance of finding
+anything along the river. He had not done so himself for a number of
+years--and he hadn't been overlooking any bets, either. There was, of
+course, still much good stuff buried in the drift below Middle River,
+but it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack trying to find
+it. But the cache above Canoe River--ah, that was another matter!
+Captain Armstrong could be absolutely depended upon in a matter of that
+kind, and the directions sounded right as rain. Yes, he quite understood
+that I should want to take it all to California with me. He would want
+to do the same thing if he were in my place. It would be easy as picking
+pippins getting it over the line. He could tell me three different ways,
+all of them dead sure. He would not think of taking any of it for
+himself. The rum we had would be ample for the trip, except in extreme
+emergency. That "thirty over-proof" went a long way. And I need not
+worry in the least about Andy. He wasn't a teetotaler exactly, but he
+never took too much under any provocation. Yes, I could depend upon the
+both of them to nose out that stuff at the old ferry. Put it there! We
+looked each other square in the eye, and shook hands solemnly there
+above the big whirlpool which was originally responsible for the good
+fortune that had come to us--or rather to me. Men have clasped hands and
+sworn to stand by each other in lesser things. At least that was the way
+it seemed to me at the moment. I could have embraced the fine old
+woodsman for his loyalty and generosity of spirit. I always called him
+Bob after that.
+
+The rain thinned down and became a light Scotch mist as we picked our
+way back to camp. That struck me as being a good omen--it's being
+"Scotch," I mean. Later it cleared up entirely, and there was a glorious
+fairweather sunset of glowing saffron and flaming poppy red. To the
+northwest--Canoe River-ward--there poured a wonderful light of pale
+liquescent amber. I had never seen such a light on land or sea, I told
+myself; or anywhere else, for that matter--except when holding a glass
+of Scotch up against the sun. That was another good omen. Funny thing,
+but I can still recall the date offhand, so indelibly had the promise of
+that day impressed itself on my mind. It was the first of October.
+
+Although it snowed an inch or two during the night, the following
+morning fulfilled the promise of the sunset by breaking bright and
+cloudless. We were to line the boat down empty for a couple of hundred
+yards, and then load up again and line about an equal distance of
+slightly better water. This would take us to the brink of the abrupt
+fall, where both outfit and boat had to be portaged over the rocks for a
+short distance. That would leave us clear for the short, swift run to
+the head of the second fall.
+
+Cutting himself a "sylvan frame" through the pines on a point a hundred
+yards below the camp, Roos set up to shoot the first piece of lining. It
+was a mean looking job, for the river was tumbling in a half-cataract
+all the way, turning and squirming like a wounded dragon. I could see
+Blackmore was a bit worried over it, and, as the sequel proved, with
+good reason. I never quite understood his explanation of the cause of
+what happened, but I believe he claimed it was due to his obeying
+(against his better judgment) Roos' signal to keep the boat in fairly
+close to the bank so that she would not pass "out of the
+picture"--beyond the range of his lens, that is. At any rate, the boat
+had hardly started before she swung broadside to the current and,
+clapping like a limpet upon a big round boulder, hung there immovable.
+Heeled till her starboard side showed like the belly of a sharply
+sheering shark, her port gunwale dipped deep into the swirling current.
+In a wink she had taken all the water she would hold with the half-heel
+that was on her--enough, perhaps, to fill her half full when on an even
+keel.
+
+It was a case for instant action--a case where the nearest available man
+had to follow his first hunch without thinking it over or counting the
+cost. A few seconds more on that rock, and one of two things must happen
+to the boat: either she would settle a few inches farther, fill
+completely and sink, or else the force of the current would tear her to
+pieces where she was. Blackmore was tugging at his line and shouting
+directions, but the roar stopped the words at his lips. Andy did not
+need to be told what was needed, however. For myself, I was not quite
+sure of what to do, and less so of how to do it. Also, I doubted my
+ability to keep my footing in the current. In short, I found myself
+thinking and weighing chances in one of those emergencies where a man to
+be worth his salt has no business to do either.
+
+There was only one place where a man could get at the boat, and Andy
+beat me to it by a mile. (I would have seen to that even had he moved a
+lot slower than he did.) He was rather more than waist deep, but quite
+safe as long as the boat stuck where she was. Unfortunately, getting her
+off was the very thing he was there for. It was a good deal like a man's
+having to saw off the branch on which he sat. But Andy never
+hesitated--probably because there was not time to think and reckon the
+consequences. Setting his heavy shoulders under her bilge, he gave a
+mighty upward heave. She shuddered through her long red length, and
+then, as the kick of the current got under her submerged gunwale, shot
+up and off as though discharged from a catapult. The job had been well
+done, too, for she came off with her stern down stream, which made it
+comparatively easy for Blackmore to check her way with his line, even
+half-filled as she was.
+
+Whether he failed to recover as the boat was swept away, or whether he
+lost his balance in avoiding entanglement in the line, Andy was not
+quite sure. His first recollection after releasing the boat, he said,
+was of floundering in the water and of finding that his first kick or
+two did not strike bottom. The thing that is always possible when a man
+has lifted off a boat in a swift current had happened: he had lost his
+footing, and in just about the one worst place in the whole Columbia.
+
+Blackmore, dragged down the bank after his floundering boat, was not in
+a position where he could throw the end of his line to any purpose. I
+waded in and reached out my pike-pole, but Andy's back was to it the
+only time he came within grabbing distance. The only thing that saved
+him was luck--the fact that the current at the point he lost his footing
+did not swirl directly into the main chute, but did a little
+double-shuffle of its own along the side of an eddy before taking the
+big leap. Hooking into the solid green water of that eddy, Andy found
+himself a toehold, and presently clambered out. He had not swallowed
+any water, and did not seem much chilled or winded. A violent sickness
+of the stomach, where the cold had arrested digestive operations, was
+about the only ill effect. What seemed to annoy him most was the fact
+that all of his pockets were turned wrong-side-out, with all of their
+contents--save only his watch, which had been secured by a
+thong--missing. Blackmore nodded grimly to me as he came up after
+securing the boat. "_Now_ perhaps you'll believe what I told you about
+the old Columbia picking pockets," he said dryly.
+
+Roos came down complaining that he had been too far away to pick up any
+details of the show even with his "six-inch" lens and cursing his luck
+for not having been set up closer at hand. Considering what he had
+missed, I thought he showed unwonted delicacy in not asking Blackmore
+and Andy to stage it over again for him.
+
+Bailing out the boat, we found one oar missing, but this we subsequently
+recovered from an eddy below. That left our net loss for the mishap only
+the contents of Andy's pockets and the picture Roos did not get. Some
+might have figured in the extra ration of rum Andy drew to straighten
+out the kinks of his outraged stomach; but that seemed hardly the
+sporting way to look at it, especially with our prospects in the drink
+line being what they were.
+
+[Illustration: "SHOOTING" THE FIRST BIT OF LINING AT SURPRISE RAPIDS
+(_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: THE CAMP WHERE THE ROAR OF THE RAPIDS DEAFENED US
+(_centre_)]
+
+[Illustration: WHERE STEINHOF WAS DROWNED (_below_)]
+
+[Illustration: WHERE ANDY JUST MISSED DROWNING IN SURPRISE RAPIDS
+(_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: LOOKING THROUGH THE PINES AT SURPRISE RAPIDS (_centre_)]
+
+[Illustration: HEAD OF SECOND FALL OF SURPRISE RAPIDS (_below_)]
+
+The portage at the fall proved a mighty stiff bit of hard labour. It was
+one thing to skid the boat along on the pine needles at Beavermouth with
+a couple of dozen men pushing it, and quite another for three men to
+take it out of the water, lift it over forty or fifty feet of boulders,
+and put it back into the river again. By the free use of rollers--cut
+from young firs--we managed, however, Roos cranking his camera through
+all of the operation and telling us to "Make it snappy!" and not to be
+"foot-hogs." Almost worse than portaging the boat was the unspeakably
+toil-some task of packing the outfit over the boulders for a couple of
+hundred yards to where there was a quiet spot to load again. Every step
+had to be balanced for, and even then one was down on his knees half the
+time. With my numerous bad joints--there are but three from shoulder to
+heel that had not been sprained or dislocated from two to a dozen
+times--this boulder clambering work was the only thing in connection
+with the whole voyage that I failed to enjoy.
+
+A half mile run with an eight-mile current took us to the head of the
+second fall, all but the first hundred yards of which had to be lined.
+Landing this time on the west bank, we worked the boat down without much
+difficulty past the jutting point where the line of Steinhoff's boat had
+parted. Blackmore had hoped to line her all the way down without
+unloading, but the last fifty yards before the cascade tumbled into the
+big whirlpool were so thickly studded with rocks along the bank that he
+finally decided not to risk it. As there were thirty or forty feet of
+deep pools and eddies between the rocks on which she was stuck and the
+nearest stretch of unsubmerged boulders, unloading was a particularly
+awkward piece of work. Finally everything was shifted out onto a
+flat-topped rock, and Roos and I were left to get this ashore while
+Andy and Blackmore completed lining down. It was an especially nice job,
+taking the boat down that last steep pitch into the big whirlpool and
+then working her round a huge square-faced rock to a quiet eddy, and I
+should greatly like to have seen it. Unluckily, what with stumbling over
+hidden boulders and being down with my nose in the water half of the
+time, and the thin blue mist that hovered round me the rest of the time
+from what I said as a consequence of stumbling, I could only guess at
+the finesse and highly technical skill with which the difficult
+operation was accomplished. The worst part appeared to be getting her
+down the fall. Once clear of the submerged rocks, Blackmore seemed to
+make the whirlpool do his work for him. Poised on a projecting log of
+the jam packed on top of the jutting rock, he paid out a hundred feet of
+line and let the racing swirl of the spinning pool carry the boat far
+out beyond all obstructions. Then, gently and delicately as if playing a
+salmon on a trout rod, he nursed her into an eddy and simply coiled his
+line and let the back-setting current carry her in to the bit of sandy
+beach where he wanted to tie her up for the night. It takes a lifetime
+of swift-water experience to master the intricacies of an operation like
+that.
+
+It was still early in the afternoon, but with a thick mist falling
+Blackmore thought best to stop where we were. The next available camping
+place was below the half-mile-long third cascade, and no old river man
+likes to go into a rapid when the visibility is poor. We pitched the
+tent in a hole cut out of the thick-growing woods on a low bench at the
+inner angle of the bend. Everything was soaking wet, but it was well
+back from the falls, and for the first time in two days we were able to
+talk to each other without shouting. Not that we did so, however; from
+sheer force of habit we continued roaring into each other's ears for a
+week or more yet.
+
+The great pile of logs on top of the flat-topped rock above the
+whirlpool had fascinated me from the first. Over a hundred feet square,
+forty feet high, and packed as though by a titanic hydraulic press, it
+must have contained thousands and thousands of cords of wood. On
+Blackmore's positive assurance as a timberman that there was nothing in
+the pile of any value for lumber, even in the improbable contingency
+that a flood would ever carry it beyond the big drifts of Kinbasket
+Lake, I decided to make a bonfire of it. Never had I had such an
+opportunity, both on the score of the sheer quantity of combustible and
+the spectacular setting for illumination.
+
+The whirlpool was _whouf-whoufing_ greedily as it wolfed the whole
+cascade when I clambered up just before dark to touch off my beacon. It
+was fairly dry at the base, and a pile of crisp shavings off a slab from
+some distant up-river sawmill caught quickly. From a spark of red
+flickering dimly through the mist when we sat down to supper, this had
+grown to a roaring furnace by the time we had relaxed to pipes and
+cigarettes. An hour later the flames had eaten a clear chimney up
+through the jam and the red light from their leaping tips was beginning
+to drive back the encompassing darkness. Roos, who had read about India,
+thought it would have been fine if we only had a few widows to cast
+themselves on the flaming pyre and commit _suttee_. Andy and Blackmore,
+both sentimental bachelors, were a unit in maintaining that it would be
+a shame to waste good widows that way, especially on the practically
+widowless Big Bend. All three were arguing the point rather heatedly
+when they crawled into their blankets. For myself, with a vision of the
+wonder about to unroll impinging on my brain, I could not think of
+turning in for hours yet.
+
+By ten o'clock the pile was well alight underneath, but it was not until
+nearly midnight, when the mist had turned to snow and a strong wind had
+sprung up, that it was blazing full strength. I hardly know what would
+have been the direction of the wind in the upper air, but, cupped in the
+embrasure of the bend, it was sucking round and round, like the big
+whirlpool, only more fitfully and with an upward rather than a downward
+pull. Now it would drag the leaping flame-column a hundred feet in the
+air, twisting it into lambent coils and fining the tip down to a sharp
+point, like that of the Avenging Angel's Sword of Fire in the old
+Biblical prints, now sweep it out in a shivering sheet above the
+whirlpool, now swing it evenly round and round as though the flame,
+arrow-pointed and attenuated, were the radium-coated hand of a
+Gargantuan clock being swiftly revolved in the dark.
+
+But the wonder of wonders was less the fire itself than the marvellous
+transformations wrought by the light it threw. And the staggering
+contrasts! The illuminated snow clouds drifting along the frosted-pink
+curtain of the tree-clad mountain walls made a roseate fairyland; even
+the foam covered sweep of the cascade, its roar drowned in the sharp
+crackle of the flames, was softened and smoothened until it seemed to
+billow like the sunset-flushed canvas of a ship becalmed: but the
+whirlpool, its sinister character only accentuated by the conflict of
+cross-shadows and reflections, was a veritable Pit of Damnation, choking
+and coughing as it swirled and rolled in streaky coils of ox-blood, in
+fire-stabbed welters of fluid coal-tar.
+
+Wrapped in my hooded duffle coat, I paced the snow-covered moss and
+exulted in the awesome spectacle until long after midnight. I have never
+envied Nero very poignantly since. Given a fiddle and a few Christians,
+I would have had all that was his on the greatest night of his life--and
+then some. Father Tiber never had a whirlpool like mine, even on the day
+Horatius swam it "heavy with his armour and spent with changing blows."
+
+The next morning, though too heavily overcast for pictures, was still
+clear enough to travel. The head riffles of the third fall of Surprise
+Rapids began a little below our camp, so that we started lining almost
+immediately. Three or four times we pulled across the river, running
+short stretches and lining now down one side and now the other. There
+was not so great a rate of drop as at the first and second falls, but
+the whole stream was choked with barely submerged rocks and lining was
+difficult on account of the frequent cliffs.
+
+It was about half way down that I all but messed things up by failing to
+get into action quickly enough at a crossing. The fault, in a way, was
+Blackmore's, because of his failure to tell me in advance what was
+expected, and then--when the order had to be passed instantly--for
+standing rather too much on ceremony in the manner of passing it. We
+were about to pull to the opposite side to line down past a riffle which
+Blackmore reckoned too rough to risk running. There was about a ten-mile
+current, and it would have required the smartest kind of a get-away and
+the hardest kind of pulling to make the other bank without being carried
+down onto the riffle. The boat was headed up-stream, and, as Blackmore
+had not told me he intended to cross, I took it for granted he was going
+to run. So, when Roos shoved off and jumped in, I rested on my oar in
+order that Andy could bring the boat sharply round and head it down
+stream. Blackmore's excited yell was the first intimation I had that
+anything was wrong. "Pull like hell! You!... Mister Freeman!"
+
+That "Mister," and his momentary pause before uttering it, defeated the
+purpose of the order. I pulled all right, and so hard that my oar-blade
+picked up a very sizable hunk of river and flung it in Blackmore's face.
+That upset my balance, and I could not recover quickly enough to keep
+the boat's head to the current. With characteristic presence of mind,
+Blackmore changed tactics instantly. "Got to chance it now!" he shouted,
+and threw such a pull onto his steering paddle that the handle bent to
+more than half a right angle where he laid it over the gunwale. There
+was one jutting rock at the head of the riffle that _had_ to be missed;
+the rest was all a matter of whether or not the next couple of hundred
+yards of submerged boulders were deeply enough covered to let us pass
+_over_ them. There was no way of avoiding them, no chance to lay a
+course _between_ them.
+
+Blackmore was a bit wilder about the eyes than I had seen him before;
+but he had stopped swearing and his mouth was set in a hard, determined
+line. Andy, with chesty grunts, was fairly flailing the water with
+swift, short-arm strokes. I did not need to be told to refrain from
+pulling in order that the others could swing her head as far toward the
+west bank as possible before the rock was reached. Instead, I held ready
+for the one quick backing stroke that would be called for in the event a
+collision seemed imminent at the last moment. It was the wave thrown off
+by the rock itself that helped us most when the showdown came. Shooting
+by the jagged barrier so close that Andy could have fended with his
+hand, the boat plunged over a short, sharp pitch and hit the white water
+with a bang.
+
+That was by long odds the roughest stuff we had been into so far. The
+waves were curling up well above our heads, and every one we hit left a
+foot or two of its top with us--solid green water, most of it, that
+began accumulating rather alarmingly in the bottom of the boat. There
+was no regularity in the way they ran, either. One would come
+mushrooming fairly over the bows, another would flop aboard over the
+beam, and every now and then a wild side-winder, missing its spring at
+the forward part of the boat, would dash a shower of spray over the
+quarter. From the bank she must have been pretty well out of sight most
+of the time, for I often saw spray thrown ten or fifteen feet to either
+side and twice as far astern. All hands were drenched from the moment we
+struck the first comber, of course, which was doubtless why a wail from
+Roos that the water was going down his neck seemed to strike Blackmore
+as a bit superfluous. "Inside or outside your neck?" he roared back,
+adding that if it was the former the flow could be checked by the simple
+and natural expedient of keeping the mouth shut. Very properly, our
+"skipper" had the feeling that, in a really tight place, all the talking
+necessary for navigation should be done from the "bridge," and that
+"extraneous" comment should be held over to smooth water.
+
+Before we had run a hundred yards the anxious look on Blackmore's face
+had given way to one of relief and exultation. "There's more water over
+the rocks than I reckoned," he shouted. "Going to run right through."
+And run we did, all of the last mile or more of Surprise Rapids and
+right on through the still swift but comparatively quiet water below.
+Here we drifted with the current for a ways, while all hands turned to
+and bailed. I took this, the first occasion that had offered, to assure
+Blackmore that he needn't go to the length of calling me "Mister" in the
+future when he had urgent orders to give, and incidentally apologized
+for getting off on the wrong foot at the head of the first rapid. "Since
+that worked out to save us half a mile of darn dirty lining and two or
+three hours of time," he replied with a grin, "I guess we won't worry
+about it this crack, Mister--I mean, Freeman. Mebbe I better get used to
+saying it that way 'gainst when I'll need to spit it out quick."
+
+It was a pleasant run from the foot of Surprise Rapids down to Kinbasket
+Lake, or at least it was pleasant until the rain set in again. There is
+a fall of sixty-four feet in the sixteen miles--most of it in the first
+ten. It was a fine swift current, with a number of riffles but no bad
+water at any point. It was good to be free for a while from the tension
+which is never absent when working in really rough water, and I have no
+doubt that Blackmore felt better about it than any of the rest of us.
+Surprise was his especial _bete noir_, and he assured me that he had
+never come safely through it without swearing never to tackle it again.
+Roos, drying out in the bow like a tabby licking her wet coat smooth
+after being rained on, sang "Green River" all the way, and I tried to
+train Andy to pull in time to the rhythm and join in the chorus. As the
+chorus had much about drink in it, it seemed only fitting--considering
+what was waiting for us at Canoe River--that we _should_ sing it. And we
+did. "Floating Down the Old Green River" became the "official song" of
+that particular part of the voyage. Later ... but why anticipate?
+
+We landed for lunch about where the water began to slacken above the
+lake. The water of the little stream at the mouth of which we tied up
+the boat was of a bright transparent amber in colour. Andy, sapient of
+the woods, thought it must flow from a lake impounded behind a
+beaver-dam in the high mountains, and that the stain was that of rotting
+wood. Beaver signs were certainly much in evidence all over the little
+bench where we lunched. Several large cottonwood trunks--one of them all
+of two feet in diameter--had been felled by the tireless little
+engineers, and we found a pile of tooth-torn chips large enough to
+kindle our fire with. While tea was boiling Blackmore pulled a couple of
+three-pound Dolly Varden out of the mouth of the creek, only to lose his
+hooks and line when a still larger one connected up with them. Roos, who
+was under orders to get an effective fishing picture, was unable to go
+into action with his camera on account of the poor light.
+
+It had begun to rain hard by the time we had shoved back into the river
+after lunch. There were still five miles to go to reach the camping
+ground Blackmore had decided upon, half way down the east side of
+Kinbasket Lake, just below Middle River--slack water all the way. Andy
+and I pulled it in a slushy half-snow-half-rain that was a lot wetter
+and unpleasanter than the straight article of either variety. Of a lake
+which is one of the loveliest in all the world in the sunlight, nothing
+was to be seen save a stretch of grey-white, wind-whipped waters beating
+upon grey-brown rocky shores. That the wind and waves headed us did not
+make the pulling any lighter, for the boat's considerable freeboard gave
+both a lot of surface to play upon. The exertion of rowing kept Andy and
+me warm, however, which gave us at least that advantage over Roos and
+Blackmore. The latter had to face it out at his paddle, but Roos, a
+bedraggled lump of sodden despair, finally gave up and crawled under the
+tarpaulin with the bags of beans and bacon, remaining there until we
+reached port.
+
+All in all, I think that was the most miserable camp I ever helped to
+pitch. The snow, refusing persistently either to harden or to soften,
+adhered clingingly to everything it touched. We were two hours clearing
+a space for the tent, setting it up and collecting enough boughs to
+cushion the floor. By that time pretty nearly everything not
+hermetically sealed was wet, including the blankets and the "dry"
+clothes. No one but Andy could have started a camp-fire under such
+conditions, and no one but Blackmore could have cooked a piping hot
+dinner on it. I forget whether it was Roos or myself who contributed
+further to save the day. Anyhow, it was one of the two of us that
+suggested cooking a can of plum-pudding in about its own bulk of "thirty
+per over-proof" rum. That lent the saving touch. In spite of a leaking
+tent and wet blankets, the whole four of us turned in singing "End of a
+Perfect Day" and "Old Green River." The latter was prophetic. A
+miniature one--coming through the roof of the tent--had the range of the
+back of my neck for most of the night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+II. RUNNING THE BEND
+
+_Kinbasket Lake and Rapids_
+
+
+It continued slushing all night and most of the next day, keeping us
+pretty close to camp. Andy, like the good housewife he was, kept
+snugging up every time he got a chance, so that things assumed a
+homelier and cheerier aspect as the day wore on. I clambered for a
+couple of miles down the rocky eastern bank of the lake in the forenoon.
+The low-hanging clouds still obscured the mountains, but underfoot I
+found unending interest in the astonishing variety of drift corralled by
+this remarkable catch-all of the upper Columbia. The main accumulation
+of flotsam and jetsam was above our camp, but even among the rocks I
+chanced onto almost everything one can imagine, from a steel rail--with
+the ties that had served to float it down still spiked to it--to a
+fragment of a vacuum-cleaner. What Roos called "the human touch" was
+furnished by an enormous uprooted spruce, on which some amorous
+lumber-jack had been pouring out his love through the blade of his axe.
+This had taken the form of a two-feet-in-diameter "bleeding heart"
+pierced by an arrow. Inside the roughly hewn "pericardium" were the
+initials "K. N." and "P. R.," with the date "July 4, 1910." One couldn't
+be quite sure whether the arrow stood for a heart quake or a heart
+break. Andy, who was sentimental and inclined to put woman in the
+abstract on a pedestal, thought it was merely a heart quake; but
+Blackmore, who had been something of a gallant in his day, and therefore
+inclined to cynicism as he neared the sear and yellow leaf, was sure it
+was heart break--that the honest lumber-jack had hacked in the arrow and
+the drops of blood after he had been jilted by some jade. Roos wanted to
+make a movie of this simple fragment of rustic art, with me standing by
+and registering "pensive memories," or something of the kind; but I
+managed to discourage him by the highly technical argument that it would
+impair the "continuity" of the "sportsmanship" which was the prime
+_motif_ of the present picture.
+
+Blackmore piloted me up to the main area of drift in the afternoon. It
+occupied a hundred acres or more of sand and mud flats which constituted
+the lower part of the extensive delta deposited on the edge of the lake
+by the waters of the good-sized stream of Middle River. At a first
+glance it seemed nothing more than a great wilderness of tree
+trunks--prostrate, upended, woven and packed together--extending for
+hundreds of yards below high-water-mark. It was between these logs that
+the smaller things had lodged. There were a number of boats, not greatly
+damaged, and fragments enough to have reconstructed a dozen more. I am
+convinced that a half day's search would have discovered the material
+for building and furnishing a house, though carpets and wall paper would
+hardly have been all one could desire. I even found a curling
+iron--closely clasped by the bent nail upon which it had been hung on
+the log of a cabin--and a corset. The latter seemed hardly worth
+salving, as it appeared--according to Blackmore--to be a "military
+model" of a decade or so back, and the steel-work was badly rusted.
+
+However, it was not gewgaws or house-furnishing we were after. One could
+hardly be expected to slither about in soft slush for second-hand things
+of that kind. I gave a great glad whoop at my first sight of a
+silt-submerged cask, only to find the head missing and nothing but mud
+in it. So, too, my second and third. Then it was Blackmore who gave the
+"View Halloo," and my heart gave a mighty leap. _His_ treasure trove had
+the head intact, and even the bung _in situ_. But alas! the latter had
+become slightly started, and although the contents had both smell and
+colour they were so heavily impregnated with river mud that they would
+hardly have been deemed fit for consumption except in New York and
+California, and not worth the risk of smuggling even there. That cask
+was the high-water-mark of our luck. Several others had the old familiar
+smell, and that was all. But there is no doubt in the world that there
+is whisky in that drift pile--hundreds of gallons of it, and some very
+old. Blackmore swears to that, and I never knew him to lie--about
+serious matters, I mean. In hunting and trapping yarns a man is expected
+to draw a long bead. I pass on this undeniably valuable information to
+any one that cares to profit by it. There are no strings attached. But
+of course ... in the event of success ... Pasadena always finds me!...
+
+We did have one find, though, that was so remarkable as to be worth all
+the trouble and disappointment of our otherwise futile search. This was
+a road-bridge, with _instinct_. The manner in which this had been
+displayed was so astonishing as to be almost beyond belief; indeed, I
+would hesitate about setting down the facts had I not a photograph to
+prove them. This bridge was perhaps sixty feet in length, and had
+doubtless been carried away by a freshet from some tributary of the
+upper river which it had spanned. This was probably somewhere between
+Golden and Windermere, so that it had run a hundred miles or more of
+swift water, including the falls of Surprise Rapids, without losing more
+than a few planks. This in itself was remarkable enough, but nothing at
+all to the fact that, when it finally decided it had come far enough,
+the sagacious structure had gone and planked itself down squarely across
+another stream. It was still a bridge in fact as well as in form. It had
+actually saved my feet from getting wet when I rushed to Blackmore's aid
+in up-ending the cask of mud-diluted whisky. My photograph plainly shows
+Blackmore standing on the bridge, with the water flowing directly
+beneath him. It would have been a more comprehensive and convincing
+picture if there had been light enough for a snapshot. As it was, I had
+to set up on a stump, and in a position which showed less of both stream
+and bridge than I might have had from a better place. I swear (and so
+does Blackmore) that we didn't place the bridge where it was. It was
+much too large for that. Roos wanted to shoot the whole three of us
+standing on it and registering "unbounded wonderment," but the light
+was never right for it up to the morning of our departure, and then
+there wasn't time.
+
+It rained and snowed all that night and most of the following day.
+During the afternoon of the latter the clouds broke up twice or thrice,
+and through rifts in the drifting wracks we had transient glimpses of
+the peaks and glaciers of the Selkirks gleaming above the precipitous
+western walls of the lake. The most conspicuous feature of the sky-line
+was the three-peaked "Trident," rising almost perpendicularly from a
+glittering field of glacial ice and impaling great masses of pendant
+_cumulo-nimbi_ on its splintered prongs. Strings of lofty glacier-set
+summits marked the line of the back-bone of the Selkirks to southeast and
+northwest, each of them sending down rain-swollen torrents to tumble
+into the lake in cataracts and cascades. Behind, or east of us, we knew
+the Rockies reared a similar barrier of snow and ice, but this was cut
+off from our vision by the more imminent lake-wall under which we were
+camped. If Kinbasket Lake is ever made accessible to the tourist its
+fame will reach to the end of the earth. This is a consummation which
+may be effected in the event the Canadian Pacific wipes out Surprise
+Rapids with its hydro-electric project dam and backs up a lake to
+Beavermouth. The journey to this spot of incomparable beauty could then
+be made soft enough to suit all but the most effete.
+
+A torrential rain, following a warm southerly breeze which sprang up in
+the middle of the afternoon, lowered the dense cloud-curtain again, and
+shortly, from somewhere behind the scenes, came the raucous rumble and
+roar of a great avalanche. Blackmore's practised ear led him to
+pronounce it a slide of both earth and snow, and to locate it somewhere
+on Trident Creek, straight across the lake from our camp. He proved to
+be right on both counts. When the clouds lifted again at sunset, a long
+yellow scar gashed the shoulder of the mountain half way up Trident
+Creek to the glacier, and the clear stream from the latter had
+completely disappeared. Blackmore said it had been dammed up by the
+slide, and that there would be all hell popping when it broke through.
+
+Scouting around for more boughs to soften his bed, Roos, just before
+supper, chanced upon Steinhoff's grave. It was under a small pine, not
+fifty feet from our tent, but so hidden by the dense undergrowth that it
+had escaped our notice for two days. It was marked only by a fragment
+split from the stern of a white-painted boat nailed horizontally on the
+pine trunk and with the single word "STEINHOFF" carved in rude capitals.
+At one corner, in pencil, was an inscription stating that the board had
+been put up in May, 1920, by Joe French and Leo Tennis. With the golden
+sunset light streaming through the trees, Roos, always strong for
+"pathetic human touches" to serve as a sombre background for his Mack
+Sennett stuff, could not resist the opportunity for a picture. Andy and
+Blackmore and I were to come climbing up to the grave from the lake,
+read the inscription, and then look at each other and shake our heads
+ominously, as though it was simply a matter of time until we, too,
+should fall prey to the implacable river. I refused straightaway, on
+the ground that I had signed up to act the part of a light comedy
+sportsman and not a heavy mourner. Blackmore and Andy were more
+amenable. In rehearsal, however, the expressions on their honest faces
+were so wooden and embarrassed that Roos finally called me up to stand
+out of range and "say something to make 'em look natural." I refrain
+from recording what I said; but I still maintain that shot was an
+interruption of the "continuity" of my "gentleman-sportsman" picture. I
+have not yet heard if it survived the studio surgery.
+
+Shortly before dark, Andy, going down to look at his set-line, found a
+three-foot ling or fresh-water cod floundering on the end of it. Roos
+persuaded him to keep it over night so that the elusive "fishing
+picture" might be made the following morning in case the light was good.
+As there were five or six inches of water in the bottom of the boat,
+Andy threw the ling in there for the night in preference to picketing
+him out on a line. There was plenty of water to have given the husky
+shovel-nose ample room to circulate with comfort if only he had been
+content to take it easy and not wax temperamental. Doubtless it was his
+imminent movie engagement that brought on his attack of flightiness. At
+any rate, he tried to burrow under a collapsible sheet-iron stove
+(which, preferring to do with a camp-fire, we had left in the boat) and
+got stuck. The forward five pounds of him had water enough to keep alive
+in, but in the night--when it cleared off and turned cold--his tail,
+which was bent up sharply under a thwart, froze stiff at almost right
+angles. But I am getting ahead of my story.
+
+The next morning, the sixth of October, broke brilliantly clear, with
+the sun gilding the prongs of the "Trident" and throwing the whole snowy
+line of the Selkirks in dazzling relief against a deep turquoise sky.
+Blackmore, keen for an early start, so as not to be rushed in working
+down through the dreaded "Twenty-One-Mile" Rapids to Canoe River, rooted
+us out at daybreak and began breaking camp before breakfast. He had
+reckoned without the "fishing picture," however. Roos wanted bright
+sunlight for it, claiming he was under special instructions to make
+something sparkling and snappy. All through breakfast he coached me on
+the intricate details of the action. "Make him put up a stiff fight," he
+admonished through a mouthful of flapjack. "Of course he won't fight,
+'cause he ain't that kind; but if you jerk and wiggle your pole just
+right it'll make it look like he was. That's what a real actor's
+for--making things look like they is when they ain't. Got me?" Then we
+went down and discovered that poor half-frozen fish with the eight-point
+alteration of the continuity of his back-bone.
+
+The ling or fresh-water cod has an underhung, somewhat shark-like mouth,
+not unsuggestive of the new moon with its points turned downward. Roos'
+mouth took on a similarly dejected droop when he found the condition the
+principal animal actor in his fish picture was in. But it was too late
+to give up now. Never might we have so husky a fighting fish ready to
+hand, and with a bright sun shining on it. Roos tried osteopathy,
+applied chiropractics and Christian Science without much effect. Our
+"lead" continued as rigid and unrelaxing as the bushman's boomerang,
+whose shape he so nearly approximated. Then Andy wrought the miracle
+with a simple "laying on of hands." What he really did was to thaw out
+the frozen rear end of the fish by holding it between his big, warm red
+Celtic paws; but the effect was as magical as a cure at Lourdes. The big
+ling was shortly flopping vigorously, and when Andy dropped him into a
+bit of a boulder-locked pool he went charging back and forth at the
+rocky barriers like a bull at a gate. Roos almost wept in his
+thankfulness, and forthwith promised the restorer an extra rum ration
+that night. Andy grinned his thanks, but reminded him that we ought to
+be at the old ferry by night, where something even better than "thirty
+per over-proof" rum would be on tap. It was indeed the morning of our
+great day. Stimulated by that inspiring thought, I prepared to outdo
+myself in the "fish picture," the "set" for which was now ready.
+
+[Illustration: BLACKMORE AND THE LING THAT REFUSED TO "REGISTER"]
+
+[Illustration: THE WRITER, WITH PIKE-POLE JUST BEFORE LINING DEATH
+RAPIDS]
+
+[Illustration: ANDY AND I PULLING DOWN KINBASKET LAKE]
+
+Standing on the stern of the beached boat, I made a long cast,
+registering "concentrated eagerness." Then Roos stopped cranking, and
+Andy brought the ling out and fastened it to the end of my line with a
+snug but comfortable hitch through the gills. (We were careful not to
+hurt him, for Chester's directions had admonished especially against
+"showing brutality".) When I had nursed him out to about where my
+opening cast had landed, Roos called "Action!" and started cranking
+again. Back and forth in wide sweeps he dashed, while I registered
+blended "eagerness" and "determination," with frequent interpolations of
+"consternation" as carefully timed tugs (by myself) bent my shivering
+pole down to the water. When Roos had enough footage of "fighting," I
+brought my catch in close to the boat and leered down at him,
+registering "near triumph." Then I towed him ashore and Andy and
+Blackmore rushed in to help me land him. After much struggling (by
+ourselves) we brought him out on the beach. At this juncture I was
+supposed to grab the ling by the gills and hold him proudly aloft,
+registering "full triumph" the while. Andy and Blackmore were to crowd
+in, pat me on the back and beam congratulations. Blackmore was then to
+assume an expression intended to convey the impression that this was the
+hardest fighting ling he had ever seen caught. All three of us were
+action perfect in our parts; but that miserable turn-tail of a ling--who
+had nothing to do but flop and register "indignant protest"--spoiled it
+all at the last. As I flung my prize on high, a shrill scream of
+"Rotten!" from Roos froze the action where it was. Then I noticed that
+what was supposed to be a gamy denizen of the swift-flowing Columbia was
+hanging from my hand as rigid as a coupling-pin--a bent coupling-pin at
+that, for he had resumed his former cold-storage curl.
+
+"Rotten!" shrieked Roos in a frenzy; "do it again!" But that was not to
+be. For the "chief actor" the curtain had rung down for good. "You must
+have played him too fierce," said Andy sympathetically. Blackmore was
+inclined to be frivolous. "P'raps he was trying to register 'Big Bend,'"
+said he.
+
+Just after we had pushed off there came a heavy and increasing roar from
+across the lake. Presently the cascade of Trident Creek sprang into
+life again, but now a squirt of yellow ochre where before it was a
+flutter of white satin. Rapidly augmenting, it spread from wall to wall
+of the rocky gorge, discharging to the bosky depths of the delta with a
+prodigious rumbling that reverberated up and down the lake like heavy
+thunder. A moment later the flood had reached the shore, and out across
+the lucent green waters of the lake spread a broadening fan of
+yellow-brown. "I told you hell would be popping after that big slide,"
+said Blackmore, resting on his paddle. "That's the backed-up stream
+breaking through."
+
+Kinbasket Lake is a broadening and slackening of the Columbia, backed up
+behind the obstructions which cause the long series of rapids between
+its outlet and the mouth of Canoe River. It is six or seven miles long,
+according to the stage of water, and from one to two miles wide. Its
+downward set of current is slight but perceptible. The outlet, as we
+approached it after a three-mile pull from our camp at Middle River,
+appeared strikingly similar to the head of Surprise Rapids. Here,
+however, the transition from quiet to swift water was even more abrupt.
+
+The surface of the lake was a-dance with the ripples kicked up by the
+crisp morning breeze, and blindingly bright where the facets of the tiny
+wavelets reflected the sunlight like shaken diamonds. The shadowed
+depths of the narrow gorge ahead was Stygian by contrast. Blackmore
+called my attention to the way the crests of the pines rimming the river
+a few hundred yards inside the gorge appeared just about on the level
+with the surface of the lake. "When you see the tree-tops fall away
+like that," he said, standing up to take his final bearings for the
+opening run, "look out. It means there's water running down hill right
+ahead faster'n any boat wants to put its nose in." The roar rolling up
+to us was not quite so deep-toned or thunderous as the challenging
+bellow of the first fall of Surprise; but it was more "permeative," as
+though the sources from which it came ran on without end. And that was
+just about the situation. We were sliding down to the intake of
+Kinbasket or "The Twenty-One-Mile" Rapids, one of the longest, if not
+_the_ longest, succession of practically unbroken riffles on any of the
+great rivers of the world.
+
+From the outlet of Kinbasket Lake to the mouth of Canoe River is
+twenty-one miles. For the sixteen miles the tail of one rapid generally
+runs right into the head of the next, and there is a fall of two hundred
+and sixty feet, or more than sixteen feet to the mile. For the last five
+miles there is less white water, but the current runs from eight to
+twelve miles an hour, with many swirls and whirlpools. The river is
+closely canyoned all the way. This compels one to make the whole run
+through in a single day, as there is no camping place at any point.
+Cliffs and sharply-sloping boulder banks greatly complicate lining down
+and compel frequent crossings at points where a failure to land just
+right is pretty likely to leave things in a good deal of a mess.
+
+Blackmore ran us down through a couple of hundred yards of slap-banging
+white water, before coming to bank above a steep pitch where the river
+tore itself to rags and tatters across a patch of rocks that seemed to
+block the whole channel. From Captain Armstrong's description, this was
+the exact point where the trouble with his tipsy bow-paddler had
+occurred, the little difficulty which had been the cause of his leaving
+the salvaged cask of Scotch at his next camp. Like pious pilgrims
+approaching the gateway of some long-laboured-toward shrine, therefore,
+we looked at the place with much interest, not to say reverence.
+Blackmore was perhaps the least sentimental of us. "I wouldn't try to
+run that next fall for all the whisky ever lost in the old Columbia," he
+said decisively, beginning to re-coil his long line. Then we turned to
+on lining down the most accursed stretch of river boulders I ever had to
+do with.
+
+Barely submerged rocks crowding the bank compelled us to wade in and
+lift the boat ahead even oftener than in Surprise Rapids. Andy always
+took the lead in this, but time after time my help was necessary to
+throw her clear. For the first time since I had boated in Alaska a good
+many years previously, I began to know the numbing effects of icy water.
+The heavy exertion did a lot to keep the blood moving, but three or four
+minutes standing with the water up to mid-thigh sent the chill right in
+to the marrow of the bones, even when sweat was running off the face in
+streams. That started a sort of dull ache in the leg bones that kept
+creeping higher and higher the longer one remained in the water. That
+ache was the worst part of it; the flesh became dead to sensation very
+quickly, but that penetrating inward pain had more hurt in it every
+minute it was prolonged. It was bad enough in the legs, but when,
+submerged to the waist, as happened every now and then, the chill began
+to penetrate to the back-bone and stab the digestive organs, it became
+pretty trying. One realized then what really short shrift a man would
+have trying to swim for more than four or five minutes even in calm
+water of this temperature. That was about the limit for heart action to
+continue with the cold striking in and numbing the veins and arteries, a
+doctor had told Blackmore, and this seemed reasonable. Andy was
+repeatedly sick at the stomach after he had been wet for long above the
+waist. My own qualms were rather less severe (doubtless because I was
+exposed rather less), but I found myself very weak and unsteady after
+every immersion. A liberal use of rum would undoubtedly have been of
+some help for a while, but Blackmore was adamant against starting in on
+it as long as there was any bad water ahead. And as there was nothing
+but bad water ahead, this meant that--in one sense at least--we were a
+"dry ship."
+
+I shall not endeavour to trace in detail our painful progress down
+"Twenty-One-Mile." Indeed, I could not do so even if I wanted, for the
+very good reason that my hands were so full helping with the boat all
+the way that I had no time to make notes, and even my mental
+record--usually fairly dependable--is hopelessly jumbled. Even Blackmore
+became considerably mixed at times. At the first four or five riffles
+below the lake he called the turn correctly, landing, lining, crossing
+and running just where he should have done so. Then his mind-map became
+less clear. Twice he lined riffles which it presently became plain we
+could have run, and then he all but failed to land above one where a
+well-masked "souse-hole" would have gulped the boat in one mouthful.
+
+It was at this juncture that I asked him why he had never taken the
+trouble of making a rough chart of this portion of the river, so that he
+could be quite sure what was ahead. He said that the idea was a good
+one, and that it had often occurred to him. There were several reasons
+why he had never carried it out. One was, that he was always so mad when
+he was going down "Twenty-One-Mile" that he couldn't see straight, let
+alone write and draw straight. This meant that the chart would be of no
+use to him, even if some one else made it--unless, of course, he brought
+the maker along to interpret it. The main deterrent, however, had been
+the fact that he had always sworn each passage should be his last, so
+that (according to his frame of mind of the moment) there would be no
+use for the chart even if he could have seen straight enough to make it,
+and to read it after it had been made.
+
+The scenery--so far as I recall it--was grand beyond words to describe.
+Cliff fronted cliff, with a jagged ribbon of violet-purple sky between.
+Every few hundred yards creeks broke through the mountain walls and came
+cascading into the river over their spreading boulder "fans." Framed in
+the narrow notches from which they sprang appeared transient visions of
+sun-dazzled peaks and glaciers towering above wedge-shaped valleys
+swimming full of lilac mist. I saw these things, floating by like double
+strips of movie film, only when we were running in the current; when
+lining I was aware of little beyond the red line of the gunwale which I
+grasped, the imminent loom of Andy's grey-shirted shoulder next me, and
+the foam-flecked swirl of liquefied glacier enfolding my legs and
+swiftly converting them to stumpy icicles.
+
+There was one comfort, though. The farther down river we worked away
+from the lake, the shorter became the stretches of lining and the longer
+the rapids that were runnable. That accelerated our progress materially,
+but even so Blackmore did not reckon that there was time to stop for
+pictures, or even for lunch. We were still well up to schedule, but he
+was anxious to work on a good margin in the event of the
+always-to-be-expected "unexpected." It was along toward three in the
+afternoon that, after completing a particularly nasty bit of lining a
+mile or two above the mouth of Yellow Creek, he came over and slapped me
+on the back. "That finishes it for the day, young man," he cried gaily.
+"We can turn loose and run the rest of it now, and we'll do it hell
+sizzling fast. It may also rejoice you to know that all the lining left
+for the whole trip is a couple of hundred yards at 'Rock Slide' and
+Death Rapids. All aboard for the Ferry!"
+
+All of a sudden life had become a blessed thing again. For the first
+time I became aware that there were birds singing in the trees, flowers
+blooming in the protected shelves above high-water-mark, and maiden-hair
+ferns festooning the dripping grottoes of the cliffs. Dumping the water
+from our boots, Andy and I resumed our oars and swung the boat right out
+into the middle of the current. The first rapid we hit was a vicious
+side-winder, shaped like a letter "S," with overhanging cliffs playing
+battledore-and-shuttlecock with the river at the bends. Blackmore said
+he would have lined it if the water had been two feet lower; as it was
+now we would get wetter trying to worry a boat round the cliffs than in
+slashing through. We got quite wet enough as it was. The rocks were not
+hard to avoid, but banging almost side-on into the great back-curving
+combers thrown off by the cliffs was just a bit terrifying. Slammed back
+and forth at express-train speed, with nothing but those roaring
+open-faced waves buffeting against the cliffs, was somewhat suggestive
+of the sensation you get from a quick double-bank in a big biplane. Only
+it was wetter--much wetter. It took Blackmore ten minutes of hard
+bailing to get rid of the splashage.
+
+The succeeding rapids, though no less swift, were straighter, and
+easier--and dryer. Roos, perched up in the bow, announced that all was
+over but the digging, and started to sing "Old Green River." Andy and I
+joined in lustily, and even Blackmore (though a lip-reader would have
+sworn he was mumbling over a rosary) claimed to be singing. Exultant as
+we all were over the prize so nearly within our grasp, we must have put
+a world of feeling into that heart-stirring chorus.
+
+    "I was drifting down the old Green River
+        On the good ship _Rock-and-Rye_--
+      I drifted too far;
+      I got stuck on the bar;
+      I was out there alone,
+      Wishing that I were home--
+
+    The Captain was lost, with all of the crew,
+    So that there was nothing left to do;
+      And I had to drink the whole Green River dry-igh
+      To get back ho-ohm to you-oo-ou!"
+
+Smoother and smoother became the going, and then--rather unexpectedly,
+it seemed to me--the water began to slacken its dizzy speed. Blackmore
+appeared considerably puzzled over it, I thought. Roos, turning
+sentimental, had started singing a song that he had learned from a
+phonograph, and in which, therefore, appeared numerous hiati.
+
+    "Now I know da-da-da-da-da--
+      Now I know the reason why--
+    Da-da-da-da----da-da-da-daah--
+      Now I know, yes, now I know!
+    Da-da-da, my heart...."
+
+Blackmore frowned more deeply as the treble wail floated back to him,
+and then broke into the next "da-da" with a sudden growl. "I say, young
+feller," he roared, slapping sharply into the quieting water with his
+paddle blade; "if you know so _geesly_ much, I'm wondering if you'd mind
+loosening up on one or two things that have got _me_ buffaloed. First
+place, do I look like a man that had took a shot of hop?" "Not at all,
+sir," quavered Roos, who seemed rather fearful of an impending
+call-down. "I don't, huh?" went on the growl. "Then please tell me why
+what I knows is a ten-mile-an-hour current looks to me like slack water,
+and why I think I hear a roar coming round the next bend." "But the
+water _is_ slack," protested Roos, "and I've heard that roar for five
+minutes _myself_. Just another rapid, isn't it? The water always...."
+
+"Rot!" roared the veteran. "There ain't no fall with a rip-raring
+thunder like that 'tween Yellow Creek and Death Rapids. Rot, I tell you!
+I must ha' been doped after all."
+
+Nevertheless, when that ground-shaking rumble assailed us in a raw,
+rough wave of savage sound as we pulled round the bend, Blackmore was
+not sufficiently confident of his "dope theory" to care to get any
+nearer to it without a preliminary reconnaissance. Landing a hundred
+yards above where a white "eyelash" of up-flipped water showed above a
+line of big rocks, we clambered down along the right bank on foot.
+Presently all that had occurred was written clear for one who knew the
+way of a slide with a river, and the way of a river with a slide, to
+read as on the page of a book.
+
+"A new rapid, and a whale at that!" gasped Blackmore in astonishment;
+"the first one that's ever formed on the Columbia in my time!"
+
+The amazing thing that had happened was this: Sometime in the spring, a
+landslide of enormous size, doubtless started by an avalanche of snow
+far up in the Selkirks, had ripped the whole side of a mountain out and
+come down all the way across the river. As the pines were hurled
+_backward_ for a couple of hundred feet above the river on the right or
+Rocky Mountain bank, it seemed reasonable to believe that the dam formed
+had averaged considerably more than that in height. As this would have
+backed up the river for at least ten or twelve miles, it is probable
+that the lake formed must have been rising for a number of days before
+it flowed over the top of the barrier and began to sluice it away. On an
+incalculably larger scale, it was just the sort of thing we had heard
+and seen happening on Trident Creek, opposite our Kinbasket Lake camp.
+Not the least remarkable thing in connection with the stupendous
+convulsion was the fact that a large creek was flowing directly down the
+great gash torn out by the slide and emptying right into the rapid which
+was left when the dam had been washed away. Blackmore was quite positive
+that there had been no creek at this point the last time he was there.
+It seemed reasonable to suppose, therefore, that the slide, in removing
+a considerable section of mountain wall, had opened a new line of
+drainage for some little valley in the high Selkirks.
+
+It was the great, rough fragments of cliff and native rock left after
+the earth had been sluiced out of the dam that remained to form the
+unexpected rapid which now confronted us. They had not yet been worn
+smooth like the rest of the river boulders, and it was this fact,
+doubtless, that gave the cascade tumbling through and over them such a
+raw, raucous roar.
+
+The solution of the mystery of the appearance of the rapid was only an
+incident compared with the problem of how to pass it. There was a
+comparatively straight channel, but there was no possibility that the
+boat could live in the huge rollers that billowed down the middle of it.
+Just to the right of the middle there was a smoother chute which looked
+better--provided the boat could be kept to it. Blackmore said that it
+looked like too much of a risk, and decided to try to line down the
+right bank--the one on which we had landed. As the river walls were too
+steep and broken to allow any of the outfit to be portaged, the boat
+would have to go through loaded.
+
+A big uprooted pine tree, extending out fifty feet over the river and
+with its under limbs swept by the water, seemed likely to prove our
+worst difficulty, and I am inclined to believe it would have held us up
+in the end, even after we reached it. As things turned out, however, it
+troubled us not a whit, for the boat never got down that far. Right at
+the head of the rapid her bows jammed between two submerged boulders
+about ten feet from the bank, and there she stuck. As it was quickly
+evident that it was out of the question to lift her on through, it now
+became a problem of working her back up-stream out of the jaws that held
+her. But with the full force of the current driving her tighter between
+the rocks, she now refused to budge even in the direction from which she
+had come.
+
+As I look back on it now, the fifteen minutes Andy and I, mid-waist deep
+in the icy water, spent trying to work that hulking red boat loose so
+that Blackmore could haul her back into quiet water for a fresh start
+takes pride of place as the most miserable interval of the whole trip.
+After Andy's experience in Surprise Rapids, neither of us was inclined
+to throw his whole weight into a lift that might leave him overbalanced
+when the boat was swept out of his reach. And so we pulled and hauled
+and cursed (I should hate to have to record all we said about the
+ancestry of the river, the boat, and the two rocks that held the boat),
+while the tentacles of the cold clutched deeper with every passing
+minute. Roos, sitting on a pine stump and whittling, furnished no help
+but some slight diversion. When he started singing "Old Green River"
+just after I had slipped and soused my head in the current, I stopped
+tugging at the boat for long enough to wade out and shy a stone at him.
+"Green River"[1] was all right in its place, but its place was swirling
+against the _inside_ of the ribs, not the _outside_. Roos had the cheek
+to pick the rock up out of his lap and heave it back at me--but with an
+aim less certain than my own. A few minutes later he called out to
+Blackmore to ask if this new rapid had a name, adding that if it had
+not, he would like to do his employer, Mr. Chester, the honour of naming
+it after him. Blackmore relaxed his strain on the line for a moment to
+roar back that no rapid was ever named after a man unless he had been
+"drownded" in it. "We'll name this one after you if you'll do the
+needful," he growled as an afterthought, throwing his weight again onto
+his line. That tickled Andy and me so mightily that we gave a prodigious
+heave in all recklessness of consequences, and off she came. Gaining the
+bank with little trouble, we joined Blackmore and helped him haul her up
+by line into slower water.
+
+    [1] For the benefit of those who have forgotten, or may never
+    have known, I will state that "Green River" was the name of a
+    brand of whisky consumed by ancient Americans with
+    considerable gusto. L. R. F.
+
+"No good lining," the "Skipper" announced decidedly, as we sat down to
+rest for a spell; "I'm going to drive her straight through." Chilled,
+weary and dead-beat generally, I was in a state of mind that would have
+welcomed jumping into the rapid with a stone tied to my neck rather than
+go back to the half-submerged wading and lifting. Roos said he hated to
+risk his camera, and so would try to crawl with it over the cliff and
+rejoin us below the rapid. Andy said he was quite game to pull his oar
+for a run if we had to, but that he would first like to try lining down
+the opposite bank. He thought we could make it _there_, and he had just
+a bit of a doubt about what might happen in mid-river. That was
+reasonable enough, and Blackmore readily consented to try the other
+side.
+
+[Illustration: OUR WETTEST CAMP AT KINBASKET LAKE (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD FERRY TOWER ABOVE CANOE RIVER (_below_)]
+
+[Illustration: WHERE WE TIED UP AT KINBASKET LAKE (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: THE BRIDGE WHICH THE COLUMBIA CARRIED A HUNDRED MILES AND
+PLACED ACROSS ANOTHER STREAM (_center_)]
+
+[Illustration: LINING DOWN TO THE HEAD OF DEATH RAPIDS (_below_)]
+
+Almost at once it appeared that we had landed in the same trouble as on
+the right bank. Directly off the mouth of the stream that came down from
+the slide the bow of the boat was caught and held between two submerged
+rocks, defying our every attempt to lift it over. Blackmore was becoming
+impatient again, and was just ready to give up and run, when Andy, with
+the aid of a young tree-trunk used as a lever, rolled one of the
+boulders aside and cleared the way. Five minutes later we had completed
+lining down and were pushing off for the final run to the Ferry. No more
+"mystery rapids" cropped up to disturb our voyage, and, pulling in deep,
+swift water, we made the next five miles in twenty-five minutes. A part
+of the distance was through the rocky-walled Red Canyon, one of the
+grandest scenic bits of the Bend. At one point Blackmore showed us a
+sheer-sided rock island, on which he said he had once found the
+graves of two white men, with an inscription so worn as to be
+indecipherable. He thought they were probably those of miners lost
+during the Cariboo gold-field excitement of the middle of the last
+century, or perhaps even those of Hudson Bay _voyageurs_ of a century or
+more back. There were many unidentified graves all the way round the
+Bend, he said.
+
+The river walls fell back a bit on both sides as we neared our
+destination, and the low-hanging western sun had found a gap in the
+Selkirks through which it was pouring its level rays to flood with a
+rich amber light the low wooded benches at the abandoned crossing. The
+old Ferry-tower reared itself upward like the Statue of Liberty, bathing
+its head in the golden light of the expiring day. Steering for it as to
+a beacon, Blackmore beached the boat on a gravel bar flanking an eddy
+almost directly under the rusting cable. We would cross later to spend
+the night in a trapper's cabin on the opposite bank, he said; as there
+was sure to be a shovel or two in the old ferry shacks, he had come
+there at once so as to get down to business without delay.
+
+Right then and there, before we left the boat, I did a thing which I
+have been greatly gratified that I did do--right then and there. I drew
+my companions close to me and assured them that I had made up my mind to
+divide the spoils with them. Blackmore and Andy should have a gallon
+apiece, and Roos a quart. (I scaled down the latter's share sharply,
+partly because he had thrown that stone back at me, and the nerve of it
+rankled, and partly--I must confess--out of "professional jealousy."
+"Stars" and "Directors" never do hit off.) The rest I would retain and
+divide with Captain Armstrong as agreed. I did not tell them that I had
+high hopes that Armstrong would soften in the end and let me keep it all
+to take home. After all of them (including Roos) had wrung my hand with
+gratitude, we set to work, each in his own way.
+
+The spot was readily located the moment we took the compass bearing.
+Pacing off was quite unnecessary. It was in the angle of a V-shaped
+outcrop of bedrock, where a man who knew about what was there could feel
+his way and claw up the treasure in the dark. It was an "inevitable"
+hiding place, just as Gibraltar is an inevitable fortress and Manhattan
+an inevitable metropolis. Yes, we each went to work in our own way.
+Blackmore and Andy found a couple of rusty shovels and went to digging;
+Roos climbed up into the old ferry basket to take a picture of them
+digging; I climbed up on the old shack to take a picture of Roos taking
+a picture of them digging. Nothing was omitted calculated to preserve
+historical accuracy. I had been in Baalbek just before the war when a
+German archaeological mission had inaugurated excavation for Phoenician
+antiquities, and so was sapient in all that an occasion of the kind
+required.
+
+The picture cycle complete, I strolled over to where Andy and Blackmore
+were making the dirt fly like a pair of Airedales digging out a badger.
+The ground was soft, they said, leaning on their shovels; it ought to be
+only the matter of minutes now. The "showings" were good. They had
+already unearthed a glove, a tin cup and a fragment of barrel iron.
+"Gorgeous stroke of luck for us that chap, K----, hit the stuff so hard
+up at Kinbasket," I murmured ecstatically. Blackmore started and
+straightened up like a man hit with a steel bullet. "What was that name
+again?" he gasped. "K----," I replied wonderingly; "some kind of a
+Swede, I believe Armstrong said. But what difference does his name make
+as long as...."
+
+Blackmore tossed his shovel out of the hole and climbed stiffly up after
+it before he replied. When he spoke it was in a voice thin and trailing,
+as though draggled by the Weariness of the Ages. "Difference, boy! All
+the difference between hell and happiness. About two years ago K----
+dropped out of sight from Revelstoke, and it was only known he had gone
+somewhere on the Bend. A week after he returned he died in the hospital
+of the 'D. T's.'"
+
+Roos (perhaps because he had the least to lose by the disaster) was the
+only one who had the strength to speak. It seemed that he had studied
+Latin in the high school. "_Sic transit gloria spiritum frumenti_," was
+what he said. Never in all the voyage did he speak so much to the point.
+
+Blackmore frowned at him gloomily as the mystic words were solemnly
+pronounced. "Young feller," he growled, "I don't savvy what the last
+part of that drug-store lingo you're spitting means; but you're dead
+right about the first part. _Sick_ is sure the word."
+
+We spent the night in an empty trapper's cabin across the river. Charity
+forbids that I lift the curtain of the house of mourning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+III. RUNNING THE BEND
+
+_Boat Encampment to Revelstoke_
+
+
+We were now close to the historic Boat Encampment, where at last our
+course would join with that followed by the early _voyageurs_ and
+explorers. No point in the whole length of the Columbia, not even
+Astoria, has associations more calculated to stir the imagination than
+this tiny patch of silt-covered overflow flat which has been formed by
+the erosive action of three torrential rivers tearing at the hearts of
+three great mountain ranges. Sand and soil of the Rockies, Selkirks and
+the Gold Range, carried by the Columbia, Canoe and Wood rivers, meet and
+mingle to form the remarkable halting place, where the east and
+westbound pioneering traffic of a century stopped to gather breath for
+the next stage of its journey.
+
+Before pushing off from the Ferry on the morning of October seventh I
+dug out from my luggage a copy of a report written in 1881 by Lieutenant
+Thomas W. Symons, U. S. A., on the navigation of the Upper Columbia.
+This was chiefly concerned with that part of the river between the
+International Boundary and the mouth of the Snake, but Lieutenant Symons
+had made a long and exhaustive study of the whole Columbia Basin, and
+his geographical description of the three rivers which unite at Boat
+Encampment is so succinct and yet so comprehensive that I am impelled
+to make a liberal quotation from it here. Of the great assistance I had
+from Lieutenant Symons' invaluable report when I came to the passage of
+that part of the river covered by his remarkable voyage of forty years
+ago I shall write later.
+
+     "Amid the universal gloom and midnight silence of the north, a
+     little above the fifty-second parallel of latitude, seemingly
+     surrounded on all sides by cloud-piercing snow-clad mountains,
+     and nestled down among the lower and nearer cedar-mantled hills,
+     there lies a narrow valley where three streams meet and blend
+     their waters, one coming from the southeast, one from the
+     northwest, and one from the east. The principal one of these
+     streams is the one from the southeast ... and is the headwater
+     stream, and bears the name of the Columbia.
+
+     "The northwestern stream is the extreme northern branch of the
+     Columbia, rising beyond the fifty-third parallel of latitude, and
+     is known among the traders and _voyageurs_ as Canoe River, from
+     the excellence of the barks obtained on its banks for canoe
+     building. This is a small river, forty yards wide at its mouth,
+     flowing through a densely timbered valley in which the trees
+     overhang the stream to such an extent as almost to shut it out
+     from the light of heaven....
+
+     "Portage River, the third of the trio of streams, the smallest
+     and the most remarkable of them, is the one which enters from the
+     east. It has its source in the very heart of the Rocky Mountains
+     and flows through a tremendous cleft in the main range between
+     two of its loftiest peaks, Mounts Brown and Hooker. Just
+     underneath these giant mountains, on the divide known as 'The
+     Height of Land,' lie two small lakes, each about thirty yards in
+     diameter, and which are only a few yards from each other. One has
+     its outlet to the west, Portage River, flowing to the Columbia;
+     the other has its outlet to the east, Whirlpool River, a branch
+     of the Athabaska, which joins the Mackenzie and flows to the
+     Arctic Ocean.
+
+     "The elevated valley in which these lakes are situated is called
+     'The Committee's Punchbowl,' and the nabobs of the fur trade
+     always treated their companions to a bucket of punch when this
+     point was reached, if they had the ingredients from which to make
+     it, and they usually had.
+
+     "The pass across the mountains by the Portage River, 'The
+     Committee's Punchbowl' and Whirlpool River, known as the
+     Athabaska Pass, was for many years the route of the British fur
+     traders in going from one side of the Rocky Mountains to the
+     other. This route is far from being an easy one, and a
+     description of the difficulties, dangers and discomforts of a
+     trip over it will certainly deter any one from making the journey
+     for pleasure. A great part of the way the traveller has to wade
+     up to his middle in the icy waters of Portage River. The journey
+     had to be made in the spring before the summer thaws and rains
+     set in, or in the autumn after severe cold weather had locked up
+     the mountain drainage. During the summer the stream becomes an
+     impetuous impassable mountain torrent."
+
+Considering that Lieutenant Symons had never traversed the Big Bend nor
+the Athabaska Pass, this description (which must have been written from
+his careful readings of the diaries of the old _voyageurs_) is a
+remarkable one. It is not only accurate topographically and
+geographically, but it has an "atmosphere" which one who _does_ know
+this region at first hand will be quick to appreciate. How and when the
+stream which he and the men before him called Portage River came to
+have its name changed to Wood, I have not been able to learn.
+
+A mile below the Ferry Blackmore called my attention to a sharp wedge of
+brown-black mountain which appeared to form the left wall of the river a
+short way ahead. That lofty out-thrust of rock, he said, was the extreme
+northern end of the Selkirk Range. The Columbia, after receiving the
+waters of Wood and Canoe rivers, looped right round this cape and
+started flowing south, but with the _massif_ of the Selkirks still
+forming its left bank. But the Rockies, which had formed its right bank
+all the way from its source, were now left behind, and their place was
+taken by the almost equally lofty Gold Range, which drained east to the
+Columbia and west to the Thompson.
+
+The Columbia doubles back from north to south at an astonishingly sharp
+angle,--as river bends go, that is. Picture mentally Madison Square, New
+York. Now suppose the Columbia to flow north on Broadway, bend round the
+Flatiron Building (which represents the Selkirks), and then flow south
+down Fifth Avenue. Then East Twenty-Third Street would represent Wood
+River, and North Broadway, Canoe River. Now forget all the other streets
+and imagine the buildings of Madison Square as ten to twelve
+thousand-feet-high mountains. And there you have a model of the apex of
+the Big Bend of the Columbia.
+
+A milky grey-green flood--straight glacier water if there ever was
+such--staining the clear stream of the Columbia marked the mouth of Wood
+River, and we pulled in for a brief glimpse in passing of what had once
+been Boat Encampment. I had broken my thermometer at Kinbasket Lake, so
+I could not take the temperatures here; but Wood River was beyond all
+doubt the coldest stream I had ever dabbled a finger-tip in. What the
+ascent to Athabaska Pass must have been may be judged from this
+description by Alexander Ross--one of the original Astoria
+party--written over a hundred years ago.
+
+     "Picture in the mind a dark, narrow defile, skirted on one side
+     by a chain of inaccessible mountains rising to a great height,
+     covered with snow, and slippery with ice from their tops down to
+     the water's edge; and on the other a beach comparatively low, but
+     studded in an irregular manner with standing and fallen trees,
+     rocks and ice, and full of driftwood, over which the torrent
+     everywhere rushes with such irresistible impetuosity that very
+     few would dare to adventure themselves in the stream. Let him
+     again imagine a rapid river descending from some great height,
+     filling up the whole channel between the rocky precipices on the
+     south, and the no less dangerous barrier on the north; and,
+     lastly, let him suppose that we were obliged to make our way on
+     foot against such a torrent, by crossing and recrossing it in all
+     its turns and windings, from morning till night, up to the middle
+     in water, and he will understand the difficulties to be overcome
+     in crossing the Rocky Mountains."
+
+I have been able to learn nothing of records which would indicate that
+any of the early explorers or _voyageurs_ traversed that portion of the
+Columbia down which we had just come. David Thompson, who is credited
+with being the first man to travel the Columbia to the sea, although he
+spent one winter at the foot of Lake Windermere, appears to have made
+his down-river push-off from Boat Encampment. Mr. Basil G. Hamilton, of
+Invermere, sends me an authoritative note on this point, based on
+Thompson's own journal. From this it appears that the great
+astronomer-explorer crossed the Rockies by Athabaska Pass and came down
+to what has since been known by the name of Boat Encampment in March,
+1811. Having built himself a hut, he made preparation for a trip down
+the Columbia, by which he hoped to reach the mouth in advance of either
+of the Astor parties, and thus be able to lay claim to the whole region
+traversed in the name of the Northwest Company. He writes: "We first
+tried to get birch rind wherewith to make our trip to the Pacific Ocean,
+but without finding any even thick enough to make a dish. So we split
+out thin boards of cedar wood, about six inches in breadth, and built a
+canoe twenty-five feet in length and fifty inches in breadth, of the
+same form as a common canoe. As we had no nails we sewed the boards to
+each other round the timbers, making use of the fine roots of the pine
+which we split."
+
+This ingeniously constructed but precarious craft was finished on the
+sixteenth of April, and Thompson's party embarked in it on the
+seventeenth. Mr. Hamilton doubts if this was the same craft in which
+they finally reached Astoria. From my own knowledge of what lies between
+I am very much inclined to agree with him. Certainly no boat of the
+construction described could have lasted even to the Arrow Lakes without
+much patching, and if a boat seeming on the lines of the original really
+reached the Pacific, it must have been many times renewed in the course
+of the voyage. I shall hardly need to add that Thompson's remarkable
+journey, so far as its original object was concerned, was a failure. He
+reached the mouth of the Columbia well in advance of Astor's land party,
+but only to find the New Yorker fur-trader's expedition by way of Cape
+Horn and Hawaii already in occupation.
+
+Boat Encampment of to-day is neither picturesque nor interesting;
+indeed, there are several camp-sites at the Bend that one would choose
+in preference to that rather damp patch of brush-covered, treeless
+clearing. All that I found in the way of relics of the past were some
+huge cedar stumps, almost covered with silt, and the remains of a
+demolished _batteau_. I salved a crude oar-lock from the latter to carry
+as a mascot for my down-river trip. As a mascot it served me very well,
+everything considered; though it _did_ get me in rather bad once when I
+tried to use it for an oar-lock.
+
+Before the sparkling jade-green stream of the Columbia had entirely
+quenched the milky flow of Wood River, the chocolate-brown torrent of
+Canoe River came pouring in to mess things up anew. The swift northern
+affluent, greatly swelled by the recent rains, was in flood, and at the
+moment appeared to be discharging a flow almost if not quite equal to
+that of the main river. For a considerable distance the waters of the
+right side of the augmented river retained their rich cinnamon tint, and
+it was not until a brisk stretch of rapid a mile below the Bend got in
+its cocktail-shaker action that the two streams became thoroughly
+blended. Then the former crystalline clearness of the Columbia was a
+thing of the past. It was still far from being a muddy river. There was
+still more of green than of brown in its waters, but they were dully
+translucent where they had been brilliantly transparent. Not until the
+hundred-mile-long settling-basin of the Arrow Lakes allowed the sediment
+to deposit did the old emerald-bright sparkle come back again.
+
+A couple of quick rifle shots from the left bank set the echoes ringing
+just after we had passed Canoe River, and Blackmore turned in to where a
+man and dog were standing in front of an extremely picturesquely located
+log cabin. It proved to be a French-Canadian half-breed trapper called
+Alphonse Edmunds. His interest in us was purely social, and after a five
+minutes' yarn we pulled on. Blackmore said the chap lived in Golden, and
+that to avoid the dreaded run down through Surprise and Kinbasket
+rapids, he was in the habit of going a couple of hundred miles by the C.
+P. R. to Kamloops, thence north for a hundred miles or more by the
+Canadian Northern, thence by packtrain a considerable distance over the
+divide to the head of Canoe River, and finally down the latter by boat
+to the Bend, where he did his winter trapping. This was about four times
+the distance as by the direct route down the Columbia, and probably at
+least quadrupled time and expense. It threw an illuminative side-light
+on the way some of the natives regarded the upper half of the Big Bend.
+
+The river was deeper now, but still plugged along at near to the
+ten-miles-an-hour it had averaged from the foot of Kinbasket Rapids. As
+the western slopes of the Selkirks were considerably more extensive
+than the eastern, the drainage to the Columbia from that side was
+proportionately greater. Cascades and cataracts came tumbling in every
+few hundred yards, and every mile or two, from one side or the other, a
+considerable creek would pour down over its spreading boulder "fan." We
+landed at twelve-thirty and cooked our lunch on the stove of a perfect
+beauty of a trapper's cabin near the mouth of Mica Creek. The trapper
+had already begun getting in his winter grub, but was away at the
+moment. The whole place was as clean as a Dutch kitchen. A recent shift
+of channel by the fickle-minded Mica Creek had undermined almost to the
+door of this snug little home, and Andy reckoned it would go down river
+on the next spring rise.
+
+[Illustration: TRAPPER'S CABIN BEING UNDERMINED BY STREAM]
+
+[Illustration: THE CAMP ABOVE TWELVE-MILE]
+
+[Illustration: LANDING AT SUNSET ABOVE CANOE RIVER (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: ANDY AND BLACKMORE SWINGING THE BOAT INTO THE HEAD OF
+ROCK SLIDE RAPIDS (_centre_)]
+
+[Illustration: THE BIG ROLLERS, FROM 15 TO 20 FEET FROM HOLLOW TO CREST,
+AT HEAD OF DEATH RAPIDS (_below_)]
+
+We ran the next eighteen miles in less than two hours, tying up for the
+night at a well-built Government cabin three miles below Big Mouth
+Creek. It was occupied for the winter by a Swede trapper named Johnston.
+He was out running his trap-lines when we arrived, but came back in time
+to be our guest for dinner. He made one rather important contribution to
+the menu--a "mulligan," the _piece de resistance_ of which, so he
+claimed, was a mud-hen he had winged with his revolver that morning.
+There were six or seven ingredients in that confounded Irish stew
+already, and--much to the disgust of Roos and myself, who didn't fancy
+eating mud-hen--Andy dumped into it just about everything he had been
+cooking except the prunes. That's the proper caper with "mulligans," and
+they are very good, too, unless some one of the makings chances to be
+out of your line. And such most decidedly was mud-hen--fish-eating
+mud-hen! As we were sort of company, Roos and I put on the best faces we
+could and filled up on prunes and marmalade. It was only after the other
+three had cleaned out the "mulligan" can that Andy chanced to mention
+that "mud-hen" was the popularly accepted euphemism for grouse shot out
+of season!
+
+Andy and Blackmore and Johnston talked "trapper stuff" all
+evening--tricks for tempting marten, how to prevent the pesky wolverine
+from robbing traps, "stink-baits," prices, and the prospects for beaver
+when it again became lawful to take them. Johnston was a typical Swede,
+with little apparent regard for his physical strength if money could be
+made by drawing upon it. The previous season he had had to sleep out in
+his blankets many nights while covering his lines, and he counted
+himself lucky that this year he had two or three rough cabins for
+shelter. He was a terrific worker and ate sparingly of the grub that
+cost him twenty cents a pound to bring in. He was already looking a bit
+drawn, and Blackmore said the next morning that he would be more or less
+of a physical wreck by spring, just as he had been the previous season.
+The hardships these trappers endure is something quite beyond the
+comprehension of any one who has not been with them. A city man, a
+farmer, even a sailor, knows nothing to compare with it.
+
+We were a mile down stream the next morning before Blackmore discovered
+that his rifle had been left in Johnston's cabin, and it took him an
+hour of hard breaking through the wet underbrush to recover it. The
+river was still rising from the rains, and the current swift with
+occasional rapids. Blackmore approached the head of Gordon Rapids
+(named, of course, from a man of that name who had lost his life there)
+with considerable caution. He intended to run them, he said, but the
+convergence of currents threw a nasty cross-riffle that was not to be
+taken liberties with. He appeared considerably relieved when he found
+that the high water made it possible to avoid the main rapid by a swift
+but comparatively clear back-channel. We had a good view of the riffle
+from below when we swung back into the main channel. It was certainly a
+vicious tumble of wild white water, and even with our considerable
+freeboard it would have been a sloppy run. I should have been very
+reluctant to go into it all with a smaller boat.
+
+Still deeply canyoned between lofty mountains, the scenery in this part
+of the Bend was quite equal to the finest through which we had passed
+above Canoe River. The steady drizzle which had now set in, however,
+made pictures out of the question. This did not deter Roos from looking
+for "location." He was under special instructions to make some effective
+camp shots, and had been on the lookout for a suitable place ever since
+we started. This day he found what he wanted. Shooting down a swift,
+rough rapid shortly after noon, we rounded a sharp bend and shot past
+the mouth of a deep black gorge with the white shimmer of a big
+waterfall just discernible in its dusky depths. Almost immediately
+opposite a rocky point jutted out into the eddy. It was thickly
+carpeted with moss and grass, and bright with the reds and yellows of
+patches of late flowers. At its base was an almost perfect circle of
+towering cedars and sugar pines, their dark green foliage standing out
+in fret-work against the pale purple mists filling the depths of a
+wedge-shaped bit of mountain valley behind. There were glaciers and
+peaks hanging giddily above, but these were obscured by the rain clouds.
+
+In response to Roos' glad "Eureka!" Blackmore threw the boat's head
+sharply toward the left bank, and hard pulling just won us the edge of
+the eddy. Missing that, we would have run on into the rough-and-tumble
+of Twelve-Mile Rapids, where (as we found the next day) there was no
+landing for another half mile. The place looked even lovelier at close
+range than from the river, and Roos announced decisively that we were
+not going to stir from there until the sun came to give him light for
+his camp shots. Fortunately, this befell the next morning. After that,
+to the best of my recollection, we did not see the sun again until we
+crossed over to the U. S. A. many days later.
+
+Roos took a lot of trouble with his camp picture, and I have since heard
+that it was most favourably reported upon from the studio. Setting up on
+the end of the point, he made his opening shot as the boat ran down the
+rapid (we had had to line back above for this, of course) and floundered
+through the swirls and whirlpools past the mouth of the gloomy gorge and
+its half-guessed waterfall. After landing and packing our outfit up the
+bank, trees were felled, boughs cut and spread and the tent set up.
+Finally, we fried bacon, tossed flapjacks and baked bannocks. I could
+tell by his expression that Roos dearly wanted to lend a Mack Sennett
+"custard-pie" touch by having some one smear some one else in the face
+with a mushy half-baked bannock, but discretion prevailed. Qualified
+"smearers" there were in plenty--Andy and Blackmore were wood-choppers
+and I was an ex-pitcher and shot-putter,--but the designation of a
+"smear-ee" was quite another matter. Roos did well to stop where he did.
+
+Pushing off about noon, we dropped down to near the head of
+"Twelve-Mile," and put Roos ashore on the right bank for a shot as we
+ran through. We had expected to land to pick him up at the foot of the
+rapid, but Blackmore, in order to make the picture as spectacular as
+possible, threw the boat right into the midst of the white stuff. There
+was a good deal of soft fluff flying in the air, but nothing with much
+weight in it. We ran through easily, but got so far over toward the left
+bank that it was impossible to pull into the eddy we had hoped to make.
+Andy and I pulled our heads off for five minutes before we could reach
+slack water near the left bank, and by then we were a quarter of a mile
+below the foot of the rapid. Andy had to go back to help Roos down over
+the boulders with his machine and tripod. Another mile in fast water
+brought us to the head of Rock Slide Rapids, and we landed on the right
+bank for our last stretch of lining on the Big Bend.
+
+The Rock Slide is the narrowest point on the whole Columbia between Lake
+Windermere and the Pacific. An almost perpendicular mountainside has
+been encroaching on the river here for many years, possibly damming it
+all the way across at times. From the Slide to the precipitous left bank
+there is an average channel seventy feet in width, through which the
+river rushes with tremendous velocity over and between enormous
+sharp-edged boulders. This pours into a cauldron-like eddy at a
+right-angled bend, and over the lower end of that swirling maelstrom the
+river spills into another narrow chute to form the _Dalles des Morts_ of
+accursed memory. I know of no place on the upper half of the Bend where
+the river is less than a hundred feet wide. The Little Dalles, just
+below the American line, are about a hundred and forty feet across in
+their narrowest part, and the Great Dalles below Celilo Falls are
+slightly wider. Kettle Falls, Hell-Gate and Rock Island Rapids have side
+channels of less than a hundred feet, but the main channels are much
+broader. Save only the _Dalles des Morts_ (which are really its
+continuation) the Rock Slide has no near rival anywhere on the river.
+
+It has struck me as quite probable that the Rock Slide, and the
+consequent constriction of the river at that point, are of comparatively
+recent occurrence, almost certainly of the last hundred years. In the
+diaries of Ross, Cox and Franchiere, on which most of the earlier
+Columbian history is based, I can find no mention of anything of the
+kind at this point, a location readily identifiable because of its
+proximity to the _Dalles des Morts_, which they all mention. But in
+Ross' record I _do_ find this significant passage:
+
+     "A little after starting (_from the Dalles des Morts_) we backed
+     our paddles and stood still for some minutes admiring a striking
+     curiosity. The water of a cataract creek, after shooting over the
+     brink of a bold precipice, falls in a white sheet onto a broad,
+     flat rock, smooth as glass, which forms the first step; then upon
+     a second, some ten feet lower down, and lastly, on a third,
+     somewhat lower. It then enters a subterranean vault, formed at
+     the mouth like a funnel, and after passing through this funnel it
+     again issues forth with a noise like distant thunder. After
+     falling over another step it meets the front of a bold rock,
+     which repulses back the water with such violence as to keep it
+     whirling around in a large basin. Opposite to this rises the wing
+     of a shelving cliff, which overhangs the basin and forces back
+     the rising spray, refracting in the sunshine all the colours of
+     the rainbow. The creek then enters the Columbia."
+
+On the left bank, immediately above the _Dalles des Morts_, an extremely
+beautiful little waterfall leaps into the river from the cliffs, but
+neither this (as will readily be seen from my photograph of it) nor any
+other similar fall I saw in the whole length of the Columbia, bears the
+least suggestion of a resemblance to the remarkable cataract Ross so
+strikingly describes. But I _did_ see a very sizable stream of water
+cascading right down the middle of the great rock slide, and at a point
+which might very well coincide with that at which Ross saw his
+"stairway-and-tunnel" phenomenon. Does it not seem quite possible that
+the latter should have undermined the cliff over and through which it
+was tumbling, precipitating it into the river and forming the Rock Slide
+of the present day?
+
+The middle of the channel at Rock Slide was a rough, smashing cascade
+that looked quite capable of grinding a boat to kindling wood in a
+hundred feet; but to the right of it the water was considerably better.
+Blackmore said the chances would be all in favour of running it safely,
+_but_, if anything at all went wrong (such as the unshipping of an oar,
+for instance), it might make it hard to get into the eddy at the bend;
+and if we missed the eddy--Death Rapids! He didn't seem to think any
+further elucidation was necessary. It would be best to line the whole
+way down, he said.
+
+On account of the considerable depth of water right up to the banks, the
+boat struck on the rocks rather less than usual; but the clamber over
+the jagged, fresh-fallen granite was the worst thing of the kind we
+encountered. I _did_ get a bit of a duck here, though, but it was not
+near to being anything serious, and the sequel was rather amusing.
+Losing my footing for a moment on the only occasion I had to give Andy a
+lift with the boat, I floundered for a few strokes, kicked into an eddy
+and climbed out.
+
+Ever since Andy had his souse and came out with empty pockets, I had
+taken the precaution of buttoning mine securely down before starting in
+to line. The buttons had resisted the best efforts of the kleptomaniacal
+river current, and I came out with the contents of my pocket wet but
+intact. But there was a trifling casualty even thus. A leg of my riding
+breeches was missing from the knee down. It was an ancient pair of East
+Indian _jodpurs_ I was wearing (without leggings, of course), and age
+and rough usage had opened a slit at the knee. Possibly I caught this
+somewhere on the boat without noting it in my excitement; or it is even
+possible the current _did_ tear it off. There was nothing especially
+remarkable about it in any case. All the same, Blackmore and Andy always
+solemnly declared that the _geesly_ river, baulked by my buttons of its
+designs on the contents of my pockets, had tried to get away with my
+whole pair of pants! If that was so, it had its way in the end. Before I
+set out on the second leg of my voyage from the foot of the Arrow Lakes,
+I threw the river god all that was left of that bedraggled pair of
+_jodpurs_ as a propitiatory offering.
+
+The deeper rumble of Death Rapids became audible above the higher-keyed
+grind of Rock Slide as we worked down toward the head of the intervening
+eddy. Of all the cataracts and cascades with sinister records on the
+Columbia this Dalles of the Dead has undoubtedly been the one to draw to
+itself the greatest share of execration. The terrific toll of lives they
+have claimed is unquestionably traceable to the fact that this swift,
+narrow chute of round-topped rollers is many times worse than it looks,
+especially to a comparatively inexperienced river man, and there have
+been many such numbered among its victims. There are two or three places
+in Surprise Rapids, and one or two even in Kinbasket, that the veriest
+greenhorn would know better than to try to run; Death Rapids it is
+conceivable that a novice might try, just as many of them have, and to
+their cost. However, it is probable that the greatest number that have
+died here were comparatively experienced men who were sucked into the
+death-chute in spite of themselves. Of such was made up the party whose
+tragic fate gave the rapid its sinister name. Ross Cox, of the original
+Astorians, tells the story, and the account of it I am setting down here
+is slightly abridged from his original narrative.
+
+     On the sixteenth of April, 1817, Ross Cox's party of twenty-three
+     left Fort George (originally and subsequently Astoria) to ascend
+     the Columbia and cross the Rockies by the Athabaska Pass, en
+     route Montreal. On the twenty-seventh of May they arrived at Boat
+     Encampment after the most severe labours in dragging their boats
+     up the rapids and making their way along the rocky shores. Seven
+     men of the party were so weak, sick and worn out that they were
+     unable to proceed across the mountains, so they were given the
+     best of the canoes and provisions, and were to attempt to return
+     down river to Spokane House, a Hudson Bay post near the mouth of
+     the river of that name. They reached the place which has since
+     borne the name of _Dalles des Morts_ without trouble. There, in
+     passing their canoe down over the rapids with a light cod line,
+     it was caught in a whirlpool. The line snapped, and the canoe,
+     with all the provisions and blankets, was lost.
+
+     The men found themselves utterly destitute, and at a time of year
+     when it was impossible to procure any wild fruit or roots. The
+     continual rising of the water completely inundated the beach,
+     which compelled them to force their way through a dense forest,
+     rendered almost impervious by a thick growth of prickly
+     underbrush. Their only nourishment was water. On the third day a
+     man named Macon died, and his surviving comrades, though
+     unconscious of how soon they might be called on to follow him,
+     divided his remains into equal parts, on which they subsisted for
+     several days. From the sore and swollen state of their feet,
+     their daily progress did not exceed two or three miles. A tailor
+     named Holmes was the next to die, and the others subsisted for
+     some days on his emaciated remains. In a little while, of the
+     seven men, only two remained alive--Dubois and La Pierre. La
+     Pierre was subsequently found on the upper Arrow Lake by two
+     Indians who were coasting it in a canoe. They took him to Kettle
+     Falls, from where he was carried to Spokane House.
+
+     He stated that after the death of the fifth man of the party,
+     Dubois and he remained for some days at the spot, living on the
+     remains. When they felt strong enough to continue, they loaded
+     themselves with as much of the flesh as they could carry; that
+     with this they succeeded in reaching the Upper Lake, around the
+     shores of which they wandered for some time in search of Indians;
+     that their food at length became exhausted, and they were again
+     reduced to the prospects of starvation. On the second night after
+     their last meal La Pierre observed something suspicious in the
+     conduct of Dubois, which induced him to be on his guard; and that
+     shortly after they had lain down for the night, and while he
+     feigned sleep, he observed Dubois cautiously opening his
+     clasp-knife, with which he sprang at La Pierre, inflicting on the
+     hand the blow evidently intended for the neck. A silent and
+     desperate conflict followed, in which, after severe struggling,
+     La Pierre succeeded in wresting the knife from his antagonist,
+     and, having no other resource left, was finally obliged to cut
+     Dubois' throat. It was several days after this that he was
+     discovered by the Indians.
+
+This was one of the earliest, and certainly the most terrible, of all
+the tragedies originating at the _Dalles des Morts_. There are a number
+of graves in the vicinity, but more numerous still are the inscriptions
+on the cliffs in memory of the victims whose bodies were never recovered
+for burial.
+
+Compared to what we had been having, lining down Death Rapids was
+comparatively simple. It was only when one got right down beside them
+that the terrible power of the great rolling waves became evident. From
+crest to trough they must have been from twelve to fifteen feet high,
+with the water--on account of the steep declivity and the lack of
+resistance from rocks--running at race-horse speed. We had become so
+used to expecting big boulders to underlie heavy waves that it was
+difficult to realize that there was all of a hundred feet of green water
+between these giant rollers and the great reefs of bedrock which were
+responsible for them.
+
+For a quarter of a mile below where the rolling waves ceased to comb
+there was a green-white chaos of whirlpools and the great geyser-like
+up-boils where the sucked-down water was ejected again to the surface.
+This was another of the places where the river was said to "eat up"
+whole pine trees at high water, and it was not hard to believe. Even now
+the voracious vortices were wolfing very considerable pieces of
+driftwood, and one had to keep a very sharp lookout to see the
+spewed-forth fragments reappear at all. This was no water for a small
+boat or canoe. It would, for instance, have engulfed the sixteen-foot
+skiff which I used on the lower river as an elephant gulps a tossed
+peanut. But our big double-ended thirty-footer was more of a mouthful.
+Blackmore pushed off without hesitation as soon as we had lined below
+the rollers, but _not_ without reiterating the old warning about not
+dipping too deep, and being quick about throwing the oar free from its
+oar-lock if a whirlpool started to drag down the blade. We had a lively
+five minutes of it, what with the whirlpools trying to suck her stern
+under and the geysers trying to toss her bow on high; but they never had
+us in serious trouble. They did spin her all the way round, though, in
+spite of all the three of us could do to hold her, and as for our
+course--a chart of it would make the track of an earthquake on a
+seismograph look as if drawn with a straight-edge!
+
+Another mile took us to the head of Priest Rapids, so named because two
+French-Canadian priests had been drowned there. This was to be our great
+rapid-running picture. Bad light had prevented our getting anything of
+the kind in Surprise and Kinbasket rapids, and "Twelve-Mile," though
+white and fast, was hardly the real thing. But Priest Rapids was reputed
+the fastest on the whole river--certainly over twenty miles an hour,
+Blackmore reckoned. It had almost as much of a pitch as the upper part
+of the first drop of Surprise Rapids down to the abrupt fall. But, being
+straight as a city street and with plenty of water over the rocks,
+running it was simply a matter of having a large enough boat and being
+willing to take the soaking. Blackmore had the boat, and, for the sake
+of a real rip-snorting picture, he said he was willing to take the
+soaking. So were Andy and I.
+
+[Illustration: LOOKING ACROSS TO BOAT ENCAMPMENT (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: "WOOD SMOKE AT TWILIGHT" ABOVE TWELVE-MILE (_below_)]
+
+[Illustration: LINING DOWN ROCK SLIDE RAPIDS (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: WHEN THE COLUMBIA TOOK HALF OF MY RIDING BREECHES
+(_below_)]
+
+We dropped Roos at the head of the rumbling "intake," and while Andy
+went down to help him set up in a favourable position, Blackmore and
+I lined back up-stream a hundred yards so as to have a good jump on when
+we started. Andy joined us presently, to report that Roos appraised the
+"back-lighting" effect across the white caps as "cheap at a million
+dollars." He was going to make the shot of his life. Pushing off we laid
+on our oars, floating down until we caught Roos' signal to come on. Then
+Andy and I swung into it with all of the something like four hundred and
+fifty pounds of beef we scaled between us. Blackmore headed her straight
+down the "V" into the swiftest and roughest part of the rapid. It was a
+bit less tempestuous toward the right bank, but a quiet passage was not
+what he was looking for this trip.
+
+The boat must have had half her length out of water when she hurdled off
+the top of that first wave. I couldn't see, of course, but I judged it
+must have been that way from the manner in which she slapped down and
+buried her nose under the next comber. That brought over the water in a
+solid green flood. Andy and I only caught it on our hunched backs, but
+Blackmore, on his feet and facing forward, had to withstand a full
+frontal attack. My one recollection of him during that mad run is that
+of a freshly emerged Neptune shaking his grizzly locks and trying to
+blink the water out of his eyes.
+
+Our team-work, as usual, went to sixes-and-sevens the moment we hit the
+rough water, but neither Andy nor I stopped pulling on that account.
+Yelling like a couple of _locoed_ Apaches, we kept slapping out with our
+oar-blades into every hump of water within reach, and I have an idea
+that we managed to keep a considerable way even over the speeding
+current right to the finish. It was quite the wettest river run I ever
+made. A number of times during the war I was in a destroyer when
+something turned up to send it driving with all the speed it had--or all
+its plates would stand, rather--into a head sea. That meant that it made
+most of the run tunnelling under water. And that was the way it seemed
+going down Priest Rapids, only not so bad, of course. We were only about
+a quarter full of water when we finally pulled up to the bank in an eddy
+to wait for the movie man.
+
+I could see that something had upset Roos by the droop of his shoulders,
+even when he was a long way off; the droop of his mouth confirmed the
+first impression on closer view. "You couldn't do that again, could
+you?" he asked Blackmore, with a furtive look in his eyes. The "Skipper"
+stopped bailing with a snort. "Sure I'll do it again," he growled
+sarcastically. "Just line the boat back where she was and I'll bring her
+down again--only not to-night. I'll want to get dried out first. But
+what's the matter anyhow? Didn't we run fast enough to suit you?"
+
+"Guess _you_ ran fast enough," was the reply; "but the film didn't.
+Buckled in camera. Oil-can! Washout! Out of luck!" Engulfed in a deep
+purple aura of gloom, Roos climbed back into the boat and asked how far
+it was to camp and dinner.
+
+For a couple of miles we had a fast current with us, but by the time we
+reached the mouth of Downie Creek--the centre of a great gold rush half
+a century ago--the river was broadening and deepening and slowing down.
+A half hour more of sharp pulling brought us to Keystone Creek and
+Boyd's Ranch, where we tied up for the night. This place had the
+distinction of being the only ranch on the Big Bend, but it was really
+little more than a clearing with a house and barn. Boyd had given his
+name to a rapid at the head of Revelstoke Canyon--drowned while trying
+to line by at high water, Blackmore said--and the present owner was an
+American Civil War Pensioner named Wilcox. He was wintering in
+California for his health, but Andy, being a friend of his, knew where
+to look for the key. Hardly had the frying bacon started its sizzling
+prelude than there came a joyous yowl at the door, and as it was opened
+an enormous tiger-striped tomcat bounded into the kitchen. Straight for
+Andy's shoulder he leaped, and the trapper's happy howl of recognition
+must have met him somewhere in the air. Andy hugged the ecstatically
+purring bundle to his breast as if it were a long-lost child, telling us
+between nuzzles into the arched furry back that this was "Tommy" (that
+was his name, of course), with whom he had spent two winters alone in
+his trapper's cabin. It was hard to tell which was the more delighted
+over this unexpected reunion, man or cat.
+
+He had little difficulty in accounting for "Tommy's" presence at Boyd's.
+He had given the cat to Wilcox a season or two back, and Wilcox, when he
+left for California, had given him to "Wild Bill," who had a cabin ten
+miles farther down the river. "Bill" already had a brother of "Tommy,"
+but a cat of much less character. As "Bill" was much given to periodic
+sprees, Andy was satisfied that "Tommy," who was a great sizer-up of
+personality, had left him in disgust and returned to his former deserted
+home to shift for himself. As he would pull down rabbits as readily as
+an ordinary cat caught mice, this was an easy matter as long as the snow
+did not get too deep. Of what might happen after that Andy did not like
+to think. He would have to make some provision for his pet before full
+winter set in.
+
+That evening we sat around the kitchen fire, telling all the cat stories
+we knew and quarrelling over whose turn it was to hold "Tommy" and put
+him through his tricks. The latter were of considerable variety. There
+was all the usual "sit-up," "jump-through" and "roll-over" stuff, but
+with such "variations" as only a trapper, snow-bound for days with
+nothing else to do, would have the time to conceive and perfect. For
+instance, if you only waved your hand in an airy spiral, "Tommy" would
+respond with no more than the conventional "once-over;" but a gentle
+tweak of the tail following the spiral, brought a roll to the left,
+while two tweaks directed him to the right. Similarly with his "front"
+and "back" somersaults, which took their inspiration from a slightly
+modified form of aerial spiral. Of course only Andy could get the fine
+work out of him, but the ordinary "jump-through" stuff he would do for
+any of us.
+
+I am afraid the cat stories we told awakened, temporarily at least, a
+good deal of mutual distrust. Roos didn't figure greatly, but Andy and
+Blackmore and I were glowering back and forth at each other with
+"I-suppose-you-don't-believe-_that_" expressions all evening. The two
+woodsmen, "hunting in couples" for the occasion, displayed considerable
+team-work. One of their best was of a trapper of their acquaintance--name
+and present address mentioned with scrupulous particularity--who had
+broken his leg one winter on Maloney Creek, just as he was at the end of
+his provisions. Dragging himself to his cabin, he lay down to die of
+starvation. The next morning his cat jumped in through the window with a
+rabbit in his mouth. Then the trapper had his great idea. Leaving the
+cat just enough to keep him alive, he took the rest for himself. That
+made the cat go on hunting, and each morning he came back with a rabbit.
+And so it went on until springtime brought in his partner and relief. I
+asked them why, if the cat was so hungry, he didn't eat the rabbit up in
+the woods; but they said that wasn't the way of a cat, or at least of
+this particular cat.
+
+Then I told them of a night, not long before the war, that I spent with
+the German archaeologists excavating at Babylon. Hearing a scratching on
+my door, I got up and found a tabby cat there. Entering the room, she
+nosed about under my mosquito netting for a few moments with
+ingratiating mewings and purrings, finally to trot out through the open
+door with an "I'll-see-you-again-in-a-moment" air. Presently she
+returned with a new-born kitten in her mouth. Nuzzling under the net and
+coverlets, she deposited the mewing atom in my bed, and then trotted off
+after another. When the whole litter of five was there, she crawled in
+herself and started nursing them. I spent the night on the couch, and
+without a net.
+
+According to the best of my judgment, that story of mine was the only
+true one told that night. And yet--confound them--they wouldn't believe
+it--any more than I would theirs!
+
+Considerable feeling arose along toward bed-time as to who was going to
+have "Tommy" to sleep with. Roos--who hadn't cut much ice in the
+story-telling--came strong at this juncture by adopting cave-man tactics
+and simply picking "Tommy" up and walking off with him. Waiting until
+Roos was asleep, I crept over and, gently extricating the furry pillow
+from under his downy cheek, carried it off to snuggle against my own
+ear. Whether Andy adopted the same Sabine methods himself, I never quite
+made sure. Anyhow, it was out of his blankets that "Tommy" came crawling
+in the morning.
+
+As we made ready to pack off, Andy was in considerable doubt as to
+whether it would be best to leave his pet where he was or to take him
+down to "Wild Bill" again. "Tommy" cut the Gordian Knot himself by
+following us down to the boat like a dog and leaping aboard. He was
+horribly upset for a while when he saw the bank slide away from him and
+felt the motion of the boat, but Roos, muffling the dismal yowls under
+his coat, kept him fairly quiet until "Wild Bill's" landing was reached.
+Here he became his old self again, following us with his quick little
+canine trot up to the cabin. Outside the door he met his twin brother,
+and the two, after a swift sniff of identification, slipped away across
+the clearing to stalk rabbits.
+
+"Wild Bill," as Andy had anticipated, was still in bed, but got up and
+welcomed us warmly as soon as he found who it was. He was a small
+man--much to my surprise, and looked more like a French-Canadian
+gentleman in reduced circumstances than the most tumultuous
+booze-fighter on the upper Columbia. I had heard scores of stories of
+his escapades in the days when Golden and Revelstoke were wide-open
+frontier towns and life was really worth living. But most of them just
+miss being "drawing-room," however, and I refrain from setting them
+down. There was one comparatively polite one, though, of the time he
+started the biggest free-for-all fight Revelstoke ever knew by using the
+white, woolly, cheek-cuddling poodle of a dance-hall girl to wipe the
+mud off his boots with. And another--but no, that one wouldn't quite
+pass censor.
+
+"Bill" had shot a number of bear in the spring, and now asked Andy to
+take the unusually fine skins to Revelstoke and sell them for him. He
+also asked if we could let him have any spare provisions, as he was
+running very short. He was jubilant when I told him he could take
+everything we had left for what it had cost in Golden. That was like
+finding money, he said, for packing in his stuff cost him close to ten
+cents a pound. But it wasn't the few dollars he saved on the grub that
+etched a silver--nay, a roseate--lining on the sodden rain clouds for
+"Wild Bill" that day; rather it was the sequel to the consequences of a
+kindly thought I had when he came down to the boat to see us off.
+
+"'Bill,'" I said, as he started to wring our hands in parting, "they
+tell me you've become a comparative teetotaler these last few years. But
+we have a little 'thirty per over-proof' left--just a swallow.
+Perhaps--for the sake of the old days...."
+
+That quick, chesty cough, rumbling right from the diaphragm, was the one
+deepest sound of emotion I ever heard--and I've heard a fair amount of
+"emoting," too. "Don't mind--if I do," he mumbled brokenly, with a long
+intake of breath that was almost a sob. I handed him a mug--a hulking
+big half-pint coffee mug, it was--and uncorked the bottle. "Say
+when...."
+
+"Thanks--won't trouble you," he muttered, snatching the bottle from me
+with a hand whose fingers crooked like claws. Then he inhaled another
+deep breath, took out his handkerchief, brushed off a place on one of
+the thwarts, sat down, and, pouring very deliberately, emptied the
+contents of the bottle to the last drop into the big mug. The bottle--a
+British Imperial quart--had been a little less than a quarter full; the
+mug was just short of brimming. "Earzow!" he mumbled, with a sweepingly
+comprehensive gesture with the mug. Then, crooking his elbow, he dumped
+the whole half pint down his throat. Diluted four-to-one, that liquid
+fire would have made an ordinary man wince; and "Wild Bill" downed it
+without a blink. Then he wiped his lips with his sleeve, set mug and
+bottle carefully down on the thwart, bowed low to each of us, and
+stepped ashore with dignified tread. Blackmore, checking Roos'
+hysterical giggle with a prod of his paddle handle, pushed off into the
+current. "Wait!" he admonished, eyeing the still figure on the bank with
+the fascinated glance of a man watching a short length of fuse sputter
+down toward the end of a stick of dynamite.
+
+We had not long to wait. The detonation of the dynamite was almost
+instantaneous. The mounting fumes of that "thirty per" fired the
+slumbering volcano of the old trapper as a dash of kerosene fires a bed
+of dormant coals. And so "Wild Bill" went wild. Dancing and whooping
+like an Indian, he shouted for us to come back--that he would give us
+his furs, his cabin, the Columbia, the Selkirks, Canada.... What he was
+going to offer next we never learned, for just then a very sobering
+thing occurred--"Tommy" and his twin brother, attracted by the noise,
+came trotting down the path from the cabin to learn what it was all
+about.
+
+Andy swore that he had told "Bill" that we had brought "Tommy" back, and
+that "Bill" had heard him, and replied that he hoped the cat would stay
+this time. But even if this was true, it no longer signified. "Bill" had
+forgotten all about it, and _knew_ that there ought to be only one
+tiger-striped tomcat about the place, whereas his eyes told him there
+were two. So he kept counting them, and stopping every now and then to
+hold up two fingers at us in pathetic puzzlement. Finally he began to
+chase them--or rather "it"--now one of "it" and now the other. The last
+we saw of him, as the current swept the boat round a point, he had
+caught "Tommy's" twin brother and was still trying to enumerate
+"Tommy." Very likely by that time there were two of him in fancy as well
+as in fact--possibly mauve and pink ones.
+
+Blackmore took a last whiff at the neck of the rum bottle and then
+tossed it gloomily into the river. "The next time you ask a man to take
+a 'swallow,'" he said, "probably you'll know enough to find out how big
+his 'swallow' is in advance."
+
+We pulled hard against a head wind all morning, and with not much help
+from the current. The latter began to speed up at Rocky Point Rapids,
+and from there the going was lively right on through Revelstoke Canyon.
+Sand Slide Rapid, a fast-rolling serpentine cascade near the head of the
+Canyon, gave us a good wetting as Blackmore slashed down the middle of
+it, and he was still bailing when we ran in between the sides of the
+great red-and-black-walled gorge. Between cliffs not over a hundred feet
+apart for a considerable distance, the river rushes with great velocity,
+throwing itself in a roaring wave now against one side, now against the
+other. As the depth is very great (Blackmore said he had failed to get
+bottom with a hundred-and-fifty-foot line), the only things to watch out
+for were the cliffs and the whirlpools. Neither was a serious menace to
+a boat of our size at that stage of water, but the swirls would have
+made the run very dangerous for a skiff or canoe at any time.
+Unfortunately, the drizzling rain and lowering clouds made pictures of
+what is one of the very finest scenic stretches of the Big Bend quite
+out of the question. If it had been the matter of a day or two, we would
+gladly have gone into camp and waited for the light; but Blackmore was
+inclined to think the spell of bad weather that had now set in was the
+beginning of an early winter, in which event we might stand-by for weeks
+without seeing the sky. It was just as well we did not wait. As I have
+already mentioned, we did not feel the touch of sunlight again until we
+were on the American side of the border.
+
+From the foot of the Canyon to Blackmore's boat-house was four miles.
+Pulling down a broadening and slackening river flanked by ever receding
+mountains, we passed under the big C. P. R. bridge and tied up at four
+o'clock. In spite of taking it easy all the time, the last twenty miles
+had been run in quite a bit under two hours.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+REVELSTOKE TO THE SPOKANE
+
+
+The voyage round the Big Bend, in spite of the atrocious weather, had
+gone so well that I had just about made up my mind to continue on down
+river by the time we reached Revelstoke. A letter which awaited me at
+the hotel there from Captain Armstrong, stating that he would be free to
+join me for my first week or ten days south from the foot of the lakes,
+was all that was needed to bring me to a decision. I wired him that I
+would pick him up in Nelson as soon as I had cleaned up a pile of
+correspondence which had pursued me in spite of all directions to the
+contrary, and in the meantime for him to endeavour to find a suitable
+boat. Nelson, as the metropolis of western British Columbia, appeared to
+be the only place where we would have a chance of finding what was
+needed in the boat line on short notice. While I wrote letters, Roos got
+his exposed film off to Los Angeles, laid in a new stock, and received
+additional instructions from Chester in connection with the new
+picture--the one for which the opening shots had already been made at
+Windermere, and which we called "The Farmer Who Would See the Sea."
+
+As there was no swift water whatever between Revelstoke and Kootenay
+Rapids, I had no hesitation in deciding to make the voyage down the
+Arrow Lakes by steamer. Both on the score of water-stage and weather, it
+was now a good month to six weeks later than the most favourable time
+for a through down-river voyage. Any time saved now, therefore, might be
+the means of avoiding so many days of winter further along. I was hoping
+that, with decreasing altitude and a less humid region ahead, I would at
+least be keeping ahead of the snows nearly if not quite all the way to
+Portland. I may mention here that, all in all, I played in very good
+luck on the score of weather. There were to be, however, a few _geesly_
+cold days on the river along about Wenatchee, and two or three mighty
+blustery blows in the Cascades.
+
+The Arrow Lakes are merely enlargements of the Columbia, keeping
+throughout their lengths the same general north-to-south direction of
+this part of the river. The upper lake is thirty-three miles in length,
+and has an average width of about three miles. Sixteen miles of
+comparatively swift river runs from the upper to the lower lake. The
+latter, which is forty-two miles long and two and a half wide, is
+somewhat less precipitously walled than the upper lake, and there are
+considerable patches of cultivation here and there along its
+banks--mostly apple orchards. There is a steamer channel all the way up
+the Columbia to Revelstoke, but the present service, maintained by the
+Canadian Pacific at its usual high standard, starts at the head of the
+upper lake and finishes at West Robson, some miles down the Columbia
+from the foot of the lower lake. This is one of the very finest lake
+trips anywhere in the world; I found it an unending source of delight,
+even after a fortnight of the superlative scenery of the Big Bend.
+
+There is a stock story they tell of the Arrow Lakes, and which appears
+intended to convey to the simple tourist a graphic idea of the
+precipitousness of their rocky walls. The skipper of my steamer told it
+while we were ploughing down the upper lake. Seeing a man struggling in
+the water near the bank one day, he ran some distance off his course to
+throw the chap a line. Disdaining all aid, the fellow kept right on
+swimming toward the shore. "Don't worry about me," he shouted back;
+"this is only the third time I've fallen off my ranch to-day."
+
+I told the Captain that the story sounded all right to me except in one
+particular--that even my glass failed to reveal any ranches for a man to
+fall off of. "Oh, that's all right," was the unperturbed reply; "there
+_was_ one when that yarn was started, but I guess it fell into the lake
+too. But mebbe I _had_ ought to keep it for the lower lake, though," he
+added; "there is still some un-slid ranches down there."
+
+Nelson is a fine little city that hangs to a rocky mountainside right at
+the point where Kootenay Lake spills over and discharges its surplus
+water into a wild, white torrent that seems to be trying to atone at the
+last for its long delay in making up its mind to join the Columbia.
+Nelson was made by the rich silver-lead mines of the Kootenay district,
+but it was so well made that, even now with the first fine frenzy of the
+mining excitement over, it is still able to carry on strongly as a
+commercial distributing and fruit shipping centre. It is peopled by the
+same fine, out-door loving folk that one finds through all of western
+Canada, and is especially noted for its aquatic sports. I am only sorry
+that I was not able to see more of both Nelson and its people.
+
+As soon as I saw Captain Armstrong I made a clean breast to him about my
+failure to unearth the treasure at the Bend. He was a good sport and
+bore up better than one would expect a man to under the circumstances.
+"I wish that matter of K---- and his D. T.'s had come up before you
+left," was his only comment.
+
+"Why?" I asked. "I can't see what difference that would have made. We
+didn't waste a lot of time digging."
+
+"That's just it," said the Captain with a wry grin. "Wouldn't you have
+gone right on digging if you had known that the spell of jim-jams that
+finished K---- came from some stuff he got from a section-hand at
+Beavermouth? Now I suppose I'll have to watch my chance and run down and
+salvage that keg of old Scotch myself." It shows the stuff that
+Armstrong was made of when I say that, even after the way I had betrayed
+the trust he had reposed in me, he was still game to go on with the
+Columbia trip. That's the sort of man he was.
+
+Boats of anywhere near the design we would need for the river were
+scarce, the Captain reported, but there was one which he thought might
+do. This proved to be a sixteen-foot, clinker-built skiff that had been
+constructed especially to carry an out-board motor. She had ample beam,
+a fair freeboard and a considerable sheer. The principal thing against
+her was the square stern, and that was of less moment running down
+river than if we had been working up. It _did_ seem just a bit like
+asking for trouble, tackling the Columbia in a boat built entirely for
+lake use; but Captain Armstrong's approval of her was quite good enough
+for me. Save for her amiable weakness of yielding somewhat overreadily
+to the seductive embraces of whirlpools--a trait common to all
+square-sterned craft of inconsiderable length--she proved more than
+equal to the task set for her. We paid fifty-five dollars for her--about
+half what she had cost--and there was a charge of ten dollars for
+expressing her to West Robson, on the Columbia.
+
+We left Nelson by train for Castlegar, on the Columbia just below West
+Robson, the afternoon of October nineteenth. The track runs in sight of
+the Kootenay practically all of the way. There is a drop of three
+hundred and fifty feet in the twenty-eight miles of river between the
+outlet of the lake and the Columbia, with no considerable stretch that
+it would be safe to run with a boat. A large part of the drop occurs in
+two fine cataracts called Bonnington Falls, where there is an important
+hydro-electric plant, serving Nelson and Trail with power; but most of
+the rest of the way the river is one continuous series of foam-white
+cascades with short quiet stretches between. The last two or three miles
+to the river the railway runs through the remarkable colony of Russian
+Doukobours, with a station at Brilliant, where their big co-operative
+jam factory and administrative offices are located. We had a more
+intimate glimpse of this interesting colony from the river the
+following day.
+
+We found the express car with the boat on the siding at West Robson, and
+the three of us--Armstrong, Roos and myself--had little difficulty in
+sliding her down the quay and launching her in the Columbia. Pulling a
+mile down the quiet current, we tied her up for the night at the
+Castlegar Ferry. Then we cut across the bend through the woods for a
+look at Kootenay Rapids, the first stretch of fast water we were to
+encounter. After the rough-and-rowdy rapids of the Big Bend, this
+quarter-mile of white riffle looked like comparatively easy running. It
+was a very different sort of a craft we had now, however, and Armstrong
+took the occasion to give the channel a careful study. There were a lot
+of big black rocks cropping up all the way across, but he thought that,
+by keeping well in toward the right bank, we could make it without much
+trouble.
+
+On the way back to the hotel at Castlegar, the Captain was hailed from
+the doorway of a cabin set in the midst of a fresh bit of clearing. It
+turned out to be a boatman who had accompanied him and Mr. Forde, of the
+Canadian Department of Public Works, on a part of their voyage down the
+Columbia in 1915. They reminisced for half an hour in the gathering
+twilight, talking mostly of the occasion when a whirlpool had stood
+their Peterboro on end in the Little Dalles. I found this just a bit
+disturbing, for Armstrong had already confided to me that he intended
+running the Little Dalles.
+
+The boat trimmed well when we came to stow the load the next morning,
+but when the three of us took our places she was rather lower in the
+water than we had expected she was going to be. She seemed very small
+after Blackmore's big thirty-footer, and the water uncomfortably close
+at hand. She was buoyant enough out in the current, however, and
+responded very smartly to paddle and oars when Armstrong and I tried a
+few practice manoeuvres. The Captain sat on his bedding roll in the
+stern, plying his long paddle, and I pulled a pair of oars from the
+forward thwart. Roos sat on the after thwart, facing Armstrong, with his
+tripod, camera and most of the luggage stowed between them. She was
+loaded to ride high by the head, as it was white water rather than
+whirlpools that was in immediate prospect. With a small boat and a
+consequent comparatively small margin of safety, one has to make his
+trim a sort of a compromise. For rough, sloppy rapids it is well to have
+the bows just about as high in the air as you can get them. On the other
+hand, it is likely to be fatal to get into a bad whirlpool with her too
+much down by the stern. As the one succeeds the other as a general rule,
+about the best you can do is to strike a comfortable mean based on what
+you know of the water ahead.
+
+[Illustration: BONNINGTON FALLS OF THE KOOTENAY (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: PLASTERED LOG CABIN IN THE DOUKHOBOR VILLAGE (_below_)]
+
+[Illustration: TRUCKING THE SKIFF THROUGH KETTLE FALLS]
+
+[Illustration: TWILIGHT IN THE GORGE AT KETTLE FALLS]
+
+I found it very awkward for a while pulling with two oars after having
+worked for so long with one, and this difficulty--especially in bad
+water--I never quite overcame. In a really rough rapid one oar is all a
+man can handle properly, and he does well if he manages that. Your
+stroke is largely determined by the sort of stuff the blade is going
+into, and--as on the verge of an eddy--with the water to port running in
+one direction, and that to starboard running another, it is obviously
+impossible for a man handling two oars to do full justice to the
+situation. He simply has to do the best he can and leave the rest to the
+man with the paddle in the stern. When the latter is an expert with the
+experience of Captain Armstrong there is little likelihood of serious
+trouble.
+
+The matter of keeping a lookout is also much more difficult in a small
+boat. In a craft with only a few inches of freeboard it is obviously out
+of the question for a steersman to keep his feet through a rapid, as he
+may do without risk in a _batteau_ or canoe large enough to give him a
+chance to brace his knees against the sides. Armstrong effected the best
+compromise possible by standing and getting a good "look-see" while he
+could, and then settling back into a securer position when the boat
+struck the rough water. The three or four feet less of vantage from
+which to con the channel imposes a good deal of a handicap, but there is
+no help for it.
+
+We ran both pitches of Kootenay Rapids easily and smartly. Her bows
+slapped down pretty hard when she tumbled off the tops of some of the
+bigger rollers, but into not the softest of the souse-holes would she
+put her high-held head. We took in plenty of spray, but nothing
+green--nothing that couldn't be bailed without stopping. It was a lot
+better performance than one was entitled to expect of a lake boat
+running her maiden rapid.
+
+"She'll do!" chuckled the Captain with a satisfied grin, resting on his
+paddle as we slid easily out of the final run of swirls; "you ought to
+take her right through without a lot of trouble." "_Imshallah!_" I
+interjected piously, anxious not to offend the River God with a display
+of overmuch confidence. I began to call her "_Imshallah_" in my mind
+from that time on, and "_Imshallah_"--"God willing"--she remained until
+I tied her up for her well-earned rest in a Portland boat-house. It was
+in the course of the next day or two that I made a propitiatory offering
+to the River God in the form of the remnants of the _jodpurs_ he had
+tried so hard to snatch from me at Rock Slide Rapids. I've always had a
+sneaking feeling offerings of that kind are "good medicine;" that the
+old Greeks knew what they were doing when they squared things with the
+Gods in advance on venturing forth into unknown waters.
+
+Big and Little Tin Cup Rapids, which are due to the obstruction caused
+by boulders washed down by the torrential Kootenay River, gave us little
+trouble. There is a channel of good depth right down the middle of both,
+and we splashed through this without getting into much besides flying
+foam. Just below we pulled up to the left bank and landed for a look at
+one of the Doukobour villages.
+
+The Doukobours are a strange Russian religious sect, with beliefs and
+observances quite at variance with those of the Greek Church. Indeed, it
+was the persecutions of the Orthodox Russians that were responsible for
+driving considerable numbers of them to Canada. They are best known in
+America, not for their indefatigable industry and many other good
+traits, but for their highly original form of protesting when they have
+fancied that certain of their rights were being restricted by Canadian
+law. On repeated occasions of this kind whole colonies of them--men,
+women and children--have thrown aside their every rag of clothing and
+started off marching about the country. Perhaps it is not strange that
+more has been written about these strange pilgrimages than of the fact
+that the Doukobours have cleared and brought to a high state of
+productivity many square miles of land that, but for their unflagging
+energy, would still be worthless. In spite of their somewhat
+unconventional habits, these simple people have been an incalculably
+valuable economic asset to western Canada.
+
+On the off chance that there might be an incipient "protest" brewing,
+Roos took his movie outfit ashore with him. He met with no luck. Indeed,
+we found the women of the astonishingly clean little village of
+plastered and whitewashed cabins extremely shy of even our hand cameras.
+The Captain thought that this was probably due to the fact that they had
+been a good deal pestered by kodak fiends while Godivaing round the
+country on some of their protest marches. "The people were very
+indignant about it," he said; "but I never heard of any one pulling down
+their blinds." Coventry was really very "Victorian" in its attitude
+toward Lady Godiva's "protest."
+
+There was good swift water all the way from Castlegar to Trail, and we
+averaged close to nine miles an hour during the time we were on the
+river. At China Bar the river was a good deal spread out, running in
+channels between low gravel islands. Any one of these was runnable for a
+small boat, and we did not need to keep to the main channel that had
+once been maintained for steamers. Sixteen miles below Castlegar, and
+about half a mile below the mouth of Sullivan Creek, there was a long
+black reef of basaltic rock stretching a third of the way across the
+river. We shot past it without difficulty by keeping near the left bank.
+The sulphurous fumes of the big smelter blotching the southern sky with
+saffron and coppery red clouds indicated that we were nearing Trail. The
+stacks, with the town below and beyond, came into view just as we hit
+the head of a fast-running riffle. We ran the last half mile at a swift
+clip, pulling up into about the only place that looked like an eddy on
+the Trail side of the river. That this proved to be the slack water
+behind the crumbling city dump could not be helped. He who rides the
+running road cannot be too particular about his landing places.
+
+We reached Trail before noon, and, so far as time was concerned, could
+just as well have run right on across the American line to Northport
+that afternoon. However, October twenty-first turned out to be a date of
+considerable importance to British Columbians, for it was the day of the
+election to determine whether that province should continue dry or, as
+the proponents of wetness euphemized it, return to "moderation." As
+there was a special provision by which voters absent from their place of
+registration could cast their ballots wherever they chanced to be,
+Captain Armstrong was anxious to stop over and do his bit for
+"moderation." Indeed, I was a bit worried at first for fear, by way of
+compensating in a measure for the injury we had done him in failing to
+come through with the treasure from the Big Bend, he would expect Roos
+and me to put in a few absentee ballots for "moderation." There was a
+rumour about that a vote for "moderation" would be later redeemable--in
+case "moderation" carried, of course--in the voter's weight of the old
+familiar juice. I never got further than a pencilled computation on the
+"temperance" bar of the Crown Point Hotel that two hundred and
+thirty-five pounds (I was down to that by now) would work out to
+something like one hundred seventeen and a half quarts. This on the rule
+that "A pint's a pound, the world round." That was as far as I got, I
+say, for there seemed rather too much of a chance of international
+complications sooner or later. But I am still wondering just what _is_
+the law covering the case of a man who sells his vote in a foreign
+country--and for his weight in whisky that he would probably never have
+delivered to him. I doubt very much if there is any precedent to go by.
+
+Between votes--or rather before Captain Armstrong voted--we took the
+occasion to go over the smelter of the Consolidated Mining and Smelting
+Company. It is one of the most modern plants of its kind in the world,
+and treats ore from all over western Canada. We were greatly interested
+in the recently installed zinc-leaching plant for the handling of an
+especially refractory ore from the company's own mine in the Kootenays.
+This ore had resisted for years every attempt to extract its zinc at a
+profit, and the perfection of the intricate process through which it is
+now put at Trail has made a mine, which would otherwise have remained
+practically valueless, worth untold millions. The two thousand and more
+employes of the smelter are the main factor in the prosperity of this
+live and by no means unattractive little town.
+
+We had two very emphatic warnings before leaving Trail the next
+morning--one was on no account to attempt to take any drinkables across
+the line by the river, and the other was to keep a weather eye lifting
+in running the rapids at the Rock Islands, two miles below town. As we
+reached the latter before we did the International Boundary Line, we
+started 'wareing the rapids first. This was by no means as empty a
+warning as many I was to have later. The islands proved to be two
+enormous granite rocks, between which the river rushed with great
+velocity. The Captain headed the boat into the deep, swift channel to
+the right, avoiding by a couple of yards a walloping whale of a
+whirlpool that came spinning right past the bow. I didn't see it, of
+course, until it passed astern; but it looked to me then as though its
+whirling centre was depressed a good three feet below the surface of the
+river, and with a black, bottomless funnel opening out of that. I was
+just about to register "nonchalance" by getting off my "all-day-sucker"
+joke, when I suddenly felt the thwart beneath me begin to push upwards
+like the floor of a jerkily-started elevator, only with a rotary action.
+Fanning empty air with both oars, I was saved from falling backwards by
+the forty-five degree up-tilt of the boat. Way beneath me--down below
+the surface of the river--Armstrong, pop-eyed, was leaning sharply
+forward to keep from being dumped out over the stern. Roos, with a
+death-grip on either gunwale, was trying to keep from falling into the
+Captain's lap. Round we went like a prancing horse, and just as the boat
+had completed the hundred and eighty degrees that headed her momentarily
+up-river, something seemed to drop away beneath her bottom, and as she
+sunk into the hole there came a great snorting "ku-whouf!" and about a
+barrel of water came pouring its solid green flood over the stern and,
+incidentally, the Captain. A couple of seconds later the boat had
+completed her round and settled back on a comparatively even keel as
+hard-plied oars and paddle wrenched her out of the grip of the Thing
+that had held her in its clutch. I saw it plainly as it did its dervish
+dance of disappointment as we drew away. It looked to me not over half
+as large as that first one which the Captain had so cleverly avoided.
+
+"That was about the way we got caught in the Little Dalles," observed
+Armstrong when we were in quieter water again. "Only it was a worse
+whirlpool than that one that did it. This square stern gives the water
+more of a grip than it can get on a canoe. We'll have to watch out for
+it."
+
+Save over a broad, shallow bar across the current at the mouth of the
+Salmon, there was deep, swift water all the way to Waneta, the Canadian
+Customs station. Here we landed Roos to await the morning train from
+Nelson to Spokane and go through to Northport to arrange the American
+Customs formalities. At a final conference we decided to heed the
+warning about not attempting to carry any drinkables openly into the
+United States. Stowing what little there was left where not the most
+lynx-eyed or ferret-nosed Customs Officer could ever get at it, we
+pushed off.
+
+There is a fairly fast current all the way to Northport, but from the
+fact that we made the eleven miles in about three-quarters of an hour,
+it seems likely that, between paddle and oars, the boat was driven
+somewhat faster than the Columbia. Just below Waneta and immediately
+above the International Boundary Line, the Pend d'Oreille or Clark's
+Fork flows, or rather falls into the Columbia. This really magnificent
+stream comes tumbling down a sheer-walled gorge in fall after fall,
+several of which can be seen in narrowing perspective from the Columbia
+itself. Its final leap is over a ten-feet-high ledge which extends all
+the way across its two-hundred-feet-wide mouth. Above this fine cataract
+it is the Pend d'Oreille, below it, the Columbia. I know of no place
+where two such rivers come together with such fine spectacular effect,
+in a way so fitting to the character of each.
+
+The Pend d'Oreille is generally rated as the principal tributary of the
+upper Columbia. Although the Kootenay--because it flows through a region
+of considerably greater annual rainfall--carries rather the more water
+of the two, the Pend d'Oreille is longer and drains a far more extensive
+watershed--that lying between the main chain of the Rockies and the
+Bitter Root and Coeur d'Alene ranges. Great as is the combined
+discharge of these two fine rivers, their effect on the Columbia is not
+apparent to the eye. If anything, the latter looks a bigger stream where
+it flows out of the lower Arrow Lake, above the Kootenay, than it does
+where it crosses the American Line below the Pend d'Oreille. As a matter
+of fact, its flow must be nearly doubled at the latter point, but the
+swifter current reduces its apparent volume. Nothing but the most
+careful computations, based on speed of current and area of
+cross-section, will give anything approximating the real discharge of a
+river.
+
+I was a good deal interested in the Pend d'Oreille, because it was on
+one of its upper tributaries, the Flathead in Montana, that I had made
+my first timid effort at rapid-running a good many years previously. It
+hadn't been a brilliant success--for two logs tied together with ropes
+hardly make the ideal of a raft; but the glamour of the hare-brained
+stunt had survived the wetting. I should dearly have loved to explore
+that wonderful black-walled canyon, with its unending succession of
+cataracts and cascades, but lack of time forbade. The drizzling rain
+made it impossible even to get a good photograph of the fine frenzy of
+that final mad leap into the Columbia.
+
+It was funny the way that rain acted. For something like a month now
+there had been only two or three days of reasonably fair weather, and
+for the last fortnight the sun had hardly been glimpsed at all. Pulling
+up to Waneta in a clammy drizzle, Captain Armstrong remarked, as he drew
+the collar of his waterproof closer to decrease the drainage down the
+back of his neck, that he reckoned they wouldn't stand for weather of
+that kind over in "God's Country." As there was nothing but sodden
+clouds to the southward, I didn't feel like giving him any definite
+assurance on the point at the moment. However, when we crossed the Line
+an hour later the rain had ceased. A couple of miles farther down the
+clouds were breaking up, and at Northport the sun was shining. I did not
+have another rainy day, nor even one more than slightly overcast, until
+I was almost at the Cascades. I trust my good Canadian friend was as
+deeply impressed as he claimed to be.
+
+Beyond a sharp riffle between jagged rock islands above Deadman's Eddy,
+and one or two shallow boulder bars where the channels were a bit
+obscure, it was good open-and-above-board water all the way to
+Northport. The "Eddy" is a whirling back-sweep of water at a bend of the
+river, and is supposed to hold up for inspection everything floatable
+that the Columbia brings down from Canada. "Funny they never thought of
+calling it 'Customs Eddy,'" Armstrong said. From the condition of its
+littered banks, it looked to be almost as prolific of "pickings" as the
+great drift pile of Kinbasket Lake. Being near a town, however, it is
+doubtless much more thoroughly gone over.
+
+We tied up below the Ferry at Northport, which was the rendezvous to
+which Roos was to bring the Customs Inspector. The ferry-man, who had
+once seen Captain Armstrong run the rapids of the upper Kootenay with
+one of his steamers, was greatly elated over having such a notable
+walking the quarterdeck of his own humble craft. Armstrong, in turn,
+was scarcely less excited over an automatic pumping contrivance which
+the ferry-man had rigged up to keep his pontoons dry. After waiting for
+an hour, we took our bags and walked up to the hotel on the main street
+at the top of the bluff. We found Roos in the office reading a last
+year's haberdashery catalogue. He said he had not expected us for a
+couple of hours yet, and that he had arranged for inspection at three
+o'clock. That gave us time for a bath and lunch ourselves. As our bags
+were now well beyond the tentacles of the Customs, we did a little
+figuring on the table-cloth between courses. By this we proved that, had
+we had the nerve to disregard the warnings of well-meaning friends in
+Trail and filled our hand-bags with Scotch instead of personal effects,
+Armstrong would now have had fourteen quarts up in his room, and I
+eighteen quarts. Then the waitress gave us current local quotations, and
+we started to figure values. I shall never know whether or not there
+would have been room on the corner of that gravy and egg broidered
+napery for my stupendous total. Just as I was beginning to run over the
+edge, the Inspector came in and asked if we would mind letting him see
+those two suit-cases we had brought to the hotel with us! Many and
+various are the joys of virtue, but none of the others comparable to
+that one which sets you aglow as you say "Search me!" when, by the
+special intervention of the providence which watches over fools and
+drunks, you haven't got goods.
+
+The inspection, both at the hotel and at the ferry, was _fairly_
+perfunctory, though I did notice that the Customs man assumed a rather
+springy step when he trod the light inner bottom of the skiff. Roos
+filmed the operation as a part of the picture, I acting as much as I
+could like I thought a farmer would act at his first Customs inspection.
+Roos, complaining that I didn't "do it natural," wanted to shoot over
+again. The Customs man was willing, but Armstrong and I, trudging
+purposefully off up the road, refused to return. Roos followed us to the
+hotel in considerable dudgeon. "Why wouldn't you let me make that shot
+over?" he asked. "It was an 'oil-can'--rotten!" "Because," I replied
+evenly, looking him straight in the eye, "I was afraid the Inspector
+might try that jig-a-jig step of his on the false bottom in the bow if
+we put him through the show a second time. I don't believe in tempting
+providence. We can get a street-car conductor and make that Inspection
+shot again in Portland. This isn't...." "You're right," cut in Roos,
+with a dawning grin of comprehension. "I beg your pardon. You're a
+deeper bird than I gave you credit for. Or perhaps it was the
+Captain...."
+
+[Illustration: WAITING FOR THE FOG TO LIFT ABOVE BISHOP'S RAPIDS]
+
+[Illustration: ROSS AND ARMSTRONG REGISTERING "GLOOM"]
+
+[Illustration: THE "INTAKE" AT THE LITTLE DALLES (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: WHERE WE STARTED TO LINE THE LITTLE DALLES (_below_)]
+
+A heavy fog filled the river gorge from bank to bank when we pushed off
+the following morning, and we had to nose down carefully to avoid the
+piers of the bridge of the Great Northern branch line to Rossland. A
+quarter of a mile farther down the river began shoaling over gravel
+bars, and out of the mist ahead came the rumble of water tumbling over
+boulders. This was an inconsiderable riffle called Bishop's Rapid, but
+the Captain was too old a river man to care to go into it without light
+to choose his channel. A half hour's wait on a gravel bar in mid-stream
+brought a lifting of the fog, and we ran through by the right hand of
+the two shallow channels without difficulty. In brilliant sunshine we
+pulled down a broad stretch of deep and rapidly slackening water to the
+gleaming white lime-stone barrier at the head of the Little Dalles.
+
+All of Northport had been a unit in warning us not to attempt to run the
+Little Dalles. Nearly every one, as far as I could judge, had lost some
+relative there, and one man gave a very circumstantial description of
+how he had seen a big _batteau_, with six Swede lumbermen, sucked out of
+sight there, never to reappear. On cross-questioning, he admitted that
+this was at high water, and that there was nothing like so much "suck"
+in the whirlpools at the present stage. The Captain, however, having
+just received telephonic word from Nelson that "moderation" had carried
+in B. C. by a decisive majority, felt that nothing short of running the
+Little Dalles would be adequate celebration. He had managed to come
+through right-side-up in a Peterboro once, and he thought our skiff
+ought to be equal to the stunt. He held that opinion just long enough
+for him to climb to the top of the cliff that forms the left wall of
+river at the gorge and take one good, long, comprehensive look into the
+depths.
+
+"Nothing doing," he said, with a decisive shake of his broad-brimmed
+Stetson. "The river's four or five feet higher than when we ran through
+here in 'fifteen, and that makes all the difference. It was touch-and-go
+for a minute then, and now it's out of the question for a small boat. If
+we can't line, we'll have to find some way to portage."
+
+The Little Dalles are formed by a great reef of lime-stone which, at one
+time, probably made a dam all the way across the river. The narrow
+channel which the Columbia has worn through the stone is less than two
+hundred feet in width for a considerable distance, and has lofty
+perpendicular walls. The river is divided by a small rock island into
+two channels at the head, the main one, to the right, being about two
+hundred feet in width, and the narrow left-hand one not over forty feet.
+The depth of the main channel is very great--probably much greater than
+its narrowest width; so that here, as also at Tumwater and "Five-Mile"
+in the Great Dalles, it may be truly said that the Columbia "has to turn
+on its side to wriggle through."
+
+It is that little rock island at the head of the gorge, extending, as it
+does, almost longitudinally _across_ the current that makes all the
+trouble. It starts one set of whirlpools running down the right-hand
+channel and another set down the left-hand. Every one of the vortices in
+this dual series of spinning "suckers" is more than one would care to
+take any liberties with if it could be avoided; and either line of
+whirlpools, taken alone, probably _could_ be avoided. The impassable
+barrage comes a hundred feet below the point where the left-hand torrent
+precipitates itself at right-angles into the current of the right-hand
+one, and the two lines of whirlpools converge in a "V" and form one big
+walloping sockdolager. Him there would still be room to run by if he
+were "whouf-ing" there alone; but his satellites won't have it. Their
+accursed team-work is such that the spreading "V" above catches
+everything that comes down stream and feeds it into the maw of the big
+whirlpool as into a hopper. Logs, ties, shingle-bolts, fence-posts--all
+the refuse of sawmills and the flotsam and jetsam of farms and
+towns--are gulped with a "whouf!" and when they reappear again, a mile
+or two down river, they are all scoured smooth and round-cornered by
+their passage through the monster's alimentary canal.
+
+"I'm sorry not to celebrate the victory of 'moderation,'" said the
+Captain finally, with another regretful shake of his head; "but
+'moderation' begins at home. It would be immoderately foolish to put the
+skiff into that line of whirlpools, the way they're running now." Roos
+was the only one who was inclined to dispute that decision, and as his
+part would have been to stand out on the brink of the cliff and turn the
+crank, it was only natural that he should take the "artistic" rather
+than the "humanitarian" view.
+
+As a last resort before portaging, we tried lining down, starting at the
+head of the narrow left-hand channel. We gave it up at the end of a
+hundred feet. A monkey at one end of the line and a log of wood at the
+other would have made the only combination calculated to get by that
+way. It was no job for a shaky-kneed man and a sinkable boat. There was
+nothing to do but look up a team or truck. What appeared to be the
+remains of the ancient portage road ran down from an abandoned farm to
+the river, and it seemed likely some kind of vehicle could be brought
+over it.
+
+As the highway ran along the bench, four or five hundred feet above the
+river, I set off by the railroad track, which was comparatively close
+at hand. At the end of a couple of miles I reached a small station
+called Marble, the shipping point for a large apple orchard project
+financed by the J. G. White Company of New York. Mr. Reed, the resident
+manager, immediately ordered a powerful team and wagon placed at my
+disposal, and with that I returned northward over the highway. We had a
+rough time getting down through brush and dead-falls to the river, but
+finally made it without an upset. Roos having finished what pictures he
+wanted--including one of the Captain standing on the brink of the cliff
+and registering "surprise-cum-disappointment-cum-disgust,"--we loaded
+the skiff and our outfit onto the wagon and started the long climb up to
+the top of the bench. The discovery of an overgrown but still passable
+road offered a better route than that followed in coming down, and we
+made the highway, and on to the village, in good time. Mr. Reed dangled
+the bait of a French _chef_ and rooms in the company's hotel as an
+inducement to spend the night with him, but we had not the time to
+accept the kind invitation. His ready courtesy was of the kind which I
+learned later I could expect as a matter of course all along the river.
+Never did I have trouble in getting help when I needed it, and when it
+was charged for, it was almost invariably an under rather than an
+over-charge. The running road is the one place left where the people
+have not been spoiled as have those on the highways frequented by motor
+tourists.
+
+Launching the boat from the Marble Ferry at four o'clock, we pulled off
+in a good current in the hope of reaching Bossburg before dark. Between
+the windings of the river and several considerable stretches of slack
+water, however, our progress was less than anticipated. Shut in by high
+hills on both sides, night descended early upon the river, and at
+five-thirty I found myself pulling in Stygian blackness. Knowing there
+was no really bad water ahead, the Captain let her slide through a
+couple of easy riffles, the white-topped waves barely guessed as they
+flagged us with ghostly signals. But a deepening growl, borne on the
+wings of the slight up-river night-breeze, demanded more consideration.
+No one but a lunatic goes into a strange rapid in a poor light, to say
+nothing of complete darkness. Pulling into an eddy by the left bank, we
+stopped and listened. The roar, though distant, was unmistakable. Water
+was tumbling among rocks at a fairly good rate, certainly too fast to
+warrant going into it in the dark.
+
+While we were debating what to do, a black figure silhouetted itself
+against the star-gleams at the top of the low bank. "Hello, there!"
+hailed the Captain. "Can you tell us how far it is to Bossburg?" "_This_
+is Bossburg," was the surprising but gratifying response. "You're
+there--that is, you're here." It proved to be the local ferry-man, and
+Columbia ferry-men are always obliging and always intelligent, at least
+in matters relating to the river. Tying up the boat, we left our stuff
+in his nearby house and sought the hotel with our hand-bags. It was not
+a promising looking hotel when we found it, for Bossburg was that
+saddest of living things, an all-but-extinguished boom-town; but the
+very kindly old couple who lived there and catered to the occasional
+wayfarer bustled about and got us a corking good meal--fried chicken and
+biscuits as light as the whipped cream we had on the candied
+peaches--and our beds were clean and comfortable.
+
+As we were now but a few miles above Kettle Falls, the most complete
+obstruction in the whole length of the Columbia, I took the occasion to
+telephone ahead for a truck with which to make the very considerable
+portage. There would be two or three miles at the falls in any case,
+Captain Armstrong said, and he was also inclined to think it would be
+advisable to extend the portage to the foot of Grand Rapids, and thus
+save a day's hard lining. It was arranged that the truck should meet us
+at the ruins of the old Hudson Bay post, on the east bank some distance
+above the upper fall.
+
+We pushed off from Bossburg at eight o'clock on the morning of October
+twenty-third. The water was slack for several hundred yards, which was
+found to be due to a reef extending all of the way across the river and
+forming the rapid which we had heard growling in the dark. This was
+called "Six Mile," and while it would have been an uncomfortable place
+to tangle up with in the night, it was simple running with the light of
+day. "Five Mile," a bit farther down, was studded with big black rocks,
+but none of them hard to avoid. As we were running rather ahead of the
+time of our rendezvous with the truck, we stretched our legs the length
+and back of the main street of Marcus, a growing little town which is
+the junction point for the Boundary Branch of the Great Northern. We
+passed the mouth of the Kettle River shortly after running under the
+railway bridge, and a pull across a big eddy carried us to the lake-like
+stretch of water backed up by the rocky obstructions responsible for
+Kettle Falls. The roar of the latter filled the air as we headed into a
+shallow, mud-bottomed lagoon widening riverward from the mouth of a
+small creek and beached the skiff under a yellowing fringe of willows.
+The site of the historic post was in an extremely aged apple orchard
+immediately above. It was one of those "inevitable" spots, where the
+_voyageurs_ of all time passing up or down the river must have begun or
+ended their portages. I was trying to conjure up pictures of a few of
+these in my mind, when the chug-chugging of an engine somewhere among
+the pines of the distant hillside recalled me to a realization of the
+fact that it was time to get ready for my own portage. Before we had our
+stuff out of the boat the truck had come to a throbbing standstill
+beyond the fringe of the willows. It promised to be an easier portage
+than some of our predecessors had had, in any event.
+
+To maintain his "continuity," Roos filmed the skiff being taken out of
+the water and loaded upon the truck, the truck passing down the main
+street of the town of Kettle Falls, and a final launching in the river
+seven miles below. Half way into town we passed an old Indian mission
+that must have been about contemporaneous with Hudson Bay operations.
+Although no nails had been used in its construction, the ancient
+building, with its high-pitched roof, still survived in a comparatively
+good state of preservation. The town is some little distance below the
+Falls, and quite out of sight of the river, which flows here between
+very high banks. We stopped at the hotel for lunch before completing the
+portage.
+
+After talking the situation over with Captain Armstrong, I decided to
+fall in with his suggestion to pass Grand Rapids as well as Kettle Falls
+in the portage. There were only about five miles of boatable water
+between the foot of the latter and the head of the former, and then an
+arduous three-quarters of a mile of lining that would have entailed the
+loss of another day. There is a drop of twelve feet in about twelve
+hundred yards in Grand Rapids, with nothing approaching a clear channel
+among the huge black basaltic rocks that have been scattered about
+through them as from a big pepper shaker. As far as I could learn, there
+is no record of any kind of a man-propelled craft of whatever size ever
+having run through and survived, but a small stern-wheeler, the
+_Shoshone_, was run down several years ago at high water. She reached
+the foot a good deal of a hulk, but still right side up. This is rated
+as one of the maddest things ever done with a steamer on the Columbia,
+and the fact that it did not end in complete disaster is reckoned by old
+river men as having been due in about equal parts to the inflexible
+nerve of her skipper and the intervention of the special providence that
+makes a point of watching over mortals who do things like that. I met
+Captain McDermid a fortnight later in Potaris. He told me then, what I
+hadn't heard before, that he took his wife and children with him.
+"Nellie thought a lot of both me and the little old _Shoshone_," he
+said with a wistful smile, "and she reckoned that, if we went, she
+wouldn't exactly like to be left here alone. And so--I never could
+refuse Nellie anything--I took her along. And now she and the _Shoshone_
+are both gone." He was a wonderful chap--McDermid. All old Columbia
+River skippers are. They wouldn't have survived if they hadn't been.
+
+There was a low bench on the left bank, about a mile below the foot of
+Grand Rapids, which could be reached by a rough road, and from which the
+boat could be slid down over the rocks to the river. Running to this
+point with the truck, we left our heavier outfit at a road camp and
+dropped the boat at the water's edge, ready for launching the following
+morning. Returning to the town, we were driven up to the Falls by Dr.
+Baldwin, a prominent member of this live and attractive little
+community, where Roos made a number of shots. The upper or main fall has
+a vertical drop of fifteen feet at low water, while the lower fall is
+really a rough tumbling cascade with a drop of ten feet in a quarter of
+a mile. The river is divided at the head of the Falls by an arrow-shaped
+rock island, the main channel being the one to the right. The left-hand
+channel loops in a broad "V" around the island and, running between
+precipitous walls, accomplishes in a beautiful rapid the same drop that
+the main channel does by the upper fall. A rocky peninsula, extending
+squarely across the course of the left-hand channel, forces the rolling
+current of the latter practically to turn a somersault before accepting
+the dictum that it must double back northward for five or six hundred
+feet before uniting with the main river. It was the savage swirling of
+water in that rock-walled elbow where the "somersault" takes place that
+prompted the imaginative French-Canadian _voyageurs_ to apply the
+appropriately descriptive name of _Chaudiere_ to the boiling maelstrom.
+
+Up to the present the development of the enormous power running to waste
+over Kettle Falls has gone little further than the dreams of the brave
+community of optimists who have been attracted there in the belief that
+a material asset of such incalculable value cannot always be ignored in
+a growing country like our own. And they are right, of course, but a few
+years ahead of time. It is only the children and grandchildren of the
+living pioneers of the Columbia who will see more than the beginning of
+its untold millions of horse-power broken to harness. And in the
+meantime the optimists of Kettle Falls are turning their attention to
+agriculture and horticulture. Never have I seen finer apple orchards
+than those through which we drove on the way to resume our down-river
+voyage.
+
+The point from which we pushed off at ten o'clock on the morning of
+October twenty-fourth must have been only a little below that at which
+Lieutenant Symons launched the _batteau_ for his historic voyage to the
+mouth of the Snake in 1881. Forty years have gone by since that
+memorable undertaking, yet Symons' report is to-day not only the most
+accurate description of an upper Columbia voyage that has ever been
+written, but also the most readable. During the time I was running the
+three hundred and fifty miles of river surveyed by Lieutenant Symons, I
+found his admirable report only less fascinating on the human side than
+it was of material assistance on the practical.
+
+Of his preparations for the voyage Lieutenant Symons writes:
+
+     "I was fortunate enough to procure from John Rickey, a settler
+     and trader, who lives at the Grand Rapids, a strongly built
+     _batteau_, and had his assistance in selecting a crew of Indians
+     for the journey. The _batteau_ was about thirty feet long, four
+     feet wide at the gunwales, and two feet deep, and is as small a
+     boat as the voyage should ever be attempted in, if it is
+     contemplated to go through all the rapids. My first lookout had
+     been to secure the services of 'Old Pierre Agare' as steersman,
+     and I had to carry on negotiations with him for several days
+     before he finally consented to go. Old Pierre is the only one of
+     the old Hudson Bay _voyageurs_ now left who knows the river
+     thoroughly at all stages of water, from Colville to its mouth....
+     The old man is seventy years of age, and hale and hearty,
+     although his eyesight is somewhat defective.... The other Indians
+     engaged were Pen-waw, Big Pierre, Little Pierre, and Joseph. They
+     had never made the trip all the way down the river, and their
+     minds were full of the dangers and terrors of the great rapids
+     below, and it was a long time before we could prevail upon them
+     to go, by promising them a high price and stipulating for their
+     return by rail and stage. Old Pierre and John Rickey laboured and
+     talked with them long and faithfully, to gain their consent, and
+     I am sure that they started off with as many misgivings about
+     getting safely through as we did who had to trust our lives to
+     their skill, confidence and obedience."
+
+Lieutenant Symons does not state whether any confusion ever arose as a
+consequence of the fact that three of his five Indians bore the
+inevitable French-Canadian name of "Pierre." Of the method of work
+followed by himself and his topographical assistant, Downing, throughout
+the voyage, he writes:
+
+     "Mr. Downing and myself worked independently in getting as
+     thorough knowledge of the river as possible, he taking the
+     courses with a prismatic compass, and estimating distances by the
+     eye, and sketching in the topographical features of the
+     surrounding country, while I estimated also the distances to
+     marked points, and paid particular attention to the bed of the
+     river, sounding wherever there were any indications of
+     shallowness. Each evening we compared notes as to distances, and
+     we found them to come out very well together, the greatest
+     difference being six and three-fourths miles in a day's run of
+     sixty-four miles. Some days they were identical. The total
+     distance from our starting point ... to the mouth of the Snake
+     River was estimated by Mr. Downing to be three hundred and
+     sixty-three miles, and by myself to be three hundred and fifty.
+     His distances were obtained by estimating how far it was to some
+     marked point ahead, and correcting it when the point was reached;
+     mine by the time required to pass over the distances, in which
+     the elements considered were the swiftness of the current and the
+     labour of the oarsmen."
+
+I may state that it was only rarely that we found the distances arrived
+at by Lieutenant Symons and Mr. Downing to be greatly at variance with
+those established by later surveys. In the matter of bars, rapids,
+currents, channels and similar things, there appeared to have been
+astonishingly little change in the four decades that had elapsed since
+he had made his observations. Where he advised, for instance, taking the
+right-hand in preference to the middle or left-hand channels, it was not
+often that we went far wrong in heeding the direction. Bars of gravel,
+of course, shift from season to season, but reefs and projections of the
+native rock are rarely altered by more than a negligible erosion. The
+prominent topographical features--cliffs, headlands, _coulees_,
+mountains--are immutable, and for mile after mile, bend after bend, we
+picked them up just as Symons reported them.
+
+The river is broad and slow for a few miles below Grand Rapids (they are
+called Rickey's Rapids locally), with steep-sided benches rising on
+either hand, and the green of apple orchards showing in bright fringes
+along their brinks. There had been the usual warnings in Kettle Falls of
+a bad rapid to be encountered "somewhere below," but the data available
+on this part of the river made us practically certain that nothing worse
+than minor riffles existed until the swift run of Spokane Rapids was
+reached. Seven miles below Grand Rapids several islands of black basalt
+contracted the river considerably, but any one of two or three channels
+offered an easy way through them. The highest of them had a driftwood
+crown that was not less than fifty feet above the present stage of the
+river, showing graphically the great rise and fall at this point.
+
+At the shallow San Poil bar we saw some Indians from the Colville
+Reservation fishing for salmon--the crooked-nosed "dogs" of the final
+run. If they were of the tribe from which the bar must have been named,
+civilization had brought them its blessing in the form of hair-restorer.
+They were as hirsute a lot of ruffians as one could expect to find out
+of Bolshevia--and as dirty.
+
+Turtle Rapid was the worst looking place we found during the day, but
+the menace was more apparent than real. The riffle took its name from a
+number of turtle-backed outcroppings of bedrock pushing up all the way
+across the river. The current was swift and deep, making it just the
+sort of place one would have expected to encounter bad swirls. These
+were, indeed, making a good deal of a stir at the foot of several of the
+narrow side runs, but by the broader middle channel which we followed
+the going was comparatively smooth. We finished an easy day by tying up
+at four o'clock where the road to the Colville Reservation comes down to
+the boulder-bordered bank at Hunter's Ferry.
+
+Columbia River ferry-men are always kindly and hospitable, and this one
+invited us to sleep on his hay and cook our meals in his kitchen. He was
+an amiable "cracker" from Kentucky, with a delectable drawl, a
+tired-looking wife and a houseful of children. Ferry-men's wives always
+have many children. This one was still pretty, though, and her
+droop--for a few years yet--would be rather appealing than otherwise. I
+couldn't be quite sure--from a remark she made--whether she had a sense
+of humor, or whether she had not. Seeing her sitting by the kitchen
+stove with a baby crooked into her left arm, a two-year-old on her lap,
+and a three-year-old riding her foot, the while she was trying to fry
+eggs, bake biscuit and boil potatoes, I observed, by way of bringing a
+brighter atmosphere with my presence, that it was a pity that the human
+race hadn't been crossed with octopi, so that young mothers would have
+enough arms to do their work with. She nodded approvingly at first,
+brightening visibly at the emancipative vision conjured up in her tired
+brain, but after five minutes of serious cogitation relapsed into gloom.
+"I reckon it wouldn't be any use, mistah," she said finally; "them
+octupusses would only give the young 'uns mo' ahms to find troubl'
+with." Now _did_ she have a sense of humour, or did she not?
+
+We had a distinctly bad night of it hitting the hay. The mow was built
+with a horseshoe-shaped manger running round three sides of it, into
+which the hay was supposed to descend by gravity as the cows devoured
+what was below. As a labour-saving device it had a good deal to
+recommend it, but as a place to sleep--well, it might not have been so
+bad if each of the dozen cows had not been belled, and if the weight of
+our tired bodies on the hay had not kept pressing it into the manger all
+night, and so made a continuous performance of feeding and that bovine
+bell-chorus. I dozed off for a spell along toward morning, awakening
+from a Chinese-gong nightmare to find my bed tilted down at an angle of
+forty-five degrees and a rough tongue lapping my face. With most of my
+mattress eaten up, I was all but in the manger myself. Turning out at
+daybreak, we pushed off at an early hour.
+
+A run of nine miles, made in about an hour, took us to Gerome, where
+another ferry crossed to the west or Colville Reservation bank. A couple
+of swift, shallow rapids above and below Roger's Bar was the only rough
+water encountered. We were looking for a point from which Spokane could
+be reached by car, as Captain Armstrong, who had originally planned to
+go with us only to Kettle Falls, was now quite at the end of the time he
+was free to remain away from Nelson and business. There were two reasons
+for our making a temporary halt at Gerome Ferry. One was the fact that
+Spokane could be reached as readily from there as from any point lower
+down, and the other was Ike Emerson. I shall have so much to say of Ike
+a bit further along that I shall no more than introduce him for the
+moment.
+
+As much of the worst water on the American course of the Columbia occurs
+in the two hundred and thirty miles between the head of Spokane Rapids
+and the foot of Priest Rapids,[2] I was considerably concerned about
+finding a good river man to take Captain Armstrong's place and help me
+with the boat. Roos made no pretensions to river usefulness, and I was
+reluctant to go into some of the rapids that I knew were ahead of us
+without a dependable man to handle the steering paddle and to help with
+lining. Men of this kind were scarce, it appeared--even more so than on
+the Big Bend, in Canada, where there was a certain amount of logging and
+trapping going on. Two or three ferry-men had shaken their heads when I
+brought the matter up. There was nothing they would like better if they
+were free, they said, but, as ferries couldn't be expected to run by
+themselves, that was out of the question on such short notice.
+
+    [2] Not be confused with the rapids of the same name we had
+    run on the Big Bend in Canada. L. R. F.
+
+It was that genial "cracker" at Hunter's Ferry who was the first to
+mention Ike Emerson. Ike would be just my man, he said, with that
+unmistakable grin that a man grins when the person he speaks of is some
+kind of a "character." Or, leastways, Ike would be just my man--_if I
+could find him_. "And where shall I be likely to find him?" I asked. He
+wasn't quite sure about that, but probably "daun rivah sumwhah." There
+was no telling about Ike, it appeared. Once he had been seen to sink
+when his raft had gone to pieces in Hell Gate, and he had been mourned
+as dead for a fortnight. At the end of that time he had turned up in
+Kettle Falls, but quite unable--or else unwilling--to tell why the river
+had carried him eighty-five miles _up_ stream instead of down to the
+Pacific. A keg of moonshine which had been Ike's fellow passenger on the
+ill-fated raft _may_ have had something to do both with the wreck and
+that long up-stream swim after the wreck. At any rate, it had never been
+explained. However, Gerome was Ike's headquarters--if any place might be
+called that for a man who lived on or in the river most of the time--and
+that would be the place to inquire for him.
+
+When I asked the ferry-man at Gerome if Ike Emerson had been seen
+thereabouts recently, he grinned the same sort of grin his colleague at
+Hunter's had grinned when the same subject was under discussion. Yes, he
+had seen Ike only the night before. He was a real old river rat; just
+the man I wanted--_if I could find him_. He was as hard as a flea to put
+your hand on when you _did_ want him, though. Well, it took us four
+hours to run our man down, but luck was with us in the end. Every
+lumber-jack, farmer and Indian that we asked about Ike, grinned that same
+grin, dropped whatever he was doing and joined in the search. There were
+a score of us when the "View Halloo" was finally sounded, and we looked
+more like a lynching party on vengeance bent than anything else I can
+think of. Ike, who was digging potatoes (of all the things in the world
+for a river rat to be doing), glowered suspiciously as we debouched from
+a _coulee_ and streamed down toward him, but his brow cleared instantly
+when I hastily told him what we had come for.
+
+You bet, he would go with us. But, wait a moment! Why should we not go
+with him? He was overdue with a raft of logs and cordwood he had
+contracted to take down below Hell Gate, and was just about to get to
+work building it. We could just throw our boat aboard, and off we would
+go together. If he could get enough help, he could have the raft ready
+in two or three days, and, once started, it would not be a lot slower
+than the skiff, especially if we took a fast motor-boat he knew of for
+towing purposes and to "put her into the rapids right." It would make a
+lot more of a show for the movies, and he had always dreamed of having
+himself filmed on a big raft running Hell Gate and Box Canyon. Just let
+us leave it to him, and he would turn out something that would be the
+real thing.
+
+All of this sounded distinctly good to me, but I turned to Roos and
+Captain Armstrong for confirmation before venturing a decision. Roos
+said it would be "the cat's ears" (late slang meaning _au fait_, or
+something like that, in English); that a raft would photograph like a
+million dollars. Armstrong's face was beaming. "It will be the chance of
+a lifetime," he said warmly. "Go by all means. I'm only sorry I can't be
+with you." So we gave Ike _carte blanche_ and told him to go ahead; we
+would arrange the financial end when he knew more about what he would be
+spending. I was glad of the wait for one reason; it would give us a
+chance to speed the Captain on his way as far as Spokane.
+
+Running over a Spokane paper in the post office and general store at
+Gerome, the program of the Chamber of Commerce luncheon for the morrow,
+October the twenty-sixth, recalled to me that I had a conditional
+engagement to perform at that function. Major Laird, the Publicity
+Secretary of the Chamber, had phoned me before we left Nelson, asking if
+I would run up to Spokane from some convenient point on the river and
+give them a bit of a yarn about our voyage at the next Tuesday luncheon.
+I had replied that, as it was quite out of the question keeping to any
+definite schedule in river travel, I could give him no positive
+assurance of turning up in time, but suggested that if he would sign up
+some one else for _piece de resistance_, he could be free to use me for
+soup or nuts in the event I put in an appearance. As it now appeared
+that we had arrived within a few hours of Spokane, I phoned Major Laird,
+and he said he would start a car off at once to take us there.
+
+We spent the afternoon helping Roos patch up the continuity of his
+"farmer" picture. Although Captain Armstrong had appeared in all the
+scenes shot since we started with the skiff, he had never made his
+official entry into the picture. Properly, this should have been done in
+one of the introductory scenes shot at the source of the river, near
+Lake Windermere. It will be remembered that, when I leaned on my
+hay-fork and gazed pensively off toward the river, I was supposed to see
+a prospector tinkering with his boat. I had walked out of two scenes on
+my way to join that prospector: the first time to ask if he would take
+me with him, and the second time, with a blanket-roll on my shoulder
+(the improvised one with the two "nicht-goons" and other foreign
+knick-knacks in it), to jump into the boat and push off. Obviously, as
+we had neither prospector nor boat at the time, these shots could not be
+made until later. Now, with the "prospector" about to leave us, it was
+imperative to continuity that we should get him into the picture before
+we could go ahead getting him out of it.
+
+"Location" was our first care, and in this fortune favoured us. The
+mouth of a small creek flowing in just below Gerome furnished a "source
+of the Columbia" background that would have defied an expert to tell
+from an original. In fact, it looked more like the popular idea of a
+"source" than did the real one; and that is an important point with the
+movies. Here we made the "tinkering" and the "first push-off" shots. Of
+course, I had a different blanket-roll on my shoulder this time, but I
+took great care to make it as close an imitation as possible of the one
+I had so hastily flung together out of "Jock's" bedding. A close
+imitation externally, I mean--there were no "frou-frous" in it.
+
+Now that we had the "prospector" properly into the picture, we were
+ready for the "farewell" shot--the getting him out of it. For this the
+Captain and I were "picked up" on a picturesque rocky point, regarding
+with interest something far off down-river. Presently he registers
+"dawning comprehension," and tells me in fluent French-Canadian
+pantomime that it is a raft--a whale of a big one. That will offer a way
+for me to continue my voyage now that he has to leave me. Then we go
+down to the boat, which he presents to me with a comprehensive
+"it-is-all-yours" gesture, before shouldering his sack of ore (one of
+our bags of canned stuff answered very well for this) and climbing off
+up the bank toward the "smelter." (We had intended to make a real
+smelter scene at Trail or Northport, but the light was poor at both
+places.) Finally I pushed off alone, pulling down and across the current
+to throw in my fortunes with the "raft." That left the thread of
+"continuity" dangling free, to be spliced up as soon as Ike had the raft
+completed. That worthy was losing no time. All afternoon we heard the
+rumble of logs rolling over boulders, and every now and then a
+fan-shaped splash of spray would flash up with a spangle of iridescence
+in the light of the declining sun.
+
+The car arrived for us at seven-thirty that evening. It was driven by
+Commissioner Howard, of the Spokane County Board, who had courteously
+volunteered to come for us when it appeared there would be some delay in
+getting a hired car off for the hundred and sixty-mile round trip. He
+was accompanied by his son, a high-school youngster. As they had eaten
+lunch on the way, they announced themselves ready to start on the return
+trip at once. The road turned out to be a rough mountain track, and
+rather muddy. Ten miles out from Gerome a suspicious clicking set in
+somewhere under the rear seat, and at twenty miles the differential had
+gone. Mr. Howard finally induced an empty truck to take us in tow, and
+behind that lumbering vehicle we did the last sixty miles. The tow-chain
+parted on an average of once a mile while we were still in the
+mountains, but did better as the roads improved. The temperature fell as
+the altitude increased, and it must have been well under twenty before
+daylight--and a mean, marrow-searching cold at that. Mr. Howard,
+refusing every offer of relief, stuck it out at the wheel all the way
+in--a remarkable example of nerve and endurance, considering that he had
+only recently come out of a hospital. Armstrong, as always, was
+indomitable, singing French-Canadian boating songs of blood-stirring
+_tempo_ most of the way. I shall ever associate his
+
+    "_Rouli, roulant, ma boule roulant,
+     En roulant, ma boule roulant!_"
+
+rather with the chug-chugging of a motor truck than with the creak of
+oars from which it derived its inspiration.
+
+We struck the paved state highway at Davenport about four o'clock, and
+in the very grey dawn of the morning after came rumbling into Spokane.
+Somewhere in the dim shadowy outskirts we stopped rumbling. The truck
+driver reported he had run out of gas. Assiduous milking of the Cole's
+tank yielded just enough to carry us on to the hotel. The Davenport of
+Spokane is one of the very finest hotels in all the world, but if it had
+been just a cabin with a stove, it would still have seemed a rose-sweet
+paradise after those last two nights we had put in--one on the hay with
+belled cows eating up the beds beneath our backs, and the other jerked
+over a frosty road in the wake of a skidding truck. Soaking for an hour
+in a steaming bath, I rolled in between soft sheets, leaving orders not
+to be called until noon.
+
+Spokane is one of the finest, cleanest and most beautiful cities of the
+West, and I have never left it after a visit without regret. This time,
+brief as our stay had to be, was no exception. It was an unusually keen
+looking lot of business and professional men that turned out for the
+Chamber luncheon, among whom I found not a few old college friends and
+others I had not seen for a number of years. Notable of these were
+Herbert Moore and Samuel Stern, with whom I had spent six weeks on a
+commercial mission in China in 1910. I was also greatly interested to
+meet Mr. Turner, the field engineer of the great project for reclaiming
+a million and three-quarters acres of land in the Columbia Basin of
+eastern Washington by diverting to it water from the Pend d'Oreille. The
+incalculable possibilities, as well as the great need of this daring
+project I was to see much of at firsthand during that part of my voyage
+on which I was about to embark.
+
+Captain Armstrong left by train for Nelson the evening of the 27th, and
+the following morning Major Laird drove Roos and me back to Gerome. For
+a considerable part of the distance we followed the highly picturesque
+route along the Spokane River, stopping for lunch at the hydro-electric
+plant of the Washington Power Company at Long Lake. This enterprising
+corporation has power installations already in operation on the Spokane
+which must make that stream pretty nearly the most completely harnessed
+river of its size in America. The lofty concrete barrier which backs up
+Long Lake has the distinction of being the highest spillway dam in the
+world. The "Spokane interval" proved a highly enjoyable spell of
+relaxation before tackling the rough stretch of river ahead. I knew I
+was going to miss greatly the guiding hand and mind of Captain
+Armstrong, but had high hopes of Ike Emerson. I was not to be
+disappointed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+RAFTING THROUGH HELL GATE
+
+
+Ike had been working at high speed during our absence, but his
+imagination appeared rather to have run ahead of his powers of
+execution. The hundred-feet-long, thirty-feet-wide raft he had set
+himself to construct (so as to have something that would "stack up big
+in the movie") took another two days to complete, and even then was not
+quite all that critical artist wanted to make it. After filling in the
+raft proper with solid logs of spruce and cedar, he began heaping
+cordwood upon it. He was trying to make something that would loom up
+above the water, he explained; "somethin' tu make a showin' in the
+pictur'." He had three or four teams hauling, and as many men piling,
+for two days. We stopped him at fifty cords in order to get under way
+the second day after our return. There was some division of opinion
+among the 'long shore loafers as to whether or not this was the
+_largest_ raft that had ever started down this part of the Columbia, but
+they were a unit in agreeing that it was the _highest_. Never was there
+a raft with so much "freeboard." The trouble was that every foot of that
+"freeboard" was cordwood, and then some; for the huge stacks of
+four-foot firewood had weighted down the logs under them until those
+great lengths of spruce and cedar were completely submerged. When you
+walked about "on deck" you saw the river flowing right along through
+the loosely stacked cordwood beneath. Roos was exultant over the way
+that mighty mass of rough wood charging down a rock-walled canyon was
+going to photograph, and Ike was proud as a peacock over the Thing he
+had brought into being. But Roos was going to be cranking on the cliff
+when we went through Hell Gate, and Ike didn't care a fig what happened
+to him anyhow. And I _did_ care. There were a lot of things that could
+happen to a crazy contraption of that kind, _if ever it hit anything
+solid_; and I knew that the walls of Hell Gate and Box Canyon must be
+solid or they wouldn't have stood as long as they had. And as for
+hitting ... that raft must be pretty nearly as long as Hell Gate was
+wide, and if ever it got to swinging.... It's funny the things a man
+will think of the night before he is going to try out a fool stunt that
+he doesn't know much about.
+
+[Illustration: MAP OF THE UPPER COLUMBIA]
+
+[Illustration: A "CLOSE-UP" OF IKE BUILDING HIS RAFT]
+
+[Illustration: MY FIFTY POUND SALMON]
+
+A fine motherly old girl called Mrs. Miller had put us up in her big,
+comfortable farm-house during our wait while Ike completed his
+ship-building operations. She must have known all of seven different
+ways of frying chicken, and maybe twice that number of putting up apple
+preserves. We had just about all of them for breakfast the morning we
+started. Jess, the ferry-man, treated us to vanilla extract cordials and
+told us the story of a raft that had struck and broken up just above his
+father's ranch near Hawk Creek. Only guy they fished out was always
+nutty afterward. Cracked on the head with a length of cordwood while
+swimming. Good swimmer, too; but a guy had no chance in a swish-swashing
+bunch of broke-loose logs. Thus Jess, and thus--or in similar
+vein--about a dozen others who came down to see us off from the ferry
+landing. They all told stories of _raft_ disasters, just as they would
+have enlarged on _boat_ disasters if it had been a boat in which we were
+starting to run Hell Gate and Box Canyon.
+
+I pulled across and landed Roos at the raft to make an introductory shot
+or two of Ike before picking up the thread of his "continuity" with my
+(pictorial) advent. A corner of the raft had been left unfinished for
+this purpose. Ike was discovered boring a log with a huge auger, after
+which he notched and laid a stringer, finishing the operation by pegging
+the latter down with a twisted hazel withe. The old river rat seemed to
+know instinctively just what was wanted of him, going through the action
+so snappily that Roos clapped him on the back and pronounced him "the
+cat's ears" as an actor.
+
+Ike showed real quality in the next scene; also the single-minded
+concentration that marks the true artist. Looking up from his boring, he
+sees a boat paddling toward him from up-river. The nearing craft was
+_Imshallah_, with the "farmer" at the oars, just as he had started (for
+the still unbuilt raft) when the "prospector" gave him the boat before
+disappearing up the bank to the "smelter" with his sack of "ore" over
+his shoulder. Thus "continuity" was served.
+
+The "farmer" pulls smartly alongside, tosses Ike the painter and
+clambers aboard the raft. An animated colloquy ensues, in which the
+"farmer" asks about the river ahead, and Ike tells him, with dramatic
+gestures, that it will be death to tackle it in so frail a skiff. A
+raft is the only safe way to make the passage and--here Ike spreads out
+his hands with the manner of a butler announcing that "dinner is
+served!"--the raft is at the "farmer's" disposal. That suits the
+"farmer" to a "T;" so the skiff is lifted aboard and they are ready to
+cast off.
+
+Where Ike displayed the concentration of a true artist was in the
+skiff-lifting shot. Just as the green bow of _Imshallah_ came over the
+side, a boy who had been stacking cordwood, in rushing forward to clear
+the fouled painter, stepped on an unsecured log and went through into
+the river. By this time, of course, I knew better than to spoil a shot
+by suspending or changing action in the middle of it, but that Ike
+should be thus esoterically sapient was rather too much to expect. Yet
+the sequel proved how much more consummate an artist of the two of us
+that untutored (even by Roos) old river rat was. When we had finished
+"Yo-heave-ho-ing" as the skiff settled into place, I (dropping my
+histrionics like a wet bathing suit) shouted to Ike to come and help me
+fish that kid out. "What kid?" he drawled in a sort of languid surprise.
+Then, after a kind of dazed once-over of the raft, fore-and-aft: "By
+cripes, the kid _is_ gone!" Now has that ever been beaten for artistic
+concentration?
+
+The lad, after bumping down along the bottom to the lower end of the
+raft, had come to the surface no whit the worse for his ducking. He was
+clambering up over the logs like a wet cat before either Ike or I,
+teetering across the crooked, wobbly cordwood, had stumbled half the
+distance to the "stern." "It must be a right sma't betta goin' daun
+unda than up heah," was Ike's only comment.
+
+The motor-boat which Ike had engaged to tow the raft was already on
+hand. It had been built by a Spokane mining magnate for use at his
+summer home on Lake Coeur d'Alene, and was one of the prettiest little
+craft of the kind I ever saw. With its lines streaming gracefully back
+from its sharp, beautifully-flared bow, it showed speed from every
+angle. Hardwood and brass were in bad shape, but the engines were
+resplendent; and the engines were the finest thing about it. They had
+been built to drive it twenty-five miles an hour when she was new, the
+chap running it said, and were probably good for all of twenty-two yet
+when he opened up. Except that its hull wasn't rugged enough to stand
+the banging, it was an ideal river boat, though not necessarily for
+towing rafts. However, it was mighty handy even at that ignominious
+work.
+
+I couldn't quite make up my mind about the engineer of the motor
+boat--not until he settled down to work, that is. His eye was quite
+satisfactory, but his habit of hesitating before answering a question,
+and then usually saying "I dunno," conveyed rather the impression of
+torpid mentality if not actual dulness. Nothing could have been further
+from the truth, as I realized instantly the moment he started swinging
+the raft into the current. He merely said "I dunno" because he really
+didn't know, where an ordinary man would have felt impelled to make half
+an answer, or at least to say something about the weather or the stage
+of the river. Earl (I never learned his last name) was sparing with his
+tongue because he was unsparing with his brain. His mind was always
+ready to act--and to react. There were to arise several situations well
+calculated to test the mettle of him, and he was always "there." I have
+never known so thoroughly useful and dependable a man for working a
+launch in swift water.
+
+While Ike was completing his final "snugging down" operations, I chanced
+to observe a long steel-blue and slightly reddish-tinged body working up
+the bottom toward the stern of the raft. It looked like a salmon, except
+that it was larger than any member of that family I had ever seen. A
+blunt-pointed pike-pole is about the last thing one would use for a
+fish-spear, but, with nothing better ready to hand, I tried it. My first
+thrust was a bad miss, but, rather strangely, I thought--failed to
+deflect the loggily nosing monster more than a foot or two from his
+course. The next thrust went home, but where I was half expecting to
+have the pole torn from my hands by a wild rush, there was only a
+sluggish, unresentful sort of a wriggle. As there was no hook or barb to
+the pike, the best I could do was to worry my prize along the bottom to
+the bank, where a couple of Indians lifted it out for me. It was a
+salmon after all--a vicious looking "dog," with a wicked mouthful of
+curving teeth--but of extraordinary size. It must have weighed between
+fifty and sixty pounds, for the pike-pole all but snapped when I tried
+to lift the monster with it. Indeed, its great bulk was undoubtedly
+responsible for the fact that it was already half-dead from battering on
+the rocks before I speared it. As the flesh was too soft even for the
+Indians, I gave it to a German farmer from a nearby clearing to feed to
+his hogs. Or rather, I traded it. The German had a dog which, for the
+sake of "human interest," Roos very much wanted to borrow. (Why, seeing
+it was a dog, he should not have called it "canine interest," I never
+quite understood; but it was the "heart touch" he wanted, at any rate).
+So Ike proposed to the "Dutchman" that we give him fifty pounds of dead
+"dog" for half that weight of live dog, the latter to be returned when
+we were through with him. That was Ike's _proposition_. As soon as we
+were under way, however, he confided to me that he never was going to
+give that good collie back to a Dutchman. A people that had done what
+the "Dutchmen" did to Belgium had no right to have a collie anyhow. If
+they must have dogs, let them keep dachshunds--or pigs. And he forthwith
+began to alienate that particular collie's affection by feeding him milk
+chocolate. Poor old Ike! Being only a fresh-water sailor, I fear he did
+not have a wife in every port, so that there was an empty place in his
+heart that craved affection.
+
+We cast off at ten o'clock, Earl swung the raft's head out by a steady
+pull with the launch, and the current completed the operation of
+turning. Once in mid-stream she made good time, the motor-boat
+maintaining just enough of a tug to keep the towing-line taut and give
+her a mile an hour or so of way over the current. That gave Earl a
+margin to work with, and, pulling sharply now to one side, now to the
+other, he kept the great pile of logs headed where the current was
+swiftest and the channel clearest. It was all in using his power at the
+right time and in the right way. A hundred-ton tugboat would have been
+helpless in stopping the raft once it started to go in the wrong
+direction. The trick was to start it right and not let it go wrong, Ike
+explained--just like raising pups or kids. It was certainly no job for a
+novice, and I found constant reassurance in the consummate
+"raftsmanship" our taciturn engineer was displaying.
+
+The hills on both sides of the river grew loftier and more rugged as we
+ran to the south, and the trees became patchier and scrubbier. The bunch
+grass on the diminishing benches at the bends was withered and brown. It
+was evident from every sign that we were nearing the arid belt of
+eastern Washington, the great semi-desert plateau that is looped in the
+bend of the Columbia between the mouth of the Spokane and the mouth of
+the Snake. The towering split crest of Mitre Rock marked the approach to
+the slack stretch of water backed up by the boulder barrage over which
+tumbles Spokane Rapids. The run through the latter was to be our real
+baptism; a short rapid passed a few miles above proving only rough
+enough to set the raft rolling in fluent undulations and throw a few
+light gobs of spray over her "bows." We were now going up against
+something pretty closely approximating the real thing. It wasn't Hell
+Gate or Box Canyon by a long way, Ike said, but at the same time it
+wasn't any place to risk any slip-up.
+
+Save for two or three of the major riffles on the Big Bend of Canada,
+Spokane Rapids has a stretch of water that must go down hill just about
+as fast as any on all the Columbia. The channel--although running
+between boulders--was narrow in the first place, and the deepest part of
+it was still further restricted by an attempt to clear a way through for
+steamer navigation in the years when a through service up and down the
+Columbia was still dreamed of. The channel was deepened considerably,
+but the effect of this was to divert a still greater flow into it and
+form a sort of a chute down which the water rushed as through a flume.
+Being straight, this channel is not very risky to run, even with a small
+boat--provided one keeps to it. A wild tumble of rollers just to the
+left of the head must be avoided, however, even by a raft. That was why
+we had the motor-boat--to be sure of "hitting the intake right," as Ike
+put it. And the motor-boat ought to be able to handle the job without
+help. He had been working hard ever since we started on a gigantic
+stern-sweep, but that was for Hell Gate and Box Canyon. Here, with her
+nose once in right, she should do it on her own.
+
+Mooring the raft against the right bank in the quiet water a couple of
+hundred yards above the "intake," Earl ran us down to the mouth of the
+Spokane River in the launch. We were purchasing gasoline and provisions
+in the little village of Lincoln, just below the Spokane, and Ike
+thought that the lower end of the rapid would be the best place for Roos
+to set up to command the raft coming through. It was indeed terrifically
+fast water, but--because the launch had the power to pick the very best
+of the channel--the run down just missed the thrill that would have
+accompanied it had it been up to one's oars to keep his boat out of
+trouble. Earl shut off almost completely as he slipped into the "V,"
+keeping a bare steerage-way over the current. Twenty miles an hour was
+quite fast enough to be going in the event she _did_ swerve from the
+channel and hit a rock; there was no point in adding to the potential
+force of the impact with the engine. As there was a heavy wash from the
+rapids in even the quietest eddy he could find opposite the town, Earl
+stayed with the launch, keeping her off the rocks with a pole while Ike,
+Roos and myself went foraging. Ike spilled gasoline over his back in
+packing a leaking can down over the boulders, causing burns from which
+he suffered considerable pain and annoyance when he came to man the
+sweep the following day.
+
+After dropping Roos on the right bank to set up for the picture, Earl
+drove the launch back up the rapid to the raft. I hardly know which was
+the more impressive, the power of the wildly racing rapid or the power
+of the engine of the launch. It was a ding-dong fight all the way.
+Although he nosed at times to within a few inches of the overhanging
+rocks of the bank in seeking the quietest water, the launch was brought
+repeatedly to a standstill. There she would hang quivering, until the
+accelerating engine would impart just the few added revolutions to the
+propellers that would give her the upper hand again. The final struggle
+at the "intake" was the bitterest of all, and Earl only won out there by
+sheering to the right across the "V"--at imminent risk of being swung
+round, it seemed to me--and reaching less impetuous water.
+
+Throwing off her mooring lines, Earl towed the raft out into the
+sluggish current. There was plenty of time and plenty of room to
+manoeuvre her into the proper position. All he had to do was to bring
+her into the "intake" well clear of the rocks and rollers to the left,
+and then keep towing hard enough to hold her head down-stream. It was a
+simple operation--compared, for instance, with what he would have on the
+morrow at Hell Gate--but still one that had to be carried out just so if
+an awful mess-up was to be avoided. Novice as I was with that sort of a
+raft, I could readily see what would happen if she once got to swinging
+and turned broadside to the rapid.
+
+That was about the first major rapid I ever recall running when I didn't
+have something to do, and it was rather a relief to be able to watch the
+wheels go round and feel that there was nothing to stand-by for. Even
+Ike, with no sweep to swing, was foot-loose, or rather hand-free.
+Knowing Earl's complete capability, he prepared to cast aside
+navigational worries for the nonce. He had picked up his axe and was
+about to turn to hewing at the blade of his big steering-oar, when I
+reminded him that he was still an actor and that he had been ordered to
+run up and down the raft and register "great anxiety" while within range
+of the camera.
+
+Perhaps the outstanding sensation of that wild run was the feeling of
+surprise that swept over me at the almost uncanny speed with which that
+huge unwieldy mass of half submerged wood gathered way. In still water
+it would have taken a powerful tug many minutes to start it moving; here
+it picked up and leapt ahead like a motor-boat. One moment it was
+drifting along at three miles an hour; five seconds later, having slid
+over the "intake," it was doing more than twenty. The actual slope of
+that first short pitch must have been all of one-in-ten, so that I found
+myself bracing against the incline of the raft, as when standing in a
+wagon that starts over the brow of a hill. Then the pitch eased and she
+hit the rollers, grinding right through them like a floating Juggernaut.
+The very worst of them--haughty-headed combers that would have sent the
+skiff sky-rocketing--simply dissolved against the logs and died in
+hissing anguish in the tangle of cordwood. The motion had nothing of the
+jerkiness of even so large a craft as the launch, and one noticed it
+less under his feet than when he looked back and saw the wallowing
+undulations of the "deck."
+
+But best of all was the contemptuous might with which the raft stamped
+out, obliterated, abolished the accursed whirlpools. Spokane was not
+deep and steep-sided enough to be a dangerous whirlpool rapid, like the
+Dalles or Hell Gate, but there were still a lot of mighty mean-mouthed
+"suckers" lying in ambush where the rollers began to flatten. There was
+no question of their arrogance and courage. The raft might have been the
+dainty _Imshallah_, with her annoying feminine weakness for clinging
+embraces, for all the hesitancy they displayed in attacking it. But, oh,
+what a difference! Where the susceptible _Imshallah_ had edged off in
+coy dalliance and ended by all but surrendering, the raft simply
+thundered ahead. The siren "whouf!" of the lurking brigand was forced
+back down its black throat as it was literally effaced, smeared from
+the face of the water. Gad, how I loved to see them die, after all
+_Imshallah_ and I had had to endure at their foul hands! _Imshallah_,
+perched safely aloft on a stack of cordwood, took it all with the rather
+languid interest one would expect from a lady of her quality; but
+I--well, I fear very much that I was leaning out over the "bows," at an
+angle not wholly safe under the circumstances, and registering "ghoulish
+glee" at the exact point where Roos had told me three times that I must
+be running up and down in the wake of Ike and registering "great
+anxiety."
+
+As there was no stopping the raft within a mile or two of the foot of
+the rapid, it had been arranged that we should launch the skiff as soon
+as we were through the worst water, and pull in to the first favourable
+eddy to await Roos and his camera. It was Ike bellowing to me to come
+and lend him a hand with the skiff that compelled me to relinquish my
+position at the "bow," where, "thumbs down" at every clash, I had been
+egging on the raft to slaughter whirlpools. The current was still very
+swift, so that Ike was carried down a considerable distance before
+making a landing. As it was slow going for Roos, laden with camera and
+tripod, over the boulders, ten or fifteen minutes elapsed before they
+pushed off in pursuit of the raft. The latter, in the meantime, had run
+a couple of miles farther down river before Earl found a stretch
+sufficiently quiet to swing her round and check her way by towing up
+against the current.
+
+In running down to this point the raft had splashed through a slashing
+bit of riffle, which I afterwards learned was called Middle Rapid
+locally. There was a short stretch of good rough white water. Offhand,
+it looked to me rather sloppier than anything we had put the skiff into
+so far; but, as it appeared there would be no difficulty in steering a
+course in fairly smooth water to the left of the rollers, I was not
+greatly concerned over it. Presently Ike came pulling round the bend at
+a great rate, and the next thing I knew _Imshallah_ was floundering
+right down the middle of the frosty-headed combers. Twice or thrice I
+saw the "V" of her bow shoot skyward, silhouetting like a black wedge
+against a fan of sun-shot spray. Then she began riding more evenly, and
+shortly was in smoother water. It was distinctly the kind of thing she
+did best, and she had come through with flying colours. Roos was
+grinning when he climbed aboard, but still showed a tinge of green about
+the gills. "Why didn't you head her into that smooth stretch on the
+left?" I asked. "_You_ had the steering paddle." "I tried to hard
+enough," he replied, still grinning, "but Ike wouldn't have it. Said he
+kinda suspected she'd go through that white stuff all right, and wanted
+to see if his suspicions were correct." And that was old Ike Emerson to
+a "T."
+
+We wallowed on through French Rapids and Hawk Creek Rapids in the next
+hour, and past the little village of Peach, nestling on a broad bench in
+the autumnal red and gold of its clustering orchards. Ike, pacing the
+"bridge" with me, said that they used to make prime peach brandy at
+Peach, and reckoned that p'raps.... "No," I cut in decisively; "_I_
+have no desire to return to Kettle Falls." I had jumped at the chance
+to draw Ike on that remarkable up-river journey of his after the
+disaster in Hell Gate, but he sheered off at once. I have grave doubts
+as to whether that strange phenomenon ever will be explained.
+
+We were now threading a great canyon, the rocky walls of which reared
+higher and higher in fantastic pinnacles, spires and weird castellations
+the deeper we penetrated its glooming depths. There had been painters at
+work, too, and with colourings brighter and more varied than any I had
+believed to exist outside of the canyons of the Colorado and the
+Yellowstone. Saffron melting to fawn and dun was there, and vivid
+streaks that were almost scarlet where fractures were fresh, but had
+changed to maroon and terra cotta under the action of the weather. A
+fluted cliff-face, touched by the air-brush of the declining sun,
+flushed a pink so delicate that one seemed to be looking at it through a
+rosy mist. There were intenser blocks and masses of colours showing in
+vivid lumps on a buttressed cliff ahead, but they were quenched before
+we reached them in a flood of indigo and mauve shadows that drenched the
+chasm as the sun dropped out of sight. From the heights it must have
+been a brilliant sunset, flaming with intense reds and yellows as desert
+sunsets always are; but looking out through the purple mists of the
+great gorge there was only a flutter of bright pennons--crimson, gold,
+polished bronze and dusky olive green--streaming across an ever widening
+and narrowing notch of jagged rock, black and opaque like splintered
+ebony. For a quarter of an hour we seemed to be steering for those
+shimmering pennons as for a harbor beacon; then a sudden up-thrust of
+black wall cut them off like a sliding door. By the time we were headed
+west again the dark pall of fallen night had smothered all life out of
+the flame-drenched sky, leaving it a pure transparent black, pricked
+with the twinkle of kindling stars. Only by the absence of stars below
+could one trace the blank opacity of the blacker black of the towering
+cliffs.
+
+No one had said anything to me about an all-day-and-all-night schedule
+for the raft, and, as a matter of fact, running in the night had not
+entered into the original itinerary at all. The reason we were bumping
+along in the dark now was that Ike, who had no more idea of time than an
+Oriental, had pushed off from Gerome an hour late, wasted another
+unnecessary hour in Lincoln yarning across the sugar barrel at the
+general store, and, as a consequence, had been overtaken by night ten
+miles above the point he wanted to make. As there was no fast water
+intervening, and as Earl had shown no signs of dissent, Ike had simply
+gone right on ahead regardless. When I asked him if it wasn't a bit
+risky, he said he thought not very; adding comfortingly that he had
+floated down on rafts a lot of times before, and hadn't "allus bumped."
+If he could see to tighten up stringer pegs, he reckoned Earl ought to
+be able to see rocks, "'cose rocks was a sight bigger'n pegs."
+
+It was not long after Ike had nullified the effect of his reassuring
+philosophy by smearing the end of his thumb with a mallet that Earl's
+night-owl eyes played him false to the extent of overlooking a rock. It
+may well have been a very small rock, and it was doubtless submerged a
+foot or more; so there was no use expecting a man to see the ripple
+above it when there wasn't light enough to indicate the passage of his
+hand before his eyes. It was no fault of Earl's at all, and even the
+optimistic Ike had claimed no more than that he hadn't "allus bumped."
+Nor was it a very serious matter at the worst. The raft merely hesitated
+a few seconds, swung part way round, slipped free again and, her head
+brought back at the pull of the launch, resumed her way. The jar of
+striking was not enough to throw a well-braced man off his feet. (The
+only reason Roos fell and pulped his ear was because he had failed to
+set himself at the right angle when the shock came.) The worst thing
+that happened was the loss of a dozen or so cords of wood which, being
+unsecurely stacked, toppled over when she struck. Luckily, the boat was
+parked on the opposite side, as was also Roos. It would have been hard
+to pick up either before morning, and Roos would hardly have lasted. The
+wood was a total loss to Ike, of course; but he was less concerned about
+that than he was over the fact that it reduced her "freeboard" on that
+quarter by three feet, so that she wouldn't make so much of a "showin'
+in the picters." He _did_ raise a howl the next morning, though. That
+was when he found that his old denim jacket had gone over with the
+cordwood. It wasn't the "wamus" itself he minded so much, he said, but
+the fact that in one of that garment's pockets had been stored the milk
+chocolate which he was using to alienate the affections of the
+Dutchman's collie. "It's all in gettin' a jump on a pup's feelin's at
+the fust offsta't," he philosophied bitterly; "an' naow I'll be losin'
+mah jump." Rather keen on the psychology of alienation, that observation
+of old Ike, it struck me.
+
+It was along toward nine o'clock, and shortly after the abrupt walls of
+the canyon began to fall away somewhat, that a light appeared on the
+left bank. Making a wide circle just above what had now become a glowing
+window-square, Earl brought the raft's head up-stream and swung her in
+against the bank. The place was marked Creston on the maps, but appeared
+to be spoken of locally as Halberson's Ferry. We spent the night with
+the hospitable Halbersons, who ran the ferry across to the Colville
+Reservation side and operated a small sawmill when logs were available.
+Earl slept at his ranch, a few miles away on the _mesa_.
+
+The night was intensely cold, and I was not surprised to find icicles
+over a foot long on the flume behind the house in the morning. The
+frozen ground returned a metallic clank to the tread of my hob-nailed
+boots as I stepped outside the door. Then I gave a gasp of amazement,
+for what did I see but Ike running--with a light, springing step--right
+along the surface of the river? At my exclamation one of the Halbersons
+left off toweling and came over to join me. "What's wrong?" he asked,
+swinging his arms to keep warm. "Wrong!" I ejaculated; "look at that! I
+know this isn't Galilee; but you don't mean to tell me the Columbia has
+frozen over during the night!" "Hardly that," was the laughing answer.
+"Ike's not running on either the ice or the water; he's just riding a
+water-soaked log to save walking. It's an old trick of his. Not many can
+do it like he can." And that was all there was to it. Ike had spotted a
+drift-log stranded a short distance up-river, and was simply bringing it
+down the easiest way so as to lash it to the raft and take it to market.
+But I should have hated to have seen a thing like that "water-walking"
+effect in those long ago days on the Canadian Big Bend, when we used to
+prime our breakfast coffee with a couple of fingers of "thirty per
+over-proof."
+
+We cast off at nine-thirty, after Ike had laid in some more "component
+parts" of his mighty sweep at the little sawmill. Although less deeply
+encanyoned than through the stretch down which we passed the previous
+night, there were still enormously high cliffs on both sides of the
+river. Trees and brush were scarcer and scrubbier than above, and the
+general aspect was becoming more and more like the semi-arid parts of
+the Colorado Desert. The colouring was somewhat less vivid than the riot
+in the canyon above, but was almost equally varied. The colour-effect
+was diversified along this part of the river by the appearance of great
+patches of rock-growing lichen, shading through half a dozen reds and
+browns to the most delicate amethyst and sage-green. At places it was
+impossible to tell from the river where the mineral pigments left off
+and the vegetable coating began.
+
+The river was broad and widening, with a comparatively slow current and
+only occasional stretches of white water. I took the occasion to launch
+the skiff and paddle about for an hour, trying to get some line on the
+speed at which the raft was towing. In smooth water I found I had the
+legs of her about three-to-one, and in rapids of about two-to-one. From
+this I figured that she did not derive more than from a mile and a half
+to two miles an hour of her speed from the launch. I only raced her
+through one bit of rapid, and she was such a poor sport about the course
+that I refused to repeat the stunt. Just as I began to spurt past her
+down through the jumping white caps she did a sort of a side-slip and
+crowded me out of the channel and into a rather messy souse-hole. The
+outraged _Imshallah_ gulped a big mouthful, but floundered through
+right-side up, as she always seemed able to do in that sort of stuff.
+But I pulled into an eddy and let the hulking old wood-pile have the
+right-of-way, declining Earl's tooted challenge for a brush in the
+riffle immediately following. A monster that could eat whirlpools alive
+wasn't anything for a skiff to monkey with the business end of. I
+boarded her respectfully by the stern and pulled _Imshallah_ up after
+me.
+
+The great bald dome of White Rock, towering a thousand feet above the
+left bank of the river, signalled our approach to Hell Gate. Towing
+across a broad reach of quiet water, Earl laid the raft against the left
+bank about half a mile above where a pair of black rock jaws,
+froth-flecked and savage, seemed closing together in an attempt to bite
+the river in two. That was as close as it was safe to stop the raft,
+Earl explained as we made fast the mooring lines, for the current began
+to accelerate rapidly almost immediately below. There were some shacks
+and an ancient apple orchard on the bench above, and Ike came over to
+whisper that they used to make some mighty kicky cider there once upon a
+time, and perhaps.... I did not need the prompting of Earl's admonitory
+head-shake. "Get a jump on you with the sweep," I said, "while Earl and
+I go down and help Roos set up. There'll be time enough to talk about
+cider below Hell Gate." I saw a somewhat (to judge from a distance)
+Bacchantic ciderette picking her way down the bench bank to the raft as
+the launch sped off down stream, but if Ike realized dividends from the
+visit there was never anything to indicate it.
+
+Although Hell Gate is a long ways from being the worst rapid on the
+Columbia, it comes pretty near to qualifying as the _worst looking_
+rapid. A long black reef, jutting out from the left bank, chokes the
+river into a narrow channel and forces it over against the rocky wall on
+the right. It shoots between these obstructions with great velocity,
+only to split itself in two against a big rock island a hundred yards
+farther down. The more direct channel is to the right, but it is too
+narrow to be of use. The main river, writhing like a wounded snake after
+being bounced off the sheer wall of the island, zigzags on through the
+black basaltic barrier in a course shaped a good deal like an elongated
+letter "Z." Hell Gate is very much like either the Great or Little
+Dalles would be if a jog were put into it by an earthquake--a rapid
+shaped like a flash of lightning, and with just as much kick in it.
+
+After much climbing and scrambling over rocks, Roos found a place about
+half way down the left side of the jagged gorge from which he could
+command the raft rounding the first leg of the "Z" and running part of
+the second leg. It would have taken a half dozen machines to cover the
+whole run through, but the place he had chosen was the one which would
+show the most one camera could be expected to get. It would miss
+entirely the main thing--the fight to keep the raft from bumping the
+rock island and splitting in two like the river did. That could not be
+helped, however. A set up in a place to catch that would have caught
+very little else, and we desired to show something of the general
+character of the gorge and rapid. Roos, solacing himself with the remark
+to the effect that, if the raft _did_ break up, probably the biggest
+part of the wreck would come down his side, was cutting himself a
+"sylvan frame" through the branches of a gnarled old screw pine as we
+left him to go to the launch.
+
+[Illustration: IKE RIDING A LOG]
+
+[Illustration: IKE ON THE MOORING LINE OF THE RAFT]
+
+[Illustration: RAFT IN TOW OF LAUNCH NEAR MOUTH OF SAN POIL (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: IKE AT THE SWEEP BELOW HELL GATE (_below_)]
+
+Ike was sitting on the bank talking with a couple of men from the
+farm-house when we got back to the raft. He had completed the sweep, he
+said, but as he had forgotten to provide any "pin" to hang it on he
+didn't quite know what to do. Perhaps we had better go up to the
+farm-house and have dinner first, and then maybe he would think of
+something. The thought of keeping Roos--whom I had seen on the verge of
+apoplexy over a half minute delay once he was ready for
+action--standing with crooked elbow at his crank, waiting an hour or
+more for the raft to shoot round the bend the next second, struck me as
+so ludicrous that I had to sit down myself to laugh without risk of
+rolling into the river. When I finally got my breath and sight back, I
+found Earl's ready mind had hit upon the idea of using the hickory
+adze-handle as a pivot for the sweep and that he and Ike were already
+rigging it. Ten minutes later the launch had swung the raft out into the
+current and we were headed for Hell Gate.
+
+The sweep, clumsy as it looked, was most ingeniously constructed. Its
+handle was a four-inch-in-diameter fir trunk, about twenty feet in
+length. One end of it had been hewn down to give hand-grip on it, and
+the other split to receive the blade. The latter was a twelve-foot
+plank, a foot and a half in width and three inches in thickness, roughly
+rounded and hewn to the shape of the flat of an oar. It was set at a
+slight upward tilt from the fir-trunk handle. Ike had contrived to
+centre the weight of the whole sweep so nicely that you could swing it
+on its adze-handle pivot with one hand. Swing it in the air, I mean;
+submerged, five or six men would have been none too few to force that
+colossal blade through the water. Ike admitted that himself, but
+reckoned that the two of us ought to be 'better'n nothin' 'tall.'
+
+As we swung out into the quickening current, I mentioned to Ike that, as
+I had never even seen a sweep of that kind in operation, much less
+worked at it myself, it might now be in order for him to give me some
+idea of what he hoped to do with it, and how. "Ye're right," he
+assented, after ejecting the inevitable squirt of tobacco and parking
+the residuary quid out of the way of his tongue as a squirrel stows a
+nut; "ye're right; five minutes fer eloosidashun an' r'h'rsal." As
+usual, Ike overestimated the time at his disposal; nevertheless, his
+intensive method of training was so much to the point that I picked up a
+"right smart bit o' sweep dope" before we began to cram into the crooked
+craw of Hell Gate.
+
+This was the biggest raft he had ever tried to take through, Ike
+explained, but he'd never had so powerful a motor launch; and Earl was
+the best man in his line on the Columbia. He reckoned that the launch
+would be able to swing the head of the raft clear of the rock island
+where the river split "agin" it; but swinging _out_ the head would have
+the effect of swinging in the stern. We were to man the sweep for the
+purpose of keeping the raft from striking amidships. We would only have
+to stroke one way, but we'd sure have to "jump into it billy hell!"
+"That being so," I suggested, "perhaps we better try a practice stroke
+or two to perfect our team-work." That struck Ike as reasonable, and so
+we went at it, he on the extreme end of the handle, I one "grip" farther
+along.
+
+Pressing the handle almost to our feet in order to elevate the blade, we
+dipped the latter with a swinging upward lift and jumped into the
+stroke. In order to keep the blade well submerged, it was necessary to
+exert almost as much force upward as forward. The compression on the
+spine was rather awful--especially as I was two or three inches taller
+than Ike, and on top of that, had the "inside" berth, where the handle
+was somewhat nearer the deck. But the blade moved through the water when
+we both straightened into it; slowly at first, and more rapidly toward
+the end of the stroke. Then we lifted the blade out of the water, and
+Ike swung it back through the air alone. I had only to "crab-step" back
+along the runway--a couple of planks laid over the cordwood--and be
+ready for the next stroke. Twice we went through that operation,
+without--so far as I could see--having any effect whatever upon the
+raft; but that was only because I was expecting "skiff-action" from a
+hundred tons of logs. We really must have altered the course
+considerably, for presently a howl came back from Earl to "do it t'other
+way," as we were throwing her out of the channel. By the time we had
+"corrected" with a couple of strokes in the opposite direction the
+launch was dipping over the crest of the "intake." Straightening up but
+not relinquishing the handle, Ike said to "let 'er ride fer a minnit,"
+but to stand-by ready.
+
+That swift opening run through the outer portal of Hell Gate offered
+about the only chance I had for a "look-see." My recollections of the
+interval that followed at the sweep are a good deal blurred. I noted
+that the water of the black-walled chasm down which we were racing was
+swift and deep, but not--right there at least--too rough for the skiff
+to ride. I noted how the sharp point of the rock island ahead threw off
+two unequal back-curving waves, as a battleship will do when turning at
+full speed. I remember thinking that, if I were in the skiff, I would
+try to avoid the island by sheering over to the right-hand channel. It
+looked too hard a pull to make the main one to the left; and the latter
+would have the worst whirlpools, too. I noted how confoundedly in the
+way of the river that sharp-nosed island was; and not only of the river,
+but of anything coming down the river. With that up-stabbing point out
+of the stream, how easy it would be! But since....
+
+"Stan'-by!" came in a growl from Ike. "'Memba naow--'billy hell' when I
+says 'jump!'" By the fact that he spat forth the whole of his
+freshly-bitten quid I had a feeling that the emergency was considerably
+beyond the ordinary. My last clear recollection was of Earl's sharply
+altering his course just before he nosed into the roaring back-curving
+wave thrown off by the island and beginning to tow to the left with his
+line at half of a right-angle to the raft. The staccato of his
+accelerating engine cut like the rattle of a machine-gun through the
+heavy rumble of the rapid, and I knew that he had thrown it wide open
+even before the foam-geyser kicked up by the propellers began to tumble
+over onto the stern of the launch. On a reduced scale, it was the same
+sort of in-tumbling jet that a destroyer throws up when, at the
+appearance of an ominous blur in the fog, she goes from
+quarter-speed-ahead to full-speed-astern. A jet like that means that the
+spinning screws are meeting almost solid resistance in the water.
+
+Ike's shoulder cut off my view ahead now, and I knew that the bow was
+swinging out only from the way the stern was swinging in. At his grunted
+"Now!" we did our curtsey-and-bow to the sweep-handle, just as we had
+practised it, then dipped the blade and drove it hard to the right.
+Four or five times we repeated that stroke, and right smartly, too, it
+seemed to me. The stern stopped swinging just at the right time,
+shooting by the foam-whitened fang of the black point by a good ten
+feet. The back-curving wave crashed down in solid green on the starboard
+quarter--but harmlessly. There was water enough to have swamped a
+_batteau_, but against a raft the comber had knocked its head off for
+nothing.
+
+Under Ike's assurance that the battle would all be over but the shouting
+in half a minute, I had put about everything I had into those half dozen
+mighty pushes with the sweep. I started to back off leisurely and resume
+my survey of the scenery as we cleared the point, but Ike's mumbled
+"Nother one!" brought me back to the sweep again. Evidently there had
+been some kind of a slip-up. "Wha' 'smatter?" I gurgled, as we swayed
+onto the kicking handle, and "Engin's on blink," rumbled the chesty
+reply. "Gotta keep'er off wi' sweep."
+
+It had been the motor-boat's role, after keeping the head of the raft
+clear of the point of the island by a strong side pull, to tow out
+straight ahead again as soon as the menace of collision was past. Earl
+was trying to do this now (I glimpsed as I crab-stepped back), but with
+two or three cylinders missing was not able to do much more than
+straighten out the tow-line. As the raft was already angling to the
+channel, the fact the current was swifter against the side of the island
+had the tendency to throw her stern in that direction. It was up to the
+sweep to keep her from striking, just as it had been at the point. What
+made it worse now was that the possible points of impact were scattered
+all the way along for two or three hundred yards, while the launch was
+giving very little help.
+
+A man ought to be able to lean onto a sweep all day long without getting
+more than a good comfortable weariness, and so I _could_ have done had I
+been properly broken in. But I was in the wrong place on the sweep, and,
+on top of that, had allowed my infantile enthusiasm to lead me into
+trying to scoop half the Columbia out of its channel at every stroke.
+And so it was that when we came to a real showdown, I found myself
+pretty hard put to come through with what was needed. Ike's relentless
+"'Nother one!" at the end of each soul-and-body wracking stroke was all
+that was said, but the 'tween-teethed grimness of its utterance was more
+potent as a verbal scourge than a steady stream of sulphurous curses.
+Ike was saving his breath, and I didn't have any left to pour out my
+feelings with.
+
+We were close to the ragged black wall all the way, and I have an idea
+that the back-waves thrown off by the projecting points had about as
+much to do with keeping us from striking as had the sweep. Such waves
+will often buffer off a canoe or _batteau_, and they must have helped
+some with the raft. There is no doubt, however, that, if the raft had
+once been allowed to swing broadside, either she or the rock island
+would have had to change shape or else hold up the million or so
+horse-power driving the Columbia. That could have only resulted in a
+one-two-three climax, with the island, Columbia and raft finishing in
+the order named. Or, to express it in more accurate race-track
+vernacular; "Island," first; "Columbia," second; "Raft," nowhere!
+
+My spine was a bar of red-hot iron rasping up and down along the exposed
+ends of all its connecting nerves, when a throaty "Aw right!" from Ike
+signalled that the worst was past. Hanging over the end of the trailing
+sweep-handle, I saw that the raft had swung into a big eddy at the foot
+of the island, and that the launch, with its engine still spraying
+scattered pops, was trying to help the back-current carry her in to the
+right bank. Middle and Lower Rapids of Hell Gate were still below us,
+but Earl had evidently determined not to run them until his engine was
+hitting on all fours again. It was characteristic of him that he didn't
+offer any explanation as to what had gone wrong, or why; but the trouble
+must have been a consequence of the terrific strain put on the engine in
+towing the head of the raft clear of the upper point of the island. At
+the end of a quarter hour's tinkering Earl reckoned that the engine
+would go "purty good" now; leastways, he hoped so, for there was nothing
+more he could do outside of a machine-shop. To save tying up again
+below, he ran across and picked up Roos and the camera before casting
+off.
+
+Middle and Lower Rapids were just straight, fast, white water, and we
+ran them without trouble. Roos set up on the raft and shot a panorama of
+the reeling rollers and the flying black curtains of the rocky walls as
+they slid past. Then he made a close-up of the weird, undulating
+Chinese-Dragon-wiggle of the "deck" of the raft, and finally, when we
+had recovered a bit of breath, of Ike and me toiling at the sweep. To
+save time, we had lunch on the raft, taking Earl's portion up to him in
+the skiff.
+
+Ike, announcing that he would need a crew of four or five men to handle
+the raft in Box Canyon, was scouting for hands all afternoon. Whenever a
+farm or a ferry appeared in the distance, we would pull ahead in the
+skiff and he would dash ashore and pursue intensive recruiting until the
+raft had come up and gone on down river. Then we would push off and
+chase it, repeating the performance as soon as another apple orchard or
+ferry tower crept out beyond a bend. For all our zeal, there was not a
+man to show when we finally pulled the skiff aboard as darkness was
+falling on the river. Most of the men Ike talked to took one look at the
+nearing raft and cut him off with a "Good-night" gesture, the
+significance of which was not lost on me even in the distant skiff. The
+nearest we came to landing any one was at Plum, where the half-breed
+ferry-man said he would have gone if it hadn't been for the fact that
+his wife was about to become a mother. It wasn't that he was worried on
+the woman's account (she did that sort of thing quite regularly without
+trouble), but he had bet a horse with the blacksmith that it was going
+to be a boy, and he kind of wanted to be on hand to be sure they didn't
+put anything over on him.
+
+At Clark's Ferry an old pal of Ike's, whom he had confidently counted on
+getting, not only refused to go when he saw the raft, but even took the
+old river rat aside and talked to him long and earnestly, after the
+manner of a brother. Ike was rather depressed after that, and spent the
+next hour slouching back and forth across the stern runway, nursing the
+handle of the gently-swung sweep against his cheek like a pet kitten. He
+was deeply introspective, and seemed to be brooding over something. It
+was not until the next morning that he admitted that the raft had not
+proved quite as handy as he had calculated.
+
+Again we ran well into the dark, but this time in a somewhat opener
+canyon than the black gorge we had threaded the night before. It was
+Spring Canyon we were making for, where Ike had left his last raft. No
+one was living there, he said, but it was a convenient place for the
+ranchers from up on the plateau to come and get the wood. Earl found the
+place and made the landing with not even a window-light to guide. We
+moored to the lower logs of the cedar raft, most of which was now lying
+high and dry on the rocks, left by the falling river. We cooked supper
+on the bank and--after Roos had deftly picked the lock with a bent
+wire--slept on the floor of an abandoned farm-house on the bench above.
+
+Ike had complained a good deal of his gasoline-burned back during the
+day, and was evidently suffering not a little discomfort from the
+chafing of his woollen undershirt. He was restless during the night, and
+when he got up at daybreak I saw him pick up and shake out an old white
+table-cloth that had been thrown in one corner. When I went down to the
+raft a little later, I found the old rat stripped to the waist and Earl
+engaged in swathing the burned back in the folds of the white
+table-cloth. As the resultant bundle was rather too bulky to allow a
+shirt to be drawn over it, Ike went around for a couple of hours just as
+he was, for all the world like "the noblest Roman of them all"--from
+neck to the waist, that is. The long, drooping, tobacco-stained
+moustaches, no less than the sagging overalls, would have had rather a
+"foreign" look on the _Forum Romanum_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+BY LAUNCH THROUGH BOX CANYON
+
+
+There was plainly something on Ike's mind all through breakfast, but
+what it was didn't transpire until I asked him what time he would be
+ready to push off. Then, like a man who blurts out an unpalatable truth,
+he gave the free end of his "toga" a fling back over his shoulder and
+announced that he had come to the conclusion that the raft was too big
+and too loosely constructed to run Box Canyon; in fact, we could count
+ourselves lucky that we got through Hell Gate without smashing up. What
+he proposed to do was to take the biggest and straightest logs from both
+the rafts and make a small, solid one that would stand any amount of
+banging from the rocks. He never gave a thought to his life when working
+on the river, he declared, but it would be a shame to run an almost
+certain risk of losing so big a lot of logs and cordwood. The wreckage
+would be sure to be salvaged by farmers who would otherwise have to buy
+wood from him, so he would be a double loser in case the raft went to
+pieces. I told him that I quite appreciated his feelings (about the wood
+and logs, I mean), and asked how long he figured it would take to get
+the logs out of the old rafts and build a new one. He reckoned it could
+be done in two or three days, if we hustled. As I had already learned
+that any of Ike's estimates of time had to be multiplied by at least
+two to approximate accuracy, I realized at once that our rafting voyage
+was at an end. We already had some very good raft pictures, and as a few
+hundred yards of the run through Box Canyon would be all that could be
+added to these, it did not seem worth anything like the delay building
+the new raft would impose. As far as the sale of the wood and logs was
+concerned, Ike said he would rather have the stuff where it was than in
+Bridgeport.
+
+So, quite unexpectedly but in all good feeling, we prepared to abandon
+the raft and have the motor-boat take the skiff in tow as far as Chelan.
+This would make up a part of the time we had lost in waiting for the
+raft in the first place, and also save the portage round Box Canyon. It
+was quite out of the question venturing into that gorge in our small
+boat, Earl said, but he had made it before with his launch, and reckoned
+he could do it again. We settled with Ike on a basis of twenty dollars a
+day for his time, out of which he would pay for the launch. As his big
+raft of logs and firewood was brought to its destination for nothing by
+this arrangement, he was that much ahead. For the further use of the
+launch, we were to pay Earl ten dollars a day and buy the gasoline.
+
+We helped Ike get the raft securely moored, had an early lunch on the
+rocks, and pushed off at a little after noon, the skiff in tow of the
+launch on a short painter. A few miles along Ike pointed out a
+depression, high above the river on the left side, which he said was the
+mouth of the Grand Coulee, the ancient bed of the Columbia. I have
+already mentioned a project which contemplates bringing water from the
+Pend d'Oreille to irrigate nearly two million acres of semi-arid land of
+the Columbia basin. A project that some engineers consider will bring
+water to the same land more directly and at a much less cost per acre is
+to build a dam all the way across the Columbia below the mouth of the
+Grand Coulee, and use the power thus available to pump sixteen thousand
+second-feet into the old channel of that river. Mr. James O'Sullivan, a
+contractor of Port Huron, Michigan, who has made an exhaustive study of
+this latter project, writes me as follows:
+
+     "A dam at this point could be built 300 feet high above low
+     water, and it would form a lake 150 miles long all the way to the
+     Canadian boundary. It is estimated that one million dollars would
+     pay all the flooding damages. A dam 300 feet high would be 4,300
+     feet long on the crest, and would require about 5,000,000 cubic
+     yards of concrete. It would cost, assuming bedrock not to exceed
+     100 feet below water, about forty million dollars. It is
+     estimated that the power-house, direct connected pumps, turbines
+     and discharge pipes would cost fifteen million dollars.... From
+     the Columbia River to the arid lands, a distance of less than
+     forty miles, there is a natural channel less than one mile wide,
+     flanked by rock walls on both sides, so that the cost of getting
+     water to the land would be primarily confined to the dam and
+     power. Such a dam would require about five years to build, and it
+     would create out of a worthless desert a national estate of four
+     hundred and fifty million dollars, and the land would produce
+     annually in crops two hundred and seventy-five million.... An
+     irrigation district is now being formed in Central Washington,
+     and it is proposed to proceed at once with the core drilling of
+     the dam-site, to determine the nature and depth of bedrock,
+     which seems to be the only question left unsettled which affects
+     the feasibility of the project. The Northwestern states are all
+     in a league for securing the reclamation of this vast area, and
+     there is no doubt that, if bedrock conditions prove to be
+     favourable, that in the near future the money will be raised to
+     construct this great project, which will reclaim an area equal to
+     the combined irrigation projects undertaken by the U. S.
+     Government to-day.... It is considered now that where power is
+     free, a pumping lift as high as 300 feet is perfectly feasible."
+
+Which of these two great projects for the reclamation of the desert of
+the Columbia Basin has the most to recommend is not a question upon
+which a mere river _voyageur_, who is not an engineer, can offer an
+intelligent opinion. That the possibilities of such reclamation, if it
+can be economically effected, are incalculably immense, however, has
+been amply demonstrated. From source to mouth, the Columbia to-day is
+almost useless for power, irrigation and even transportation. The
+experience of those who, lured on by abnormal rainfalls of a decade or
+more ago, tried dry farming in this region border closely on the tragic.
+And the tragedy has been all the more poignant from the fact that the
+disaster of drought has overtaken them year after year with the Columbia
+running half a million second-feet of water to waste right before their
+eyes. I subsequently met a rancher in Wenatchee who said the only good
+the Columbia ever was to a man who tried to farm along it in the dry
+belt was as a place to drown himself in when he went broke.
+
+[Illustration: THE SUSPENSION BRIDGE AT CHELAN FALLS (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: OLD RIVER VETERANS ON THE LANDING AT POTARIS. (CAPT.
+McDERMID ON LEFT, IKE EMERSON ON RIGHT) (_below_)]
+
+[Illustration: NIGHT WAS FALLING AS WE HEADED INTO BOX CANYON (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: THE COLUMBIA ABOVE BOX CANYON (_below_)]
+
+The rock-littered channel of Moneghan's or Buckley's Rapids was easily
+threaded by the launch, and Equilibrium or "Jumbo" Rapids, three miles
+lower down, did not prove a serious obstruction. The official name is
+the former, and was given the riffle by Symons on account of a
+round-topped rock which rolled back and forth in the current because of
+its unstable equilibrium. The local name of "Jumbo" derives from the
+fact that this same rolling rock has something of the appearance of an
+elephant, when viewed from a certain angle. Ten miles more of deep,
+evenly-flowing water brought us to Mah-kin Rapids and the head of
+Nespilem Canyon. The next twenty-four miles, terminating at the foot of
+what is officially called Kalichen Falls and Whirlpool (Box Canyon in
+local nomenclature), is the fastest stretch of equal length on the
+Columbia except on the Big Bend in Canada. It is one continuous
+succession of rapids, eddies and whirlpools all the way, and the much
+feared Box Canyon is a fitting finale. I was distinctly glad to be
+running through in a motor-boat rather than the skiff. As to the raft, I
+never have been able to make up my mind as to just how she would have
+fared.
+
+The roar of the savage half-mile tumble of Mah-kin Rapids was a fitting
+overture to the main performance. The river narrows down sharply between
+precipitous banks, and most of the rocks from the surrounding hills seem
+to have rolled into the middle of the channel. There was an awful mess
+of churned water even where the river was deepest, and I wouldn't have
+been quite comfortable heading into it even in the launch. Earl seemed
+rather of the same mind, too, for he kept edging out to the right every
+time one of the big combers lurched over at him. With the engine running
+like a top, he kept her in comparatively good water all the way through.
+It was a striking lesson in the value of power in running a rapid--as
+long as the power doesn't fail you.
+
+Rock-peppered rapids followed each other every mile or two from the foot
+of Mah-kin, but--thanks to Earl's nose for the best channel--we were not
+taking more than an occasional shower of spray over the bows where the
+water was whitest. It was not too rough for reading, and, anxious to
+prepare Roos for what he was about to experience at Kalichen Falls and
+Collision Rock, I dug out Symons' report and ran rapidly through the
+dramatic description of how his party fared in running the sinister
+gorge ahead. It seems to me rather a classic of its kind, and I am
+setting it down in full, just as I read it to Roos and Ike that
+afternoon in the cockpit of the launch. I only wish I could complete the
+effect with the diorama of the flying canyon walls, the swirling waters
+of the river, and the obligato in duet by the roaring rapids and the
+sharply hitting engine.
+
+     "The shores of Nespilem Canyon are strewn with huge masses of
+     black basaltic rock of all sizes and shapes, and this continues
+     for several miles, forming a characteristic picture of Columbia
+     River scenery. The complete ... lifelessness of the scene makes
+     it seem exceedingly wild, almost unearthly. And so we plunge
+     along swiftly through the rolling water, with huge rocks looming
+     up, now on one side and now on the other. Every stroke of the oar
+     is bearing us onward, nearer and nearer, to that portion of our
+     voyage most dreaded, the terrible Kalichen Falls and Whirlpool
+     Rapids. We hear the low rumbling of the water, and see the tops
+     of the huge half-sunken rocks and the white foam of the tumbling
+     waters. For a few moments the rowing ceases, while brave old
+     Pierre gives his orders to the Indians in their own tongue. He
+     knows that everything depends upon his steering and their rowing
+     or backing at the right moment, with all the strength they
+     possess. Years ago he was in a Hudson Bay Company _batteau_ which
+     capsized in these very rapids, and out of a crew of sixteen men
+     eight perished in the water or on the rocks.
+
+     "The Indians make their preparations for the struggle by
+     stripping off all their superfluous clothing, removing their
+     gloves, and each ties a bright-coloured handkerchief tightly
+     about his head; poles and extra oars are laid ready in convenient
+     places to reach should they become necessary, and then with a
+     shout the Indians seize their oars and commence laying to them
+     with all their strength. We are rushing forward at a fearful
+     rate, owing to the combined exertions of the Indians and the
+     racing current, and we shudder at the thought of striking any of
+     the huge black rocks near which we glide. Now we are fairly in
+     the rapids, and our boat is rushing madly through the foam and
+     billows; the Indians are shouting at every stroke in their wild,
+     savage glee; it is infectious; we shout too, and feel the wild
+     exultation which comes to men in moments of great excitement and
+     danger. Ugly masses of rocks show their heads above the troubled
+     waters on every side, and sunken rocks are discernible by the
+     action of the surf. Great billows strike us fore and aft, some
+     falling squarely over the bows and drenching us to the waist.
+     This is bad enough, but the worst is yet to come as we draw near
+     with great velocity to a huge rock which appears dead ahead.
+
+     "Has old Pierre seen it? The water looks terribly cold as we
+     think of his failing eyesight. Then an order, a shout, backing on
+     one side and pulling on the other, and a quick stroke of the
+     steering oar, and the rock appears on our right hand. Another
+     command, and answering shout, and the oars bend like willows as
+     the Indians struggle to get the boat out of the strong eddy into
+     which Pierre had thrown her. Finally she shoots ahead and passes
+     the rock like a flash, within less than an oar's length of it,
+     and we shout for joy and breathe freely again....
+
+     "For half a mile the river is comparatively good, and our staunch
+     crew rest on their oars preparatory to the next struggle, which
+     soon comes, as some more rocky, foamy rapids are reached. Here
+     the swells are very high and grand, and our boat at one time
+     seems to stand almost perpendicularly." ("Them's Eagle Rapids,"
+     Ike interrupted; "sloppier 'n 'ell, but straight.")
+
+     "For about nine miles further the river continues studded with
+     rocks and swift, with ripples every mile or so, until we reach
+     Foster Creek Rapids. Here the rocks become thicker ... and the
+     water fierce and wild. For a mile more we plunge and toss through
+     the foaming, roaring water, amid wild yells from our Indian
+     friends, and we emerge from Foster Creek Rapids, which appear to
+     be as rough and dangerous a place as any we have yet encountered.
+     We are now out of Nespilem Canyon and through all the Nespilem
+     Rapids, and we certainly feel greatly relieved...."
+
+Ike, renewing his quid, observed that they didn't call it Nespilem
+Canyon any more, for the reason that that sounded too much like "Let's
+spill 'em!" and there was enough chance of that without asking for it.
+Roos, in bravado, asked Ike if he was going to strip down like Symons'
+Indians did. The old Roman replied by pulling on a heavy mackinaw over
+his "toga," saying that he'd rather have warmth than action once he was
+out in the "Columby." That led me to ask him--with a touch of bravado on
+my own account--how long it would take him to "submarine" from Box
+Canyon to Kettle Falls. He grinned a bit sourly at that, and started
+slacking the lashings on the sweeps and pike-poles. Roos was just tying
+a red handkerchief round his head when Earl beckoned him forward to take
+the wheel while he gave the engine a final hurried tuning. Ike, saying
+that we would be hitting "White Cap" just round the next bend, gave me
+brief but pointed instructions in the use of sweep and pike-pole in case
+the engine went wrong. He had spat forth his quid again, just as at Hell
+Gate, and his unmuffled voice had a strange and penetrating _timbre_.
+
+White Cap Rapids are well named. Two rocky points converge at the head
+and force all the conflicting currents of the river into a straight,
+steep channel, heavily littered with boulders and fanged with
+outcropping bedrock. In that currents from opposite sides of the river
+are thrown together in one mad tumble of wallowing waters, it is much
+like Gordon Rapids, on the Big Bend. If anything, it is the rougher of
+the two, making up in volume what it lacks in drop. It is a rapid that
+would be particularly mean for a small boat, from the fact that there
+would be no way of keeping out of the middle of it, and that is a wet
+place--very. The launch had the power to hold a course just on the outer
+right edge of the rough water, and so made a fairly comfortable passage
+of it.
+
+With the "intake" above Kalichen Falls full in view a half mile distant,
+Earl went back to his engine as we shot out at the foot of "White Cap"
+and gave it a few little "jiggering" caresses--much as a rider pats the
+neck of his hunter as he comes to a jump--before the final test. Then he
+covered it carefully with a double canvas and went back to the wheel.
+Roos he kept forward, standing-by to take the wheel or tinker the engine
+in case of emergency. The lad, though quite without "river sense," was a
+first-class mechanic and fairly dependable at the steering wheel
+providing he was told what to do.
+
+The sounding board of the rocky walls gave a deep pulsating resonance to
+the heavy roar ahead, but it was not until we dipped over the "intake"
+that the full volume of it assailed us. Then it came with a rush, a
+palpable avalanche of sound that impacted on the ear-drums with the raw,
+grinding roar of a passing freight train. It was not from the huge
+rollers the launch was skirting so smartly that this tearing, rending
+roar came, but from an enormous black rock almost dead ahead. It was
+trying to do the same thing that big island in the middle of Hell Gate
+had tried to do, and was succeeding rather better. The latter had been
+able to do no more than split the river down the middle; this one was
+forcing the whole stream to do a side-step, and pretty nearly a
+somersault--hence Kalichen Falls and Whirlpool. Collision Rock was
+distinctly impressive, even from a launch.
+
+The sun was just dipping behind the southern wall of Box Canyon (how
+funky I became later, when I was alone, about going into a rapid in that
+slanting, deceptive evening light!) as the launch hit the rough water.
+There was dancing iridescence in the flung foam-spurts above the
+combers, and at the right of Collision Bock the beginning of a rainbow
+which I knew would grow almost to a full circle when we looked back from
+below the fall. I snapped once with my kodak into the reeling tops of
+the waves that raced beside us, and then started to wind up to have a
+fresh film for the rock and the crowning rainbow. That highly artistic
+exposure was never made.
+
+Earl, instead of shutting off his engine as he did in running Spokane
+Rapids, opened up all the wider as he neared the barrier and its
+refluent wave. This was because the danger of striking submerged rocks
+was less than that of butting into that one outcrop of ragged reef that
+was coming so near to throwing the river over on its back. If the launch
+was to avoid telescoping on Collision Rock as the Columbia was doing, it
+must get enough way on to shoot across the current into the eddy on the
+left. That was what Earl was preparing for when he opened up the engine.
+With both boat and current doing well over twenty miles an hour, we were
+literally rushing down at the rocky barrier with the speed of an express
+train when Earl spun the wheel hard over and drove her sharply to the
+left. That was when I stopped kodaking.
+
+In spite of the rough water, the launch had been remarkably dry until
+her course was altered. Then she made up for lost time. The next ten or
+fifteen seconds was an unbroken deluge. With a great up-toss of wake,
+she heeled all of forty-five degrees to starboard at the turn, seeing
+which, the river forthwith began piling over her port or up-stream side
+and making an astonishingly single-minded attempt to push her on the
+rest of the way under. Failing in that (for her draught was too great
+and her engine set too low to make her easily capsizable), the river
+tried to accomplish the same end by swamping her. Fore and aft the water
+came pouring over in a solid green flood, and kept right on pouring
+until Earl, having driven through to the point he wanted, turned her
+head down stream again and let her right herself.
+
+The water was swishing about my knees for a few moments in the cockpit,
+and it must have been worse than that forward. Then it drained down into
+the bilge without, apparently, greatly affecting her buoyancy. The
+higher-keyed staccato of the engine cut sharply through the heavier roar
+of the falls. It was still popping like a machine-gun, without a break.
+Reassured by that welcome sound, Earl orientated quickly as he shook the
+water from his eyes, and then put her full at the head of the falls.
+Just how much of a pitch there was at this stage of water I couldn't
+quite make out. Nothing in comparison with the cataract there at high
+water (when the river rushes right over the top of Collision Rock)
+certainly; and yet it was a dizzy bit of a drop, with rather too
+deliberate a recovery to leave one quite comfortable. For a few seconds
+the launch's head was deeply buried in the soft stuff of the souse-hole
+into which she took her header; the next her bows were high in the air
+as the up-boil caught her. Then her propellers began striking into
+something solider than air-charged suds, and she shot jerkily away in a
+current so torn with swirls that it looked like a great length of
+twisted green-and-white rope. We had missed Collision Rock by thirty
+feet, and given the dreaded whirlpool behind it an even wider berth.
+
+The next thirteen miles we did at a rate that Ike figured must have been
+about the fastest travelling ever done on the Columbia. The current runs
+at from ten to twenty miles an hour all the way from the head of Box
+Canyon to Bridgeport, and Earl, racing to reach Foster Creek Rapids
+before it was dark, ran just about wide open nearly the whole distance.
+It was real train speed at which we sped down the darkening
+gorge--possibly over forty miles an hour at times. Earl knew the channel
+like a book, and said there was nothing to bother about in the way of
+rocks as long as he could see. We were out of the closely-walled part of
+the canyon at Eagle Rapids, and the sunset glow was bright upon the
+water ahead. There is a series of short, steep riffles here, extending
+for a mile and a half, and Earl slammed right down the lot of them on
+the high. Ike was right about their being sloppy, but the beacon of the
+afterglow gave the bearing straight through. Two miles further on the
+river appeared suddenly to be filled with swimming hippos--round-topped
+black rocks just showing above the water; but each one was silhouetted
+against a surface that glinted rose and gold, and so was as easy to miss
+as in broad daylight.
+
+It was all but full night as the roar of Foster Creek Rapids began to
+drown the rattle of the engine, with only a luminous lilac mist
+floating above the south-western mountains to mark where the sun had
+set; but it was enough--just enough--to throw a glow of pale amethyst on
+the frothy tops of the white-caps, leaving the untorn water to roll on
+in fluid anthracite. Earl barely eased her at the head, and then plunged
+her down a path of polished ebony, with the blank blur of rocks looming
+close on the right and an apparitional line of half-guessed rollers
+booming boisterously to the left. For three-quarters of a mile we raced
+that ghostly Ku-Klux-Klan procession, and Roos, who was timing with his
+radium-faced watch, announced that we had made the distance in something
+like seventy seconds. Then there was quieter water, and presently the
+lights of Bridgeport. Earl put us off opposite the town, and ran down a
+quarter of a mile farther to get out of the still swiftly-running
+current and berth the launch in a quiet eddy below the sawmill.
+
+Bridgeport, for a town a score of miles from the railway, proved
+unexpectedly metropolitan, with electric lights, banks, movie theatres,
+and a sign at the main crossing prohibiting "Left Hand Turns." The
+people, for a country town, showed very diverting evidences of
+sophistication. At the movies that night (where we went to get the
+election returns), they continually laughed at the villain and snickered
+at the heroine's platitudinous sub-titles; and finally, when word came
+that it was Harding beyond all doubt, they forgot the picture completely
+and gave their undivided attention to joshing the town's only avowed
+Democrat. The victim bore up fairly well as long as his baiters stuck
+to "straight politics," but when they accused him of wearing an
+imitation leather coat made of brown oil-cloth, the shaft got under his
+armour. With a ruddy blush that was the plainest kind of a confession of
+guilt, he pushed out to the aisle and beat a disorderly retreat.
+
+A prosperous apple farmer sitting next me (he had been telling me what
+his crop would bring the while the naturally vamp-faced heroine was
+trying to register pup-innocence and "gold-cannot-buy-me" as the villain
+was choking her) sniffed contemptuously as the discomfited Democrat
+disappeared through the swinging doors. "Seems to feel worse about being
+caught with an imitation coat than about being an imitation politician.
+Better send him to Congress!" Now _wasn't_ that good for a small town
+that didn't even have a railroad? I've known men of cities of all of a
+hundred thousand, with street cars, municipal baths, Carnegie libraries
+and women's clubs, who hadn't the measure of Congress as accurately as
+that. I wish there had been time to see more of Bridgeport.
+
+It was down to twelve above when we turned out in the morning, with the
+clear air tingling with frost particles and incipient ice-fringes around
+the eddies. Fortunately, Earl had bailed both boats the night before and
+drained his engine. Just below Bridgeport the river, which had been
+running almost due west from the mouth of the Spokane River, turned off
+to the north. In a slackening current we approached the small patch of
+open country at the mouth of the Okinagan. The latter, which heads above
+the lake of the same name in British Columbia, appears an insignificant
+stream as viewed from the Columbia, and one would never suspect that it
+is navigable for good-sized stern-wheelers for a considerable distance
+above its mouth. On the right bank of the Columbia, just above the mouth
+of the Okinagan, is the site of what was perhaps the most important of
+the original Astor posts of the interior. As a sequel to the war of 1812
+it was turned over to the Northwest Company, and ultimately passed under
+the control of Hudson Bay. I could see nothing but a barren flat at this
+point where so much history was made, but a splendid apple orchard
+occupies most of the fertile bench in the loop of the bend on the
+opposite bank.
+
+The mouth of the Okinagan marks the most northerly point of the
+Washington Big Bend of the Columbia. From there it flows southwesterly
+for a few miles to the mouth of the Methow, before turning almost
+directly south. We passed Brewster without landing, but pulled up
+alongside a big stern-wheeler moored against the bank at Potaris, just
+above the swift-running Methow Rapids. It was the _Bridgeport_, and Ike
+had spoken of her skipper, whom he called "Old Cap," many times and with
+the greatest affection. "Old Cap" proved to be the Captain McDermid, who
+had run the _Shoshone_ down through Grand Rapids, and who was rated as
+the nerviest steamer skipper left on the Columbia.
+
+Captain McDermid was waiting on the bow of his steamer to give us a hand
+aboard. He had read of our voyage in the Spokane papers, he said, and
+had been on the lookout for several days. At first he had watched for a
+skiff, but later, when he had heard that we had pushed off with Ike on
+a raft, it was logs he had been keeping a weather eye lifting for. When
+Ike described the raft to him, he wagged his head significantly, and
+said he reckoned it was just as well we had changed to the launch for
+Box Canyon. "It isn't everybody that can navigate under water like this
+old rat here," he added, giving Ike a playful prod in the ribs.
+
+As we were planning to go on through to the mouth of the Chelan River,
+in the hope of getting up to the lake that afternoon, an hour was the
+most I could stop over on the _Bridgeport_ for a yarn with Captain
+McDermid, where I would have been glad of a week. He told me, very
+simply but graphically, of the run down Grand Rapids, and a little of
+his work with stern or side-wheelers in other parts of the world, which
+included a year on the upper Amazon and about the same time as skipper
+of a ferry running from the Battery to Staten Island. Then he spoke,
+with a shade of sadness, of the _Bridgeport_ and his plans for the
+future. In all the thousand miles of the Columbia between the Dalles and
+its source, she had been the last steamer to maintain a regular service.
+(This was not reckoning the Arrow Lakes, of course). But the close of
+the present apple season had marked the end. Between the increasing
+competition of railways and trucks, the game was no longer worth the
+candle. He, and his partners in the _Bridgeport_, had decided to try to
+take her to Portland and offer her for sale. She was very powerfully
+engined and would undoubtedly bring a good price--once they got her
+there. But getting her to Portland was the rub. There were locks at the
+Cascades and the Dalles, but Rock Island, Cabinet, Priest and Umatilla,
+to say nothing of a number of lesser rapids would have to be run. It was
+a big gamble, insurance, of course, being out of the question on any
+terms. The _Douglas_, half the size of the _Bridgeport_, had tried it a
+couple of months ago, and--well, we would see the consequences on the
+rocks below Cabinet Rapids. Got through Rock Island all right, and then
+went wrong in Cabinet, which wasn't half as bad. Overconfidence,
+probably, "Old Cap" thought. But he felt sure that _he_ would have
+better luck, especially if he went down first and made a good study of
+Rock Island and Priest; and that was one of the things that he had
+wanted to see me about. If there was room for him in the skiff, he would
+like to run through with us as far as Pasco, and brush up on the channel
+as we went along. If things were so he could get away, he would join us
+at Wenatchee on our return from Chelan. I jumped at the chance without
+hesitation, for it would give us the benefit of the experience and help
+of the very best man on that part of the Columbia in getting through the
+worst of the rapids that remained to be run. I had been a good deal
+concerned about how the sinister cascade of Rock Island was to be
+negotiated, to say nothing of the long series of riffles called Priest
+Rapids, which had even a worse record. I parted with Captain McDermid
+with the understanding that we would get in touch by phone a day or two
+later, when I knew definitely when we would return to the river from
+Chelan, and make the final arrangements.
+
+Leaving Ike on the _Bridgeport_ for a yarn with his old friend, we
+pushed off in the launch for Chelan. Methow Rapids, just below the river
+of that name, was the only fast water encountered, and that was a good,
+straight run in a fairly clear channel. We landed half a mile below the
+mouth of the Chelan River, where the remains of a road led down through
+the boulders to the tower of an abandoned ferry. Earl put about at once
+and headed back up-stream, expecting to pick up Ike at Potaris and push
+on through to Bridgeport that evening.
+
+We parted from both Earl and Ike in all good feeling and with much
+regret. Each in his line was one of the best men I have ever had to do
+with. Ike--in spite of the extent to which his movements were dominated
+by the maxim that "time is made for slaves," or, more likely, for that
+very reason--was a most priceless character. I only hope I shall be able
+to recruit him for another river voyage in the not-too-distant future.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+CHELAN TO PASCO
+
+
+For two reasons I am writing but briefly of our visit to Lake Chelan:
+first, because it was entirely incidental to the Columbia voyage, and,
+second, because one who has only made the run up and down this loveliest
+of mountain lakes has no call to write of it. Chelan is well named
+"Beautiful Water." Sixty miles long and from one to four miles wide,
+cliff-walled and backed by snowy mountains and glaciers, it has much in
+common with the Arrow Lakes of the upper Columbia, and, by the same
+tokens, Kootenay Lake. Among the large mountain lakes of the world it
+has few peers.
+
+The Chelan River falls three hundred and eighty-five feet in the four
+miles from the outlet of the lake to where it tumbles into the Columbia.
+It is a foam-white torrent all the way, with a wonderful "Horse-shoe"
+gorge near the lower end which has few rivals for savage grandeur. One
+may reach the lake from the Columbia by roads starting either north or
+south of the draining river. We went by the latter, as it was the more
+conveniently reached from the ferry-man's house where we had left our
+outfit after landing. The town of Chelan, at the lower end of the lake,
+is a lovely little village, with clean streets, bright shops, and a very
+comfortable hotel. I have forgotten the name of the hotel, but not the
+fact that it serves a big pitcher of thick, yellow cream with every
+breakfast. So far as my own experience goes, it is the only hotel in
+America or Europe which has perpetuated that now all but extinct
+ante-bellum custom. In case there may be any interested to know--even
+actually to enjoy--what our forefathers had with their coffee and mush,
+I will state that three transcontinental railways pass within a hundred
+miles to the southward of Chelan. It will prove well worth the
+stop-over; and there is the lake besides.
+
+The lower end of Lake Chelan is surrounded by rolling hills, whose
+fertile soil is admirably adapted to apples, now an important industry
+in that region; the upper end is closely walled with mountains and high
+cliffs--really an extremely deep gorge half filled with water. Indeed,
+the distinction of being the "deepest furrow Time has wrought on the
+face of the Western Hemisphere" is claimed for upper Chelan Lake--this
+because there are cliffs which rise almost vertically for six thousand
+feet from the water's edge, and at a point where the sounding lead has
+needed nearly a third of that length of line to bring it back from a
+rocky bottom which is indented far below the level of the sea.
+
+The head of Chelan is far back in the heart of the Cascades, in the
+glaciers of which its feeding streams take their rise. The main
+tributaries are Railroad Creek, which flows in from the south about
+two-thirds of the way up, and Stehekin River, which comes in at the
+head. These two streams are credited with some of the finest waterfalls,
+gorges and cliff and glacier-begirt mountain valleys to be found in
+North America, and it is possible to see the best of both in the course
+of a single "circular" trip by packtrain. To my great regret, it was not
+practicable to get an outfit together in the limited time at our
+disposal. The best we could do so late in the season was a hurried run
+up to Rainbow Falls, a most striking cataract, three hundred and fifty
+feet in height, descending over the cliffs of the Stehekin River four
+miles above the head of the lake. Roos made a number of scenic shots
+here, but on a roll which--whether in the camera or the laboratory it
+was impossible to determine--was badly light-struck. Similar misfortune
+attended a number of other shots he made (through the courtesy of the
+Captain of the mail launch in running near the cliffs) of waterfalls
+tumbling directly into the lake. There are many slips between the cup
+and the lip--the camera and the screen, I should say--in scenic movie
+work.
+
+[Illustration: A ROCKY CLIFF NEAR HEAD OF LAKE CHELAN]
+
+[Illustration: RAINBOW FALLS, 350 FEET HIGH, ABOVE HEAD OF LAKE CHELAN]
+
+[Illustration: WENATCHEE UNDER THE DUST CLOUD OF ITS SPEEDING AUTOS
+(_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: HEAD OF ROCK ISLAND RAPIDS (_below_)]
+
+We arrived back at the town of Chelan in time for lunch on the sixth of
+November, and a couple of hours later were down at the Columbia ready to
+push off again. I had been unable to get in touch with Captain McDermid
+by phone, but was confident that he would turn up in good time at
+Wenatchee. As there was nothing between that point and the mouth of the
+Chelan in the way of really bad water, I had no hesitation in making the
+run without a "pilot." Launching _Imshallah_ below the old ferry-tower
+at two o'clock, we reached the little town of Entiat, just above the
+river and rapids of that name, at five. The skiff rode higher with
+Captain Armstrong and his luggage out, her increased buoyancy
+compensating in a measure for the less intelligent handling she had.
+Roos took the steering paddle in the stern, and I continued rowing from
+the forward thwart. All of the luggage was shifted well aft. The current
+was fairly swift all the way, but the two or three rapids encountered
+were not difficult to pass. Ribbon Cliff, two thousand feet high and
+streaked with strata of yellow, grey and black clays, was the most
+striking physical feature seen in the course of this easy afternoon's
+run.
+
+Entiat is a prosperous little apple-growing centre, and, with the
+packing season at its height, was jammed to the roof with workers. Rooms
+at the hotel were out of the question. Roos slept on a couch in the
+parlour, which room was also occupied by three drummers and two truck
+drivers. I had a shakedown on a canvased-in porch, on which were six
+beds and four cots. My room-mates kept me awake a good part of the night
+growling because their wages had just been cut to seven dollars a day,
+now that the rush was over. I would have been the more surprised that
+any one should complain about a wage like that had not a trio of
+farmettes--or rather packettes--at the big family dinner table been
+comparing notes of their takings. One twinkling-fingered blonde
+confessed to having averaged thirteen dollars a day for the last week
+packing apples, while a brown-bloomered brunette had done a bit better
+than twelve. The third one--attenuated, stoop-shouldered and
+spectacled--was in the dumps because sore fingers had scaled her average
+down to ten-fifty--"hardly worth coming out from Spokane for," she
+sniffed. Roos tried to engage them in conversation, and started out
+auspiciously with a description of running Box Canyon. But the
+gimlet-eyed thin one asked him what he got for doing a thing like that,
+and promptly their interest faded. And why _should_ they have cared to
+waste time over a mere seventy-five-dollar-a-week cameraman? But it was
+something even to have eaten pumpkin pie with the plutocracy.
+
+The swift-flowing Entiat River has dumped a good many thousand tons of
+boulders into the Columbia, and most of these have lodged to form a
+broad, shallow bar a short distance below the mouth of the former. The
+Columbia hasn't been able quite to make up its mind the best way to go
+here, and so has hit on a sort of a compromise by using three or four
+channels. Roos found himself in a good deal the same sort of dilemma
+when we came rolling along there on the morning of the seventh, but as a
+boat--if it is going to preserve its entity as such--cannot run down
+more than one channel at a time, _Imshallah_ found the attempt at a
+compromise to which she was committed only ended in butting her head
+against a low gravel island. It was impossible to make the main middle
+channel from there, but we poled off without much difficulty and went
+bumping off down a shallow channel to the extreme right. She kissed off
+a boulder once or twice before winning through to deeper water, but not
+hard enough to do her much harm. It was a distinctly messy piece of
+work, though, and I was glad that Ike or Captain Armstrong was not there
+to see their teachings put into practice.
+
+The river cliffs became lower as we ran south, and after passing a
+commanding point on the right bank we came suddenly upon the open
+valley of the Wenatchee, the nearest thing to a plain we had seen in all
+the hundreds of miles from the source of the Columbia. There are not
+over twenty to thirty square miles of land that is even comparatively
+level here, but to eyes which had been wont for two months to seek
+sky-line with a forty-five degree upward slant of gaze it was like
+coming out of an Andean pass upon the boundless Pampas of Argentina.
+Wenatchee was in sight for several miles before we reached it, an
+impressive water-front of mills, warehouses and tall buildings. Over all
+floated a dark pall, such as one sees above Pittsburgh, Birmingham,
+Essen or any other great factory city, but we looked in vain for the
+forest of chimneys it would have taken to produce that bituminous
+blanket. As we drew nearer we discovered that what we had taken to be
+smoke was a mighty dust-cloud. It was a Sunday at the height of the
+apple-packing season, and all the plutocratic packettes were joy-riding.
+There were, it is true, more Fords than Rolls-Royces in the solid double
+procession of cars that jammed the main street for a mile, but that was
+doubtless because the supply of the former had held out better. I can't
+believe that the consideration of price had anything to do with it.
+
+The hotel, of course, was full, even with the dining-room set thick with
+cots, but by admiring a haberdashery drummer's line of neck-ties for an
+hour, I managed to get him to "will" me his room and bath when he
+departed that afternoon. Roos employed similar strategy with a jazz
+movie orchestra fiddler, but his train didn't pull out until four-thirty
+in the morning. A young reporter from the local paper called for an
+interview in the afternoon, and told us the story of the _Douglas_, the
+steamer which Captain McDermid had mentioned as having been lost in
+trying to take her to Portland. Selig had gone along to write the story
+of the run through Rock Island Rapids, the first to be reached and the
+place which was reckoned as the most dangerous she would have to pass.
+When she had come out of that sinister gorge without mishap, he had them
+land him at the first convenient place in the quiet water below, from
+where he made his way to the railway and hurried back to Wenatchee with
+his story. That he had seen all the best of the excitement, he had no
+doubt. A quarter of an hour after Selig left her, the _Douglas_ was a
+total wreck on the rocks below Cabinet Rapids. He didn't know just how
+it had happened, but said we would find what was left of her still where
+she had struck.
+
+Wenatchee is the liveliest kind of a town, and claims to be the largest
+apple-shipping point in the United States. It also has a daily paper
+which claims to be the largest in the world in a city of under ten
+thousand population. I can easily believe this is true. I have seen many
+papers in cities of fifty or a hundred thousand that were not to be
+compared with it for both telegraphic and local news. Banks are on
+almost every corner for a half dozen blocks of the main street of
+Wenatchee, and every one seems to have a bank account. I saw stacks of
+check-books by the cashiers' desks in restaurants and shops, and in one
+of the ice cream parlours I saw a young packette paying for her nut
+sundae with a check.
+
+No word came from Captain McDermid during the day, and after
+endeavouring to reach him by phone all of the following forenoon, I
+reluctantly decided to push on without him. This was a good deal of a
+disappointment, not only because I felt that I was going to need his
+help mighty badly, but also because I was anxious to see more of him
+personally. A man who will take a steamer containing his wife and
+children down Rickey's Rapids of the Columbia isn't to be met with every
+day. Roos was anxious to get a picture of the "Farmer Who Would See the
+Sea" working his way down Rock Island Rapids, and as his machine was
+about the most valuable thing there was to lose in getting down there,
+it seemed up to me to do what I could. But for the first time since we
+pushed off to run the Big Bend, I unpacked and kept out my inflatable
+"Gieve" life-preserver waistcoat, which I had worn in the North Sea
+during the war, and which I had brought along on the "off chance." Selig
+came down with his Graflex to get a photo of our departure for the
+_World_, but declined an invitation for another run through Rock Island
+Rapids.
+
+There is a long and lofty highway bridge spanning the Columbia half a
+mile below Wenatchee, which fine structure also appears to be used on
+occasion as a city dump. That it was functioning in this capacity at the
+very moment we were about to pass under it between the two mid-stream
+piers did not become apparent until the swift current had carried us so
+close that it was not safe to try to alter course either to left or
+right. There was nothing to do but run the gauntlet of the swervily
+swooping dust-tailed comets whose heads appeared to run the whole gamut
+of discard of a rather extravagant town of eight thousand people, all
+disdainful of "used" things. It would have been a rare chance to renew
+our outfit, only most of the contributions were speeding too rapidly at
+the end of their hundred-foot drop to make them entirely acceptable.
+"Low bridge!" I shouted to Roos, and swung hard onto my oars, yelling a
+lung-full at every stroke in the hope that the busy dumpers might stay
+their murderous hands at the last moment. Vain hope! My final frightened
+upward glance told me that the nauseous cataclysm was augmenting rather
+than lessening.
+
+I put _Imshallah_ into some mighty nasty looking rapids with a lot less
+apprehension than I drove her into that reeking second-hand barrage, that
+Niagara of things that people didn't want. Doubtless it was the fact
+that _I_ wanted the stuff still less than they did that lent power to my
+arms and gave me a strength far transcending that of ordinary endeavour.
+Roos swore afterward that I lifted her right out of the water, just as a
+speeding hydroplane lifts at the top of its jump. This may have been so;
+but if it was, Roos sensed it rather than saw it, for his humped
+shoulders were folded tightly over his ducked head, like the wings of a
+newly hatched chicken. Anyhow, the little lady drove through safely,
+just as she always had. But where she had always emerged dewy-fresh and
+dancing jauntily on the tips of her toes from the roughest of rapids,
+here she oozed out upon an oil-slicked stream with the "Mark of the
+Beast" on her fore and aft. I mean that literally. That accursed little
+"White Wings" that sat up aloft to take toll of the life of poor Jack,
+must have had some kind of a slaughter-house dumping contract--and
+_Imshallah_ got a smothering smear of the proceeds. Also a trailing
+length of burlap and a bag of cinders. As the latter burst when it
+kissed off my shoulder, Roos' joke about my wearing sack-cloth-and-ashes
+was not entirely without point. The only article of value accruing was
+the shaving-brush which fell in Roos' lap. He felt sure it must have
+been thrown away by mistake, for it had real camel's-hair bristles, and
+he liked it better than his own--after the ashes had worked out of it.
+And yet it might have been a lot worse. I only _heard_ the splash of the
+wash-boiler that must have hit just ahead of her, but the sewing machine
+that grazed her stern jazzed right across my line of vision.
+
+Up to that time Surprise Rapids of the Big Bend of Canada had stood as
+the superlative in the way of a really nasty hole to go through; from
+then on "Surprise Rapids of Wenatchee Bridge" claimed pride of place in
+this respect.
+
+Swabbing down decks as best we could without landing, we pushed ahead. I
+was anxious to get down to Rock Island Rapids in time to look over the
+channels, if not to start through, before dark. We should have known
+better than to treat a dainty lady like _Imshallah_ in that way. It was
+bad enough to have subjected her to the indignity of running the garbage
+barrage; not to give her a proper bath after it was unpardonable. At
+least that was the way she seemed to look at it, and so I never felt
+inclined to blame her for taking matters into her own hands. Wallowing
+through a sharp bit of rapid a mile below the bridge washed the outside
+of her bright and clean as ever, but it was the stain of that
+slaughter-house stuff on the inside that rankled. She was restive and
+cranky in the swirls and eddies all down a long stretch of slack water
+running between black basalt islands, and as the river narrowed and
+began to tumble over a boisterous rapid above the Great Northern Railway
+bridge, she began jumping about nervously, like a spirited horse
+watching his chance for a bolt.
+
+It was Roos' business, of course, to watch where she was going, but he
+made no claim of being a qualified steersman; so that there was really
+no excuse for my failing to watch our capricious lady's symptoms and
+keep a steadying hand on her. Probably I _should_ have done so had not a
+freight train run out on the bridge just as we neared the head of the
+rapid, throwing out so striking a smoke-smudge against a background of
+sun-silvered clouds that I needs must try for a hurried snapshot. That
+done, we were close to the "V" of the drop-off, and I had just time to
+see that there were three or four rather terrifying rollers tumbling
+right in the heart of the riffle, evidently thrown up by a jagged
+outcrop of bedrock very close to the surface. I would never have
+chanced putting even a big _batteau_ directly into so wild a welter,
+but, with fairly good water to the left, there was no need of our
+passing within ten feet of the centre of disturbance. The course was so
+plain that I do not recall even calling any warning to Roos as I sat
+down and resumed my oars. Each of us claimed the other was responsible
+for what followed, but I think the real truth of it was that _Imshallah_
+had made up her mind to have a bath without further delay, and couldn't
+have been stopped anyhow.
+
+I never did see just what hit us, nor how we were hit; for it all came
+with the suddenness of a sand-bagging. Roos was stroking away
+confidently, and appeared to be singing, from the movement of his lips.
+The words, if any, were drowned in the roar. All at once his eyes became
+wild and he lashed out with a frenzied paddle-pull that was evidently
+intended to throw her head to the left. The next instant the crash
+came--sudden, shattering, savage. I remember distinctly wondering why
+Roos' eyes were shifted apprehensively upward, like those of a man who
+fancies he is backing away from a bombing airplane. And I think I recall
+spray dashing two or three lengths astern of us, before the solid
+battering ram of the water hit me on the back, and Roos in the face. And
+all _Imshallah_ did was to stand straight up on her hind legs and let
+little demi-semi-quivers run up and down her back like a real lady
+exulting in the tickle of a shower-bath. Then she lay down and let the
+river run over her; then reared up on her hind legs again. Twice or
+thrice she repeated that routine, when, apparently satisfied that her
+ablutions were complete, she settled down and ran the rest of the rapid
+sedately and soberly, and, I am afraid, without much help from either
+oars or paddle. I have always thought Roos was particularly happy in
+his description of how it looked for'ard just after that first big wave
+hit us. "The top of that comber was ten feet above your head," he said,
+"and it came curving over you just like the 'canopy' of a
+'Jack-in-the-Pulpit.'"
+
+With _Imshallah_ rather more than half full of water, and consequently
+not a lot more freeboard for the moment than a good thick plank, it was
+just as well that no more rapids appeared before we found a patch of
+bank flat enough to allow us to land and dump her. Fresh as a daisy
+inside and out, she was as sweet and reasonable when we launched her
+again as any other lady of quality after she has had her own way. Not
+far below the bridge we tied up near the supply-pipe of a railway
+pumping station on the left bank. With the black gorge of Rock Island
+Rapids three-quarters of a mile below sending up an ominous growl, this
+appeared to be the proper place to stop and ask the way.
+
+The engineer of the pumping-station said that he knew very little about
+the big rapid, as he had only been on his present job for a week. He had
+only seen the left-hand channel, and, as an old sailor, he was dead
+certain no open boat ever launched could live to run the lower end of
+it. He said he thought the safest way would be to put the skiff on his
+push-car, run it down the tracks a couple of miles, and launch it below
+the worst of the rapids. I told him we might be very glad to do this as
+a last resort, but, as it would involve a lot of time and labour, I
+would like to look at the rapid first. He told us to make free of his
+bunk-house in case we spent the night there, and suggested we call in
+at a farm house a couple of hundred yards down the track and talk with
+an old man there, who would probably know all about the rapid.
+
+That proved to be a good tip. The farmer turned out to be an old-time
+stern-wheeler captain, who had navigated the upper Columbia for many
+years in the early days. He was greatly interested in our trip, and said
+that we ought to have no great trouble with the rapids ahead, that is,
+as long as we didn't try to take undue liberties with them. The safest
+way to get through would be to land at the head of the big island that
+divided the channels and line right down the left side of it. It would
+be pretty hard work, but we ought not to get in wrong if we took our
+time. He was sorry he couldn't go down and look the place over with us,
+but it happened that his youngest daughter was being married that
+evening, and things were sort of crowding for the rest of the day.
+_That_ explained why the yard was full of flivvers, and the numerous
+dressed-up men lounging around the porches. We decided that the groom
+was the lad, with an aggressively fresh-shaven gill, who was being made
+the butt of a joke every time he sauntered up to a new group, and that
+the bride was the buxom miss having her chestnut hair combed at a
+window, with at least half a dozen other girls looking on.
+
+Roos was very keen to have the wedding postponed to the following morning,
+and changed to an _al fresco_ affair which he could shoot with good light.
+With a little study, he said, he was sure he could work it into his
+"continuity." Perhaps, for instance, the "Farmer-Who-Would-See-the-Sea"
+might start them off on their honeymoon by taking them a few miles down
+river in his boat. That would lend "heart interest and...." I throttled
+that scheme in the bud before my impetuous companion could broach it to
+the principals. I wasn't going to tempt the providence that had saved me
+whole from the wrath of Jock o' Windermere by taking a chance with any
+more "bride stuff."
+
+The black-walled gorge of Rock Island is one of the grimmest-looking
+holes on the Columbia, and of all hours of the day sunset, when the deep
+shadows are banking thick above the roaring waters, is the least cheery
+time to pay it a visit. Somewhat as at Hell Gate, the river splits upon
+a long, rocky island, the broader, shallower channel being to the right,
+and the narrower, deeper one to the left. The upper end of the
+right-hand channel was quiet and straight; indeed, it was the one I
+would have been prompted to take had not the old river captain at the
+farm-house inclined to the opinion that the lining on the other would be
+easier. The former had been the course Symons had taken, and he
+mentioned that the lower end was very crooked and rocky. I decided,
+therefore, to brave the difficulties that I could see something of in
+advance rather than to blunder into those I knew not of. Although the
+left channel began to speed up right from the head, I saw enough of it
+to be sure that we could run at least the upper two-thirds of it without
+much risk, and that there was then a good eddy from which to land on the
+side next to the railroad. This was the head of the main fall--an
+extremely rough cascade having a drop of ten feet in four hundred yards.
+Down that we would have to line. I was quite in agreement with the
+pump-station man that no open boat would live in those wildly rolling
+waters. Fearful of complications, I restrained Roos from accepting an
+invitation to the wedding, and we turned in early for a good night's
+sleep at the pump-station bunk-house.
+
+The game old octogenarian had asked me especially to hail him from the
+river in the morning, so that he could go down and help us through the
+rapids. I should have been glad indeed of his advice in what I knew
+would be a mighty awkward operation, but had not the heart to disturb
+him when I saw there was no curl of smoke from the kitchen chimney when
+we drifted by at eight o'clock. The roar of fast and furious revelry had
+vied with the roar of the rapids pretty well all night, culminating with
+a crescendo leading up to the old shoe barrage at about daybreak. It
+didn't seem quite human to keep the old boy lining down river all
+morning after lining up against that big barrel of "sweet cider" all
+night.... (No, I hadn't missed that little detail; that was one of the
+reasons I had kept Roos away). So we drifted on down toward the big
+noise alone. The pump-man promised he would come down to help as soon as
+his tank was filled, but that wouldn't be for an hour or more.
+
+Rock Island Rapids are in a gorge within a gorge. The black
+water-scoured canyon with the foam-white river at the bottom of it is
+not over fifty feet deep in the sheer. Back of high-water mark there is
+a narrow strip of bench on either side, above which rises a thousand
+feet or more of brown bluff. The eastern wall still cast its shadow on
+the river, but the reflection of the straw-yellow band of broadening
+light creeping down the western bluff filled the gorge with a diffused
+golden glow that threw every rock and riffle into sharp relief. It was a
+dozen times better to see by than the blinding brilliance of direct
+light, and, knowing just what to expect for the next quarter-mile, I ran
+confidently into the head of the rapid. Early morning is the hour of
+confidence and optimism on the flowing road; evening the hour of doubt,
+indecision and apprehension.
+
+A submerged rock at the entrance to the left channel, which I had marked
+mentally from the high bank the night before as an obstacle to be
+avoided, proved rather harder to locate from water level; but Roos
+spotted it in time to give it a comfortable berth in shooting by. Then
+the abrupt black walls closed in, and we ran for three hundred yards in
+fast but not dangerous water. The current took us straight into the eddy
+I had picked for a landing place, and the skiff slid quietly into a
+gentle swirling loop of back-water, with nothing but a huge jutting rock
+intervening between that secure haven and the brink of the fall. So far
+all had gone exactly as planned. Now we were to see how it looked for
+lining.
+
+Roos set up on a shelf and cranked while I lined round the projecting
+rock, an operation which proved unexpectedly simple once it was started
+right. At my first attempt I failed to swing the boat out of the eddy,
+and as a consequence she was brought back against the rock and given
+rather a stiff bump. The next time I launched her higher up, and paying
+out plenty of scope, let her go right out into the main current and
+over the "intake" of the fall. It took brisk following up to keep the
+line from fouling, and after that was cleared I didn't have quite as
+much time as I needed to take in slack and brace myself for the coming
+jerk. The result was _Imshallah_ got such a way on in her hundred feet
+of run that, like a _locoed_ broncho pulling up and galloping off with
+its picket-pin, she took me right along over and off the big rock and
+into the water below. To my great surprise, where I was expecting to go
+straight into the whirlpool one usually finds behind a projecting rock,
+I landed in water that was both slack and comparatively shallow.
+Recovering quickly from my stumble, I braced against the easy current
+and checked the runaway with little trouble. Roos, who had missed the
+last part of the action, wanted me to do that jump and stumble over
+again, but the ten foot flop down onto the not very deeply submerged
+boulders was a bit too much a shake-up to sustain for art's sake.
+
+Now that it was too late to line back, I saw why it was the old captain
+had advised working down the side of the island. The left bank of the
+cascade (which latter was tumbling close beside me now), was all but
+sheer. Only here and there were there footings close to the water, so
+that the man with the line would have to make his way for the most part
+along the top of the rocky wall. _He_ could get along all right, but
+there was no place where a man could follow the boat and keep it off
+with a pole. It might have been managed with a man poling-off from the
+boat itself, but I hardly felt like urging Roos to take the chance. It
+was out of the question trying to line back up the "intake" of the
+fall, but there _was_ one loop-hole which looked worth exploring before
+risking an almost certain mess-up in trying to work down the side of the
+cascade.
+
+I have mentioned that I had expected to find a whirlpool under the big
+jutting rock. The only reason there wasn't one was because what at high
+water must have been a very considerable back channel took out at this
+point and acted as a sort of safety-valve. There was still a stream a
+few inches deep flowing out here, running off to the left into a dark
+cavernous-looking crack in the bedrock. That water had to come back to
+the river somewhere below, and there was just a chance that the boat
+could be squeezed through the same way. At any rate, there was not
+enough of a weight of water to do any harm, and it ought not to be hard
+to "back up" in the event it proved impossible to push on through.
+Leaving Roos to set up and shoot a particularly villainous whirlpool he
+had discovered, I dragged the skiff through the shallow opening and
+launched it into a deep black pool beyond.
+
+Poling from pool to pool, I entered a miniature gorge where I was
+presently so walled in by the rock that the raw roar of the cascade was
+muffled to a heavy, earth-shaking rumble. This tiny canyonette opened up
+at the end of a hundred yards to a sheer-walled rock-bound pool,
+evidently scoured out by the action of a high-water whirlpool. This
+turned out to be an enormous "pot-hole," for I had to avoid the
+water-spun boulder, which had been the tool of the sculpturing River
+God, in pushing into the outlet crack. The latter was so narrow and
+overhanging that I had to lie down and work the skiff along with my
+up-raised hands. Twenty yards of that brought me out to a winding little
+lake, less steeply walled than the gorge above, but apparently closed
+all the way round, even at the lower end. I was in a complete _cul de
+sac_. A gurgling whirlpool showed where the water escaped by a
+subterranean passage, but that was plainly no place to take a lady,
+especially a lady of quality like _Imshallah_.
+
+Tying _Imshallah_ up to a boulder to prevent her amiable weakness for
+rushing to the embraces of whirlpools getting the better of her, I
+climbed up a steeply-sloping pitch of bedrock and looked down to the
+head of a long narrow arm of quiet water. The gay little waterfall
+breaking forth from the rock beneath my feet was leaping directly into
+the main stream of the Columbia--and below the cascade. A stiff thirty
+or forty-foot portage, and we were through. We might have to wait for
+the pump-man to help us lift the boat up that first pitch, but he ought
+to be along almost any time now.
+
+Taking a short-cut back across the water-washed rock, I found Roos just
+completing his shots of the cascade. The sun was on the latter now, and
+its dazzling whiteness threw it into striking relief against the
+sinister walls between which it tumbled. Save the first two falls of
+Surprise Rapids, there is not a savager rush of water on the upper
+Columbia than this final three hundred yards of the left-hand channel of
+Rock Island. Roos was delighted with the way it showed up in his finder,
+and even more pleased when he learned that we were not going to have to
+line the boat down it. Then he had one of his confounded inspirations.
+That portage over the reef of bedrock, with the little waterfall in the
+background, would photograph like a million dollars, he declared; but to
+get the full effect of it, and to preserve "continuity," the "farmer"
+ought to do it alone. It wouldn't do to include the pump-man in the
+picture, now that the "farmer" was supposed to be travelling alone. If I
+_had_ to have his help, all right; only it wouldn't do to shoot while
+the other man was in the picture. But it _would_ really be the "Cat's
+ears" if the "farmer" could make it on his own. He wouldn't have to make
+that big pull-up without stopping; he could jerk the boat along a foot
+or two at a time, and then get his breath like the pursued villain did
+in the processional finales of knockabout comedies. Then he showed me
+how, by resuming the same grip on the boat and the same facial
+expression at each renewed attack, the action could be made to appear
+practically continuous.
+
+Well, I fell for it. Tom Sawyer was not more adroit in getting out of
+white-washing his fence than was Roos in getting out of that portage
+job. He wanted to preserve "continuity" by starting back at the head of
+the cascade, but we compromised by making it the "pot-hole." Emerging to
+the lakelet, I registered "extreme dejection" at finding my progress
+blocked, and "dull gloom" as I landed and climbed up for a look-see. But
+when I reached the top of the reef and discovered the quiet water below,
+like sunlight breaking through a cloud, I assumed as nearly as I knew
+how an exact imitation of an expression I had seen on the face of Balboa
+in a picture called "First Sight of the Pacific." "That's the 'Cat's
+ears,'" encouraged Roos; "now snake the boat over--and make it snappy!"
+
+I made it snappy, all right; but it was my spine that did most of the
+snapping. And it wasn't a foot at a time that I snaked the boat over.
+(Roos had been too optimistic on that score); it was by inches. Roos
+took infinite pains in coaching me as to "resuming grip and expression;"
+but even so, I am afraid the finished film will display considerable
+jerkiness in its "continuous action." I gained some solace by calling
+Roos names all the time, and so must again beg "lip-readers" who see the
+picture to consider the provocation and not judge too harshly. Once
+tilted over the crest of the reef, the boat took more holding than
+hauling. Being pretty well gone in the back and knees, she got away from
+me and slid the last ten feet, giving her bottom a bumping that it never
+did entirely recover from. I was caulking incipient leaks all the way to
+Portland as a consequence of that confounded "one man" portage.
+
+Just as we had loaded up and were ready to push off, the pump-man
+breezed along and asked us to give him a passage as far as Columbia
+River station, two or three miles below. He wanted to take an oar, but
+as the distance was short and the current swift, I told him it was not
+worth bothering with. So he laid the oar he had taken out along the
+starboard gunwale, and knelt just aft the after thwart, facing forward.
+Roos always claimed that it was the loom of the pump-man's back cutting
+off his view ahead that was responsible for the little diversion that
+followed. A good part of the blame was doubtless my own for not keeping
+a sharper watch over my shoulder, as I certainly should have done had I
+been alone. In any event, _Imshallah's alibi_ was complete. She behaved
+through it all like a real thoroughbred.
+
+There was a sinuous tangle of swirls where the right-hand and left-hand
+cascades flew at each other's throats at the lower end of the rock
+island, and then a gay stretch of sun-dazzled froth where the teeth of a
+long reef menaced all the way across the channel; then a stretch of
+lazily-coiling green-black water, flowing between lofty brown cliffs and
+broken here and there with the loom of house-like rocks of shattered
+basalt. The roar of Rock Island died down in muffled _diminuendo_, and
+it seemed mighty good to have that diapason muttering in bafflement
+astern rather than growling in anticipation ahead. There was only one
+little rapid between here and the siding, the pump-man said, and it
+wouldn't bother us much as there was plenty of room to get by. He was
+right--for the most part.
+
+I took a good look at the riffle as we headed down to it. It was a short
+stretch of rough, noisy water, but nothing that would have had to be
+avoided except for a single big roller in the middle of it. As this was
+throwing a great dash of spray high in the air every now and then, I
+felt sure the rock responsible for it was very slightly
+submerged--perhaps not more than a few inches. As this was so obviously
+an obstacle to steer well clear of, it never occurred to me to give
+Roos any especial warning about it, especially as he continued standing
+and sizing up the situation for half a minute after I had resumed my
+oars. The main current ran straight across the riffle, but with fifty
+feet of clear water to the left there was no need of getting into any of
+the worst of it, let alone trying to hurdle that foam-throwing rock.
+
+Leaning hard on my oars, I had good steerage-way on the skiff by the
+time she dipped over into the fast-running water. Roos was cuffing
+jauntily at the wave crests, and singing. Because of the sequel, I
+remember particularly it was "Dardanella" that was claiming his
+attention. Two or three times he had maintained that he was a "lucky
+fella" before I saw what seemed to me to be mingled dissent and
+perturbation gathering in the pump-man's steel-grey eyes. Then, all of a
+sudden, he gave vocal expression to his doubts. "You won't think you're
+a 'lucky fella' if you put her onta that rock," he yelled over his
+shoulder. Turning at the finish of my stroke, I saw that big
+spray-flipping comber about two lengths away, and _dead ahead_, looking
+savager than ever. Trailing my right oar, I pulled every ounce I could
+bring to bear upon my left, trying to throw her head toward the better
+water. The next instant I was all but falling over backwards as the oar
+snapped cleanly off in the oar-lock. I recall perfectly the gleam of the
+long copper nails which had weakened it, and the fresh fracture of the
+broken spruce.
+
+The weight I put onto my right oar in saving myself from tumbling
+backward had the effect of throwing her head in just the opposite
+direction I had intended. Since she could hardly have avoided hitting
+the big roller anyhow, once she was so near, it is probably better that
+she hit it squarely than sidling. The crash was solid, almost shattering
+in its intensity, and yet I am not sure that she hit the rock at all. If
+she did, it was a glancing blow, for she could not possibly have
+survived anything heavier.
+
+The pump-man, true to his sailor instincts, kept his head perfectly in
+the face of the deluge that had engulfed him. The spare oar was lying
+ready to hand, and he had it waiting for me in the oar-lock by the time
+I was on an even keel again. The second wave, which she rode on her own,
+threw _Imshallah's_ head off a bit, but by the time she was rising to
+the third I was helping her again with the oars. Seeing how well she was
+taking it, I did not try to pull out of the riffle now, but let her run
+right down through it to the end. Only the first wave put much green
+water into her, but even that had not filled her anywhere nearly so deep
+as she had been the evening before. When we beached her below Columbia
+River station we found her starboard bow heavily dented, but even that
+did not convince me that we had hit the big rock. I am rather inclined
+to think that denting was done when I did my lone-hand portage at Rock
+Island. I was dead sorry I couldn't persuade that pump-man to throw up
+his job and come along with us. He had the real stuff in him.
+
+[Illustration: THE PICTURE THAT COST ME A WETTING (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: THE WRECK OF THE "DOUGLAS" (_below_)]
+
+[Illustration: WE COOKED OUR BREAKFAST IN THE GALLEY OF THE WRECK OF THE
+"DOUGLAS"]
+
+[Illustration: A ROCKY CLIFF ABOVE BEVERLY]
+
+After having lunch in the railway men's eating house at Columbia River,
+we went down to push off again. Finding the local ferry-man examining
+the skiff, I asked him if he thought she would do to run Cabinet
+Rapids, which we could hear rumbling a mile below. "Not if you try to
+push them out of the river the way you did that riffle above here a
+while ago," he replied with a grin. He said he had been watching us
+through his glass, and that the boat had disappeared from sight for
+three or four seconds when she hit the big roller. He offered to bet his
+ferry-boat against the skiff that we couldn't do it again and come
+through right-side-up. No takers. Speaking seriously, he said that, by
+keeping well to the left, we could run Cabinet all right--if nothing
+went wrong. "But better not make a practice of breaking an oar just
+where you're going to need it most," he added with another grin;
+"there's nothing on the river that would live through the big riffle
+over against the right bank. You'll see what she did to the _Douglas_."
+
+Landing from the slack water above a rocky point which juts out into the
+river at the head of Cabinet Rapids, we climbed a couple of hundred
+yards over water-scoured boulders to the brink of the gorge. It was a
+decidedly rough-looking rapid, but by no means so hopeless for running
+with a small boat as Rock Island. In that the main riffle was thrown
+against a sheer bank of the river, it reminded me a good deal of Death
+Rapids on the Big Bend. But this riffle, while appearing fully as rough
+as that of the dreaded _Dalles des Morts_, was not, like the latter,
+unavoidable. The chance of passing it in only fairly broken water to the
+left looked quite good enough to try. The wreck of the _Douglas_,
+standing out white and stark against the black boulders a mile below,
+was a good warning against taking any unnecessary chances. I looked
+well to the oars and the trim of the boat before shoving off.
+
+Once out into the river, I could see that the rapid was white from bank
+to bank, but still nothing that ought to trouble us seriously. I stood
+for a minute or two looking ahead from the vantage of one of the
+thwarts, and it was just as I was taking up my oars again in the
+quickening current that the corner of my eye glimpsed the narrow opening
+of a deep back-channel winding off between splintered walls of columnar
+basalt to the left. I wasn't looking for any more one-man portages, but
+this opening looked good enough to explore. It might lead through by an
+easy way, and there was hardly enough water to do much harm if it
+didn't. It took hard pulling to sheer off from the "intake" now we had
+drifted so close, but we finally made it and entered the dark
+back-channel. Narrowing and broadening, just as the other had done, it
+led on for a couple of hundred yards, finally to discharge over a
+six-foot fall into a deeply indented pool that opened out to the river
+about half way down the rapid. The wedge-shaped crack at the head of the
+little fall was narrower than the skiff at water-line, but by dint of a
+little lifting and tugging we worked her through and lowered her into
+the pool below. Pulling out through the opening, we headed her
+confidently into the current. There was a quarter-mile of white water
+yet, but we were far enough down now so that the loss of an oar or any
+other mishap wouldn't leave the skiff to run into those wallowing
+rollers over against the further cliff. A sharp, slashing run carried us
+through to the foot of Cabinet Rapids, and a few minutes later we had
+hauled up into an eddy under the left bank opposite the wreck of the
+_Douglas_.
+
+The little stern-wheeler had come to grief at high-water, so that we had
+to clamber all of three hundred yards over big, smooth, round boulders
+to reach the point where the wreck was lying. The latter was by no means
+in so bad a shape as I had expected to find it. The principal damage
+appeared to have been done to the wheel, which was clamped down tight
+over a huge boulder, and to the starboard bow, which was stove in. The
+rest of her hull and her upper works were intact; also the engines,
+though terribly rusty. There was not much from which one could
+reconstruct the story of the disaster; in fact, I have not learned to
+this day any authentic details. The chances are, however, that the wheel
+struck a rock somewhere in Cabinet Rapids, and, after that, drifting out
+of control, she had come in for the rest of the mauling. If her captain
+is like the rest of the Columbia River skippers I met, I have no doubt
+that she will be patched up again before next high-water and started off
+for Portland.
+
+With towering cliffs on both sides and the great black boulders
+scattered all around, Roos felt that both subject and setting were
+highly favourable for an effective movie, and started to think out a way
+to work the wreck of the _Douglas_ into his "continuity." After some
+minutes of brown study, he declared that the best way to work it would
+be for the "farmer" to land, come clambering across the boulders
+registering "puzzled wonderment," and then to stand in silent
+contemplation of the wreck, registering "thankfulness." "Thankfulness
+for what?" I demanded; "it doesn't strike me as Christian to gloat over
+the wreck of a ship." "You don't get me at all," he expostulated. "I
+don't mean for him to show thankfulness because of the wreck of the
+steamer, but because his own boat has so far escaped a similar fate. He
+just stands here with his arms folded, casts his eyes upward, moves his
+lips as if...."
+
+"Nothing doing," I cut in decisively. "If you'd been raising beans and
+hay and apricots as long as I have, you'd know that a farmer never
+registers thankfulness about anything but a rise in the market, and
+there ain't no such thing any more." While we were arguing that moot
+point, the sun dipped behind the loftily looming wall of brown-black
+cliff across the river and the trouble settled itself automatically.
+Because there was no longer light, Roos thought it would be a good stunt
+to camp where we were until morning, and as a camp was always
+"continuity"--there we were!
+
+There was plenty of cordwood left, and the galley stove was in good
+condition. As we had no candles, dinner was cooked by the mingled red
+and green gleams of the port and starboard lights, transferred to the
+galley for that purpose. I slept in the cook's cabin and Roos--with his
+bed made up on the wire springs from the Captain's cabin--on the deck of
+the galley. With water freezing half an inch thick in the coffee-pot on
+the galley stove, we had an insufferably cold night of it--one of the
+worst we spent on the river. In the morning Roos made his "camp shots,"
+which consisted principally of the farmer chopping cordwood on the main
+deck, building a fire in the galley stove and cooking breakfast. Out of
+deference to my esoteric knowledge of the way farmers feel about things,
+he consented to omit the "thankfulness stuff."
+
+Shoving off into a steady six-mile current at nine-thirty, a few minutes
+brought us in sight of a striking basaltic island, which Symons had
+characterized as "one of the most perfect profile rocks in existence."
+"Approaching it from the north," he wrote, "it presents a striking
+likeness to the profile of Queen Victoria.... Coming nearer to it and
+passing it on the west, the profile changes and merges into a more
+Grecian and Sphinx-like face, whose placid immobility takes one's mind
+involuntarily to far-off Egypt. It rises from the surface of the water
+about a hundred feet, and a pair of eagles have selected it as their
+home, and upon its extreme top have built a nest, giving, as it were, a
+crown to this goddess of the Columbia."
+
+Roos declared himself strong for that "Sphinx stuff," and had his camera
+set up in the bow ready for a close-up of every change of expression. He
+was doomed to disappointment. The first thing we discovered missing was
+the crowning eagles' nest, and then Victoria's nose, mouth and chin. Her
+brow and hair were there, but both considerably eroded and inroad-ed by
+the weather. The "Grecian-and-Sphinx-like face" we never did locate,
+although I pulled around the island twice in search of them. Roos
+declared her an "oil can," and packed up his camera in supreme disgust.
+That was, I believe, the last time he had it set up on the Columbia.
+
+As Lieutenant Symons had proved so invariably accurate in all of his
+topographical descriptions, I am strongly inclined to the belief that
+floods and the elements had conspired to wreak much havoc with
+"Victoria's" features in the forty years that had elapsed since he
+limned them so strikingly with pen and pencil. I have known fairly
+stonily-featured ladies to change almost as much in a good deal less
+than forty years.
+
+Cabinet Rapids is the beginning of a somewhat irregular series of
+columnar basaltic cliffs which wall in the Columbia closely for the next
+thirty miles. They range in height from fifteen hundred to three
+thousand feet, and in colour from a rich blend of saffron-cinnamon,
+through all the shades of brown, to a dull black. The prevailing
+formation is that of upended cordwood, but there are endless weird
+stratifications and lamiations, with here and there queer nuclei that
+suggest sulphur crystallizations. Imbedded in the face of one of these
+cliffs not far from the tumultuous run of Gualquil Rapids, is a landmark
+that has been famous among Columbia _voyageurs_ for over a hundred
+years. This is huge log, barkless and weather-whitened, standing on end
+in the native basalt. Over a thousand feet above the river and almost an
+equal distance from the brink of the sheer wall of rock, there is no
+possible question of its having been set there by man. The descriptions
+written of it a hundred years ago might have been written to-day.
+Whether it is petrified or not, there is no way of knowing. The only
+possible explanation of its presence is that it was lodged where it is
+at a time when the Columbia flowed a thousand feet higher than it does
+to-day, probably before it tore its great gorge through the Cascades and
+much of what is now eastern Washington was a vast lake.
+
+On the suggestion of the ferry-man at Trinidad, we avoided the upper
+half of Gualquil Rapids by taking a straight, narrow channel to the
+right, which would probably have been dry in another week. There is a
+half mile of fast, white water here, ending with some heavy swirls
+against a sheer cliff, but nothing seriously to menace any well-handled
+open boat. The water was slack for a number of miles from the foot of
+Gualquil, but began quickening where the river spread out between long
+gravel bars below Vantage Ferry. They were shunting sheep across at the
+latter point, and the Portuguese herders crowded eagerly round our boat,
+making strange "high signs" and voicing cryptic utterances, evidently
+having something to do with a local bootleggers' code. At our failure to
+respond in kind, they became suspicious (doubtless the fact that Roos
+was wearing a second-hand Canadian officer's uniform he had bought in
+Revelstoke had something to do with it) that we were prohibition
+enforcement officials, and they were muttering darkly to each other and
+shaking their heads as we pushed off again.
+
+The cliffs ran out not long after we left Vantage Ferry, and as we
+neared the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Bridge at Beverly rough
+patches of sandy desert began opening up on either side. Deprived of the
+shelter of the high river walls, we were at once exposed to a heavy
+easterly wind that had evidently been blowing all day on the desert. The
+sun dulled to a luminous blur behind the pall of the sand-filled air,
+and the wind, which headed us every now and then, about neutralized the
+impulse of the accelerating current. There was a forty-miles-an-hour
+sand-storm blowing when we beached the boat under the railway bridge at
+four-thirty. The brilliantly golden-yellow cars of the C. M. & St. P.
+Limited rumbling across above behind their electric locomotive seemed
+strangely out-of-place in the desolate landscape.
+
+The one sidewalk of the town's fragment of street was ankle-deep in sand
+as we buffetted our way to the hotel. "Have you ever been in Beverly
+before?" asked the sandy-haired (literally) girl who responded to the
+jangle of the cowbell on the counter. "But I should know better than
+that," she apologized with a blush as she blew off the grit on the
+register; "'cause if you had been here once, you'd sure never be here
+again. What's the game, anyhow? You haven't...?" A knowing twitch of a
+dusty eyelash finished the question.
+
+"No, we haven't," growled Roos irritably. Somehow he was never able to
+extract half the amusement that I did over being taken for a
+boot-legger.
+
+It was the sand-storm that broke Roos' heart, I think. He was
+non-committal at supper that night when I started to talk about Priest
+Rapids, and the next morning, after describing his shave as like rubbing
+his face with a brick, he announced that he was through with the
+Columbia for good. As there was a good deal to be said for his
+contention that, between the shortening days and the high cliffs walling
+in the river, there were only two or three hours of good shooting light
+even when the sun was out, I did not feel justified in urging him to go
+on unless he wanted to. In any event, light for filming the running and
+lining of Priest Rapids, now that the sand-storm was at its height, was
+out of the question for a day or two at least. And below Priest Rapids
+there would be nothing worth filming until the mouth of the Snake was
+passed. I suggested, therefore, that he should go on to Pasco by train
+and await me there, finding out in the meantime by wire whether Chester
+cared to have him continue the "farmer" picture in the face of the
+adverse light conditions.
+
+By this time I had fairly complete data on Priest Rapids. These,
+beginning at the end of a stretch of slack water several miles below
+Beverly, continue for eleven miles. In this distance there are seven
+major riffles, with considerable intervals of fairly quiet water
+between. It seemed probable that all of these, with the exception of the
+second and seventh, and possibly the sixth, could be run. The lining of
+the others, while not difficult, would require the help of another man.
+All that morning I inhaled sand as I went over Beverly with a
+fine-toothed comb in a very earnest effort to find some one willing to
+give me a hand through Priest Rapids. The nearest I came to success was
+an ex-brakeman, who said he would go with me after the storm was over,
+provided a job hadn't turned up in the meantime. The only real river-man
+I found was an old chap who opined that the middle of November was too
+late in the year to be getting his feet--if nothing else--wet in the
+"Columby." He offered to haul the boat to the foot of the rapids by the
+road for twenty dollars, but as the down-river branch of the Milwaukee
+presented an opportunity to accomplish the same end in less time and
+discomfort, I decided to portage by the latter. As there was an
+auto-stage service from Hanford to Pasco, Roos accompanied me to the
+former point by train, and helped get the boat down to the river and
+into the water in the morning. Hanford was not the point on the line
+closest to the foot of Priest Rapids, but I took the boat through to
+there because the station was nearer the river than at White Bluffs, and
+launching, therefore, a simpler matter.
+
+The stretch of seventy miles between the foot of Priest Rapids and the
+mouth of the Snake has the slowest current of any part of the Columbia
+above the Dalles. Mindful of the time we had been losing by stops for
+lunch, I now began putting into practice a plan which I followed right
+on to the end of my voyage. Taking a package of biscuit and a couple of
+bars of milk chocolate in my pocket, I kept the river right straight on
+through to my destination. Munching and resting for an hour at noon, I
+at least had the benefit of the current for this period. Eating a much
+lighter lunch, I also gained the advantage of no longer being troubled
+with that comfortable _siesta_-time drowsiness that inevitably follows a
+hearty meal and disinclines one strongly to heavy exertion for an hour
+or more.
+
+For a dozen miles or more below Hanford the river, flanked on either
+side by rolling desert sand-dunes, winds in broad shallow reaches
+through a region desolate in the extreme. The only signs of life I saw
+for many miles were coyotes slinking through the hungry sage-brush and
+occasional flocks of geese, the latter forerunners of the countless
+myriads that were to keep me company below the Snake. At Richfield the
+results of irrigation became evident in young apple orchards and green
+fields of alfalfa, and these multiplied all the way down to Pasco. The
+country seemed very flat and monotonous after so many weeks among cliffs
+and mountains, but there was no question of its richness and
+productivity once water was brought to it. The low overflow flats about
+the mouth of the Yakima, which flows into the Columbia from the west a
+few miles above Pasco, gave little indication of the beauty of the
+famous apple country which owes so much to the waters diverted from that
+little river.
+
+After pulling for an hour with the long Northern Pacific bridge in view,
+I landed just below the Pasco-Kennewick ferry at three o'clock. As I was
+beaching the boat and getting out the luggage to leave in the
+ferry-man's house-boat, a hail from the river attracted my attention. It
+was from Roos, in the front seat of an auto, on the approaching
+ferry-boat. His stage had been behind time in leaving Hanford, and as a
+consequence I had beaten him to the Pasco landing by ten minutes. After
+the speed with which we had moved on the upper river, however, mine had
+been rather a slow run. In spite of my steady pulling, it had taken me
+just under six hours to do the thirty-five miles.
+
+After the exchange of a wire or two, Roos obtained permission from
+Chester to suspend the "farmer" picture, and was ordered on to New York
+to report. We were both a good deal disappointed not to have a pictorial
+record of the "farmer" actually seeing the sea; in fact, we did some
+hours of "location" scouting in the hope of finding a substitute Pacific
+in the vicinity of Pasco. If that Beverly sand-storm had only made
+itself felt seventy-five miles farther down river I honestly believe we
+would have accomplished our worthy end. There was a pretty bit of white
+beach below the N. P. bridge. _If_ the sand had been blowing thick
+enough to obscure the farther shore, and _if_ the wind had blown in the
+right direction to throw up a line or two of surf, I could have stood
+with one foot on that beach, the other on _Imshallah's_ bow, elbow on
+knee, chin in hand, and registered "fulfilment," and none could have
+told it from the real Pacific. Indeed, that bit of backwash from Pasco's
+outfall sewer, with the sand-barrage and surf I have postulated, would
+have "shot" _more_ like the Pacific than many spots I can think of
+looking off to the Columbia bar.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+PASCO TO THE DALLES
+
+
+The only lone-hand river voyage I had ever taken previous to the one on
+which I was about to embark was down the lower Colorado River, from
+Needles to the head of the Gulf of California. This had been in
+comparatively quiet water all the way, with nothing much to look out for
+save the tidal bore at the lower end. As I had never been above the
+Dalles on the lower Columbia, I had very little idea of what I would
+encounter in the way of rapids. I knew that there were locks by which
+the Dalles and Cascades could be passed, but as the combined fall at
+these points accounted for only about a quarter of that between the
+Snake and tide-water, it was certain there must still be some very swift
+rapids to run. That there had at times been a steamer service maintained
+from the Snake down meant that there must be some sort of a rock-free
+channel through all of the riffles; but it did not necessarily mean that
+these were runnable in a small boat. A properly handled stern-wheeler
+can be drifted down and (by means of line and capstan) hauled up rapids
+where not even a high-powered launch can live. I had a list of about a
+score of the principal rapids between the Snake and Celilo Falls, with
+their distances from the Canadian Boundary by river. This would enable
+me to know approximately _where_ I was going to find them. That was
+all. Information on fall, channel and the best means of running them I
+would have to pick up as I went along.
+
+I shoved off from Pasco Ferry at nine o'clock in the morning of Sunday,
+November fourteenth. With Roos and his blanket-roll, camera and tripod
+out of the stern, I found that the skiff trimmed better when I rowed
+from the after thwart. She pulled easier and handled a lot more smartly
+now. It was evident, however, that her increased freeboard was going to
+make her harder to hold to her course with head winds, but these I hoped
+to have little trouble with until I reached the gorge of the Cascades.
+The ferry-man assured me that I would encounter no really bad water
+until I came to the last pitch of Umatilla Rapids, about thirty-five
+miles below. He advised me to take a good look at that before putting
+into it, as an unbroken reef ran almost directly across the current and
+the channel was not easy to locate. It was the most troublesome bar to
+navigation on the lower Columbia, and steamers were repeatedly getting
+in trouble there. I would see the latest wreck a couple of miles below
+the foot of the rapids.
+
+I passed the mouth of the Snake about three miles below the ferry. Here
+was no such spectacular meeting of waters as occurs when the Pend
+d'Oreille and Columbia spring together, for the country is low and
+level, and the mouth of the Snake broad and shallow. The discharge was
+through two channels, and the water greenish-grey in colour; but where
+that blend in the swift tributaries of the upper river suggests the
+intense coldness of glacial origin, here the picture conjured up was of
+desert and alkali plains. Its mouth is the least interesting part of
+the Snake. It has some magnificent canyons in its upper and middle
+waters--as have also its two fine tributaries, the Salmon and
+Clearwater,--and its Shoshone Falls are second only to Niagara on the
+North American continent.
+
+Lieutenant Symons, who concluded his exploration of the upper Columbia
+at the Snake, characterizes the region as a "bleak, dreary waste, in
+which for many miles around sage-brush and sand predominate ... one of
+the most abominable places in the country to live in." Alexander Ross,
+on the other hand, writing seventy years earlier, describes it as one of
+the loveliest lands imaginable. The fact that the one reached the Snake
+in the fall and the other in the spring may have had something to do
+with these diametrically opposed impressions. Irrigation and cultivation
+have gone far to redeem this land from the desert Symons found it, but
+it is still far from being quite the Paradise Ross seemed to think it
+was. As the only considerable plain touching the Columbia at any point
+in its course, this region of the Snake can never make the scenic appeal
+of the hundreds of miles of cliff-walled gorges above and below; but it
+is a land of great potential richness. With water and power available
+from the two greatest rivers of the West, there can be no question of
+its future, both agriculturally and industrially. Pasco will yet more
+than fulfil the promises made for that mushroom town in its early boom
+days. "KEEP YOUR EYE ON PASCO!" was a byword from one end of the country
+to the other in the nineties, and this hustling rail and agricultural
+centre at the junction of the Columbia and the Snake should not be lost
+sight of even to-day.
+
+The lighter-hued water of the Snake was pretty well churned into the
+flood of the Columbia at the end of a mile, leaving a faint suggestion
+of cloudiness in the transparent green that the latter had preserved all
+the way from the Arrow Lakes. The long bridge of the Spokane, Portland
+and Seattle Railway spanned the Columbia just below the Snake, and from
+there on paralleled the river closely right down to the Willamette.
+After the Oregon-Washington Railway and Navigation Company tracks
+appeared on the south bank below the Walla Walla, it was only at rare
+intervals that I was out of sight of a grade, or out of sound of a
+train, for the remainder of my voyage. In a day or two the trainmen,
+running back and forth between divisional points, came to recognize the
+bright green skiff plugging on down the dark green river (mighty small
+she must have looked to them from the banks) and never failed to give
+her a hail or a wave in passing. On a certain memorable occasion one of
+them (doubtless in direct defiance of rules) ventured even further in
+the way of a warning ... but I will tell of that in its place.
+
+Homley Rapids, seven miles below Pasco ferry, are formed by a rough reef
+of bedrock running half way across the river from the right bank.
+Approached from the right side of the long gravel island that divides
+the river just above them, one might get badly tangled up before he got
+through; by the left-hand channel the going is easy if one keeps an eye
+on the shallowing water at the bars. A sky-line of brown mountains,
+with a double-turreted butte as their most conspicuous feature, marks
+the point where the Columbia finally turns west for its assault on the
+Cascades and its plunge to the Pacific. That bend is the boundary of the
+fertile plains extending from the Yakima to the Walla Walla, and the
+beginning of a new series of gorges, in some respects the grandest of
+all. The matchless panorama of the Cascade gorges is a fitting finale to
+the stupendous scenic pageant that has been staged all the way from the
+glacial sources of the Columbia.
+
+A low sandy beach just above the mouth of the rather insignificant Walla
+Walla comes pretty near to being the most historically important point
+on the Columbia. Here Lewis and Clark first came to the waters of the
+long-struggled-toward Oregon; here came Fremont, the "Pathfinder;" here
+Thompson planted his pious proclamation claiming all of the valley of
+the Columbia for the Northwest Company; and by here, sooner or later,
+passed and repassed practically every one of the trappers, missionaries,
+settlers and other pioneers who were finally to bring Oregon permanently
+under the Stars and Stripes.
+
+The double-topped butte, an outstanding landmark for _voyageurs_ for a
+hundred years, has long been called "The Two Virgins." The story is told
+locally of a Catholic priest who saved his life by taking refuge in a
+cave between the castellated turrets during an Indian massacre, but who
+got in rather serious trouble with the Church afterwards as a
+consequence of sending words of his deliverance by a French-Canadian
+half-breed _voyageur_. The latter got the salient details of the story
+straight, but neglected to explain that the two virgins were mountains.
+The result was that the unlucky priest narrowly missed excommunication
+for saving his life at the expense of breaking his vows. I got no
+affidavit with the story; but local "stock" yarns are always worth
+preserving on account of their colour.
+
+There were a number of big black rocks where the river began its bend to
+the west, but the channel to the right was not hard to follow. Neither
+did Bull Run Rapids, a few miles farther down, offer any difficulties. I
+followed the steamer channel as having the swiftest current, but could
+have passed without trouble on either side of it in much quieter water.
+Brown and terra-cotta-tinged cliffs reared higher and higher to left and
+right, encroaching closely on the river. There was little room for
+cultivation at any point, and often the railways had had to resort to
+heavy cutting and tunnelling to find a way through some jutting rock
+buttress. There were no trees, and the general aspect of the country was
+desolate in the extreme.
+
+It was toward the end of a grey afternoon that I headed _Imshallah_ into
+the first pitch of Umatilla Rapids. The sun had dissolved into a slowly
+thickening mist about three o'clock, and from then on the whole
+landscape had been gradually neutralizing itself by taking on shade
+after shade of dull, inconspicuous grey. From the grey-white mistiness
+of the sky to the grey-green murkiness of the river there was nothing
+that contrasted with anything else; every object was blended, dissolved,
+all but quenched. The foam-ruffles above even the sharpest of the
+riffles blurred like the streaking of clouded marble at a hundred feet,
+and it took the livest kind of a lookout to avoid the ones with teeth in
+them. Neither the first nor the second riffle had any very bad water,
+but my neck was stiff from watching over my shoulder even as they were.
+I had rather intended avoiding this trouble by drifting down anything
+that looked very threatening stern first, but that would have involved
+retrimming the boat and greatly reducing her speed. If I was going to
+make Umatilla by dark, there was no time to lose.
+
+From the head of the first riffle of Umatilla Rapids to the head of the
+third or main one is a mile and a half. There was a slight up-river
+breeze blowing in the mist, and the heavy rumble of the big fall came to
+my ears some distance above the opening riffle. The distant roar
+augmented steadily after that, and the sharper grind of the more
+imminent riffles was never loud enough to drown it out entirely. The
+fact that it had a certain "all pervasive" quality, seeming to fill the
+whole of the gorge with its heavy beat, told me that it was an unusually
+long rapid, as well as an unusually rough one. That, it seemed, was
+about all I was going to be able to find out. No one was in sight on the
+left bank, which I was skirting, and the right bank was masked with
+mist. With none to seek information from, and with not enough light to
+see for myself, the alternatives were very simple: I could either land,
+line as far as I could while light lasted and then seek Umatilla on foot
+for the night, or I could take my chance at running through. It was the
+delay and uncertainty sure to be attendant upon lining that was the
+principal factor in deciding me to try the latter course. Also, I knew
+that there was an open channel all the way through, and that the rapid
+was a comparatively broad and shallow one, rather than constricted and
+deep. This meant that it would be straight white water--a succession of
+broken waves--I was going into, rather than heavy swirls and whirlpools;
+just the water in which the skiff had already proved she was at her
+best. These points seemed to minimize the risk of going wrong to a point
+where the chance of running was worth taking for the time and trouble it
+would save. If I had not known these things in advance, I should never,
+of course, have risked going into so strong a rapid under such
+conditions of light.
+
+I shall always have a very grateful feeling toward that Pasco ferry-man
+for those few words he dropped about the run of the reef and the set of
+the current at Umatilla Rapid. This is one of the few great rapids I
+have ever known on any river where the main drift of the current will
+not carry a boat to the deepest channel. This is due to the fact that
+the great reef of native rock which causes the rapid is sufficiently
+submerged even at middle water to permit a considerable flow directly
+across it. The consequence of this is that a boat, large or small, which
+follows the current and does not start soon enough working over toward
+the point where a channel has been blasted through the reef, is almost
+certain to be carried directly upon the latter. This has happened to a
+good many steamers, the latest having been wrecked not long before my
+voyage.
+
+With a rough idea of the lay of things in my mind, I had edged a good
+deal farther out across the current than would have been the case had I
+been trusting to my own judgment of the way the rapid _ought_ to develop
+in the light of my past experience. The smooth but swiftly-flowing water
+to the left looked almost empty of threat, and it was not until I was
+within a hundred feet of the barrier that I saw it was flowing directly
+over the latter and went tumbling down the farther side in an almost
+straight fall. At the same instant I saw that I was still heading forty
+or fifty feet to the left of where the "intake" dipped through the break
+in the reef. Realizing that I could never make it by heading straight, I
+swung the skiff round and pulled quartering to the current with her head
+up-stream. Even then it was a nearer squeak than I like to think of. I
+missed the middle of the "V" by ten feet as I swung her head down-stream
+again, and as the racing current carried her up against the back-wave
+thrown off the end of the break in the reef she heeled heavily to
+starboard, like an auto turning on a steeply-banked track. Then she shot
+out into the big white combers in mid-channel and started slap-banging
+down through them. It looked beastly rough ahead, but in any event it
+was better than hanging up on the reef at the outset. We were going to
+have a run for our money whatever happened.
+
+The only precautions there had been time to take were slipping into my
+"Gieve" and throwing all my luggage aft. Half-inflated, the
+rubber-lined jacket was no handicap in rowing, and the tube hung ready
+to receive more air if necessity arose. As for the trim, it had been my
+snap judgment at the last moment that it would be better to give the
+skiff her head in the rollers that I _knew_ were coming, and let her
+take her chance in being down by the stern in whirlpools that might
+never materialize. I still think that was the best thing to have done
+under the circumstances.
+
+Not until I was right down into that wild wallow of rock-churned foam
+was there a chance to get an idea of the rather remarkable bedrock
+formation which is responsible for making Umatilla Rapids the worrisome
+problem they have always been for river skippers. After piercing the
+black basaltic barrier of the reef, the channel shoots to the left and
+runs for a quarter of a mile or more (I was too busy to judge distances
+accurately) right along the foot of it. With a considerable stream of
+water cascading over the reef at almost right angles to the channel, a
+queer sort of side-kick is thrown into the waves of the latter which
+make it one of the most "unrhythmic" rapids I ever ran. _Imshallah_
+pounded horribly, but gave not the savagest of the twisting combers a
+chance to put anything solid over her high held head. My erratic pecking
+strokes did not find green water often enough to give her much way over
+the current, but she responded instantly every time I dug deep to throw
+her head back after she had been buffeted sideways by an arrogant
+ruffian of a roller.
+
+As soon as I saw the way she was riding the roughest of the water, I
+realized that the only chance of a bad mess-up would come through my
+failure to keep her head to the enemy. Knowing this wasn't likely to
+happen unless I broke an oar, I eased a bit on my pulling and gave just
+a quick short-arm jerk now and then to hold her steady. She was never
+near to broaching-to, and I'm mighty glad she wasn't. Umatilla is the
+sort of a rapid that hasn't quite the teeth to get the best of a
+carefully handled boat that is running in good luck, but which has the
+power, with a mile to spare, to grind to match-wood any craft that gets
+into trouble on its own account. It was an eerie run that--with the
+snarling cascade of the reef on one side, the ghostly dance of the
+rollers on the other, and the impenetrable grey curtain of the mist
+blanking everything beyond a radius of a hundred feet; but _Imshallah_
+went through it with her head in the air and came waltzing out into the
+swirls below as cocky as a partridge. Indeed, that was just the trouble.
+The pair of us were just a bit _too_ cocky over the way we had gone it
+blind and come through so smartly. It remained for a couple of lesser
+rapids to reduce both of us to a proper humility of spirit.
+
+I had been prepared to make a quick shift to the forward thwart in case
+there was a bad run of whirlpools following the rapid, and so bring her
+up by the stern. This did not prove necessary, however, as the rapidly
+broadening river was too shallow for dangerous under-currents. A short
+run in slackening water brought me to the town of Umatilla just as the
+lights were beginning to twinkle in the windows. Landing in the quiet
+water below a short stone jetty, I left my stuff in a nearby shack and
+sought the hotel. The pool-room "stove-decorators" refused to believe I
+had come through the rapid until I described it to them. Then they said
+it was better to be a lucky darnfool on the Columbia than an unlucky
+school-teacher. "School-teacher," it appeared, was the local apotheosis
+of Wisdom, and stood at the opposite pole from "darnfool." It seems that
+there had been two male school-teachers drowned in Umatilla that summer
+and only one darnfool, and they were rather put out at me for having
+failed to even up the score. Then they tried to spoil my evening by
+telling me all the things that had happened to people in Devil's Run
+Rapids, which I would go into just below the mouth of the river the
+first thing in the morning. They had me rather fussed for a while,
+too--until they told one about a farmer who, after having had his launch
+upset on his way home from his wedding, swam out with his bride in his
+arms. I told them I'd try to get that lusty swimmer to tow me through
+Devil's Run in the morning, and turned in for a good sleep.
+
+Umatilla is a decrepit little old town that knew its best days away back
+in the last century, when it was the head of steamer navigation on the
+Columbia and the terminus of the freighting route to Idaho and eastern
+Washington. There are rich irrigated lands farther up the Umatilla
+River, but the development of these seems to have done little for the
+stagnating old settlement by the Columbia, which has little left but its
+historic memories. It was by the Umatilla that the rugged Hunt and the
+remnants of the Astor overland party came to the Columbia, after what
+was perhaps the most terrible journey ever made across the continent.
+And all through the time of the _voyageurs_, the trappers and the
+pioneers, Umatilla was only less important as a halting and portage
+point than the Cascades and the Dalles.
+
+I pulled away from the jetty of Umatilla at eight o'clock in the morning
+of November fifteenth. The sky was clear and there was no trace of the
+mist of the previous evening. There was brilliant, diamond-bright
+visibility on the river, with the usual early morning mirage effects,
+due to the chill stratum of air lying close to the water. This
+exaggerated considerably the height of distant riffles, lifting them up
+into eye-scope much sooner than they would have been picked up
+ordinarily. I put on my "Gieve" and blew it up in anticipation of a
+stiff fight at Devil's Run, only to find just enough rocks and riffles
+there to make me certain of locating them. I could see, however, that
+the formation was such that there might have been very troublesome water
+there at higher, and possibly lower, stages. Out of charity for the
+tellers of a good many awesome tales I had to listen to in respect of
+rapids I subsequently found to be comparatively innocuous, I am inclined
+to believe that a number of them were substantially straight accounts of
+disasters which had actually occurred in flood season, or at times when
+other water levels than those I encountered made the riffles in question
+much more troublesome.
+
+I had an easy day of it for rapids, but, as a consequence of the
+comparatively slow water, rather a hard one for pulling. Canoe
+Encampment Rapids, twenty miles below Devil's Run, gave me a good lift
+for a mile or more, but not enough to make much of a respite from the
+oars if I was going to make the fifty miles I had set for my day's run.
+I was still ten miles short of that at four o'clock when a drizzling
+rain setting in from the south-west decided me to land for shelter at
+Hepburn Junction, on the left bank. That was the first rain I had
+encountered since passing the Canadian Boundary, after a month of
+practically continuous storms. There was nothing but a railway station
+at the Junction, but a nearby road-camp offered the chance of food and
+shelter. The young contractor--he was doing the concrete work on a State
+Highway bridge at that point--eyed my bedraggled figure somewhat
+disapprovingly at first, at a loss, apparently, as to whether I was a
+straight hobo or merely a disguised boot-legger. An instant later we had
+recognized each other as football opponents of Los Angeles-Pasadena
+school-days. His name was Walter Rees, of a family prominent among early
+Southern California pioneers. With the rain pattering on the tent roof,
+we talked each other to sleep lamenting the good old days of the "flying
+wedge" and massed play in football.
+
+It was clear again the following morning, but with a mistiness to the
+west masking Mount Hood and the Cascades, to which I was now coming very
+near. The cliffs had been rearing up higher and higher at every mile,
+great walls of red-brown and black rock strongly suggestive, in their
+rugged barrenness, of the buttressed, turreted and columned formation
+through which the river runs below the mouth of the Spokane. Owyhee,
+Blalock and Four O'clock rapids were easy running, but the sustained
+roar which the slight up-river breeze brought to my ears as the black,
+right-angling gorge of Rock Creek came in sight was fair warning that
+there was really rough water ahead. Although I had been able to gather
+very little information along the way, the fact that I had so far
+descended but a small part of the two hundred feet of drop between
+Umatilla and Celilo Falls meant that the several rapids immediately
+ahead would have to make up for the loafing the Columbia had been guilty
+of for the last sixty miles.
+
+Taking advantage of the quiet stretch of water below Four O'clock
+Rapids, I went all over the skiff as she drifted in the easy current,
+tuning her up for the slap-banging she could not fail to receive in the
+long succession of sharp riffles which began at Rock Creek. In
+tightening up the brass screws along the gunwale, I removed and threw
+into the bottom of the boat both of my oar-locks. When I started to
+restore them to place as the roar of the nearing rapid grew louder, I
+found that one of them--the left--had been kicked out of reach under the
+bottom-boards. Rather than go to the trouble of tearing up the latter
+just then, I replaced the missing lock with one from my duffle-bag, a
+roughly-smithed piece of iron that I had carried away as a mascot from
+an old _batteau_ at Boat Encampment. It proved quite a bit too snug for
+its socket, besides being a deal wider than it should have been for the
+shaft of my light oar. There was a spoon oar, with a ring lock, under
+the thwarts, but I was somewhat chary of using it since its mate had
+snapped with me below Rock Island Rapids.
+
+The river narrowed sharply above Rock Creek, and, standing on a thwart
+as the skiff drifted down, I saw that the rapid dropped away in a solid
+stretch of white foam tumbling between black basaltic walls. There was a
+good, stiff fall, but it was reassuring that I could see right away to
+the end of the white water, which did not appear to continue around the
+ninety-degree bend at the foot. It was just the sort of water
+_Imshallah_ was at her best in running, so I decided it was simply a
+matter of choosing the clearest channel and letting her go. A white
+cross-barred post on the mountainside at the angle of the bend gave me
+the bearing for the channel a minute or two before I made out the dip of
+the "intake." Stowing everything well aft, as I had done at Umatilla, I
+took up my oars and put her straight over the jade-green tip of the "V."
+
+That was rough-and-rowdy water, and no mistake. Every roller meant a
+slam, and every slam meant a shower-bath; but withal, it was mostly
+spray that came over her bows--nothing really to bother about. And so
+_Imshallah_ would have run it right through--had not a sharp dig I gave
+with my left oar jerked the latter out of that "open-faced" Boat
+Encampment mascot lock and sent me keeling over backwards. The next
+moment she was wallowing, beam-on, into the troughs and over the crests
+of the combers, dipping green water at every roll.
+
+Recovering my seat as quickly as possible, I tried to bring her head up
+again by backing with the right oar. She swung obediently enough, but I
+could not hold her bow down-stream once she was headed right.
+
+Rather than chance that "mascot" oar-lock again, I tumbled aft and did
+what I could with the paddle. Down as she was by the stern, that brought
+her head right out of the water and made it rather hopeless getting any
+way on her. She tumbled on through to the foot of the rapid without
+putting a gunwale under again, however, a circumstance for which I was
+highly thankful. She already had five or six inches of water in her, as
+I found as soon as I began to bail. It is just as well the trouble
+didn't occur at the head of the rapid. We were half way down when I
+ceased to function, and _Imshallah_ had about all she wanted to navigate
+the remainder. I was also duly thankful that there was nothing more than
+a few bad swirls at the foot of the rapid. Standing on her tail as she
+was after I plumped down in the stern with the paddle, a good strong
+whirlpool, such as must form at that sharp bend at high-water, would
+have made not more than one comfortable mouthful of her.
+
+From the foot of Rock Creek Rapids to the head of Squally Hook Rapids is
+something less than four miles of not very swift water. It took me about
+all the time the boat was drifting that distance to get her bailed out
+enough to retrieve my lost oar-lock from under the bottom-boards.
+Squally Hook, I could see, was much the same sort of a short, sharp,
+savage rapid as Rock Creek. There was the same restricted "intake," and
+the same abrupt bend just beyond the foot; only below Squally Hook the
+river turned to the left, where at Rock Creek it had turned to the
+right.
+
+The sheer two-thousand-foot cliff on the inside of the bend that gives
+its name to the rapid is well called Squally Hook. What had been a
+gentle ten-miles-an-hour breeze on the river above began resolving
+itself into a succession of fitful gusts of twenty or thirty as I
+approached the rock-walled bend. Even a steady head-wind makes steering
+awkward in going into a rapid; a gusty one is a distinct nuisance. To
+avoid the necessity of any sharp change of course after I was once among
+the white-caps, I resolved to use every care in heading into the rapid
+at exactly the right place. That was why, when I became aware that two
+girls from a farm-house on a bench above the right bank were motioning
+me imperiously in that direction, I swerved sharply from the course I
+had decided upon in an endeavour to locate the channel into which I was
+sure they were trying to tell me to head. Just what those confounded
+half-breed Loreli were _really_ driving at I never did learn. Perhaps
+they had apples to sell, or some sweet cider; or perhaps they thought I
+had some cider that was not sweet. Perhaps it was pure sociability--the
+desire of a bit of a "talky-talk" with the green-boated _voyageur_. At
+any rate, they were certainly _not_ trying to pilot me into a clear
+channel. That fact walloped me right between the eyes the instant I
+discovered that I had pulled beyond the entrance of a perfectly straight
+channel and that there was a barely submerged barrier of rock blocking
+the river all the way on to the right bank.
+
+That, of course, left me no alternative but to pull back for all that
+was in me to wait the "intake." It was a very similar predicament to the
+one in which the mist had tricked me at the head of Umatilla; only
+there I had room to make the channel and here I didn't. The current,
+running now like a mill-race, carried me onto the reef sixty feet to the
+right of the smooth green chute of the "fairway."
+
+If it had taken half an hour instead of half a second to shoot out
+across the shoaling shelf of that froth-hidden reef there might have
+been time for a goodly bit of worrying anent the outcome. As it was,
+there was just the sudden thrill of seeing the bottom of the river
+leaping up to hit the bottom of the boat, the instant of suspense as she
+touched and dragged at the brink, and then the dizzy nose-dive of two or
+three feet down into deeper water. It was done so quickly that a stroke
+checked by the rock of the reef was finished in the up-boil below the
+little cascade. With an inch or two less of water she might have hung at
+the brink and swung beam-on to the current, which, of course, would have
+meant an instant capsize. The way it was, she made a straight clean jump
+of it, and only buried her nose in the souse-hole for the briefest part
+of a second when she struck. The rest was merely the matter of three
+hundred yards of rough running down a rock-clear channel.
+
+The authors of my near-mess-up came capering down the bank in pursuit as
+I swung out into the smoothening swirls, but I only shook my fist at
+them and resumed my oars. Darn women, anyway!--when a man's running
+rapids, I mean.
+
+Now one would have thought that those two performances were enough for
+one afternoon, especially as both were very largely due to my own
+carelessness; but I suppose the "trilogy of trouble" had to be rounded
+out complete. From the foot of Squally Hook Rapids to the head of Indian
+Rapids is about three miles. The water became ominously slack as I
+neared what appeared to be a number of great rock islands almost
+completely barring the river. It was not until I was almost even with
+the first of them that a channel, very narrow and very straight, opened
+up along the left bank. Various other channels led off among the
+islands, but with nothing to indicate how or where they emerged. That
+flume-like chute down the left bank was plainly the way the steamers
+went, and certainly the quickest and most direct course on down the
+river. Peering through the rocky vista, I could see a rain storm racing
+up the Columbia, with the grey face of it just blotting out a
+wedge-shaped gorge through the southern cliffs which I knew must be the
+mouth of the John Day. That storm was another reason why I should choose
+the shortest and swiftest channel. There ought to be some kind of
+shelter where this important southern tributary met the Columbia.
+
+Of course, I knew all about still water running deep (which was of no
+concern to me) and "twisty" (which was of considerable concern). I
+should certainly have given more thought to the matter of trimming for
+what was sure to be waiting to snap up _Imshallah_ at the foot of that
+speeding chute of green-black water had not an old friend of mine
+breezed along just then. He was the engineer of the way freight on the
+"South-bank" line. We had been exchanging signals in passing for three
+days now--twice on his down run and once on his up. This was the first
+opportunity I had had to show him how a rapid should be run, and I noted
+with gratification that he appeared to be slowing down so as to miss
+none of the fine points. On my part, dispensing with my wonted
+preliminary "look-see," I swung hard on the oars in an effort to get
+into the swiftest water before the spectators were out of sight.
+
+As the engine drew up even with me, I balanced my oars with my right
+hand for a moment and waved the engineer greetings with my left; he, in
+turn, ran the locomotive with his left hand and waved with his right.
+Then I saw that the fireman was also waving, and, farther back, the
+brakeman, from the top of a car, and the conductor from the "lookout" of
+the caboose. The occupants of the "dirigible grandstand" at the
+Poughkeepsie regattas had nothing on the crew of that way freight. And
+the latter, moreover, were treated to a burst of speed such as no
+man-propelled boat in still water ever came close to. I was not pulling
+over four or five miles an hour myself, but that smooth, steep,
+unobstructed chute must have been spilling through its current at close
+to twenty. In a couple of hundred yards I pulled up three or four
+car-lengths on the comparatively slow-moving train, and I was still
+gaining when a sudden "_toot-a-too-toot!_" made me stop rowing and look
+around. I had recognized instantly the familiar danger signal, and was
+rather expecting to see a cow grazing with true bovine nonchalance on
+the weeds between the ties. Instead, it was the engineer's wildly
+gesticulating arm that caught my back-cast eye. He was pointing just
+ahead of me, and down--evidently at something in the water.
+
+Then I saw it too--a big black funnel-shaped hole down which a wide
+ribbon of river seemed to be taking a sort of a spiral tumble. It was
+that entirely well-meant _toot-a-toot_, which was intended to prod me,
+not a cow, into activity, that was primarily responsible for what
+followed. Had I not ceased rowing on hearing it, it is probable that the
+skiff would have had enough way when she did strike that whirlpool to
+carry her right on through. As it was _Imshallah_ simply did an undulant
+glide into the watery tentacles of the lurking octopus, snuggled into
+his breast and prepared to spend the night reeling in a dervish dance
+with him. I must do the jade the justice of admitting that she had no
+intention of outraging the proprieties by going any further than a
+nocturnal terpsichorean revel. Going home for the night with him never
+entered her mind; so that when he tried to pull the "Cave-Man stuff" and
+drag her down to his under-water grottoes, she put up the most virtuous
+kind of resistance. The trouble was that I didn't want to go even as far
+as she did. Dancing was the last thing I cared for, with that rain-storm
+and night coming on. Yet--at least as far as my friends on the way
+freight ever knew--an all-night _Danse d'Apache_ looked very much like
+what we were up against; for I recall distinctly that when the train was
+disappearing round the next bend _Imshallah_, her head thrown
+ecstatically skyward, was still spinning in circles, while I continued
+to fan the air with my oars like an animated Dutch windmill.
+
+It was a mighty sizeable whirlpool, that black-mouthed maelstrom into
+which _Imshallah's_ susceptibility had betrayed both of us. I should say
+that it was twice the diameter of the one which had given us such a
+severe shaking just above the Canadian Boundary, and with a "suck" in
+proportion. What helped the situation now, however, was the fact that
+the skiff carried rather less than half the weight she did then. At the
+rate she was taking water over the stern during that first attack, she
+could not have survived for more than half a minute; now she was riding
+so much more buoyantly that she was only dipping half a bucket or so
+once in every two or three rounds. When I saw that she could probably go
+on dancing for an hour or two without taking in enough water to put her
+under, something of the ludicrousness of the situation began to dawn on
+me. Missing the water completely with half of my strokes, and only
+dealing it futile slaps with the rest, I was making no more linear
+progress than if I had been riding a merry-go-round. I didn't dare to
+put the stern any lower by sliding down there and trying to paddle where
+there was water to be reached. Crowding her head down by working my
+weight forward finally struck me as the only thing to do.
+
+With the forward thwart almost above my head this was not an easy
+consummation to effect, especially with an oar in either hand. Luckily,
+I was now using the "ring" oar-locks, so that they came along on the
+oars when I unshipped the latter. Standing up was, of course, out of
+the question. I simply slid off backwards on to the bottom and wriggled
+forward in a sitting position until I felt my spine against the thwart.
+That brought her nose out of the clouds, and she settled down still
+farther when, after getting my elbows over the seat behind me, I worked
+up into a rowing position.
+
+The whirlpool was spinning from right to left, and one quick stroke with
+my left oar--against the current of the "spin," that is--was enough to
+shoot her clear. Bad swirls and two or three smaller "twisters" made her
+course a devious one for the next hundred yards, but she never swung in
+a complete revolution again. I pulled into smooth water just as the
+first drops of the storm began to patter on the back of my neck.
+
+The first riffle of John Day Rapids sent its warning growl on the
+up-river wind before I was a quarter of a mile below the whirlpool, and
+ahead loomed a barrier of rock islands, rising out of the white foam
+churned up as the Columbia raced between them. I had to run the first
+riffle--an easy one--to make the mouth of the John Day, but that was as
+far as I went. I reckoned there had been quite enough excitement for one
+afternoon without poking into any more rough water against a rain and
+head wind. Dropping below the gravel bar off the mouth of the Day, I
+pulled fifty yards up-stream in a quiet current and moored _Imshallah_
+under the railway bridge. I camped for the night with a couple of motor
+tourists in a shack near the upper end of the bridge. My hosts were two
+genial souls, father and son, enjoying an indefinite spell of fishing,
+hunting and trapping on a stake the former had made in the sale of one
+of his "prospects" in southern Oregon. They were bluff, big-hearted,
+genuine chaps, both of them, and we had a highly delightful evening of
+yarning.
+
+It was clear again the next morning, but with the barometer of my
+confidence jolted down several notches by what had occurred the previous
+afternoon. I pulled across the river and sought a quieter way through
+the second riffle of John Day Rapids than that promised by the
+boisterous steamer channel. By devious ways and sinuous, I wound this
+way and that among the black rock islands, until a shallow channel along
+the right bank let me out of the maze at the lower end. This waste of
+time and effort was largely due to funkiness on my part, and there was
+no necessity for it. The steamer channel is white and rough, with
+something of a whirlpool on the left side at the lower end, but nothing
+that there is any real excuse for avoiding. The third riffle was nothing
+to bother about; nor did Schofield's Rapids, two miles below, offer any
+difficulties. As a matter of fact, Adventure, having had its innings,
+was taking a day off, leaving me to follow the Golden Trail of Romance.
+To-day was "Ladies' Day" on the Columbia.
+
+Romance first showed her bright eyes at a little farm on the right bank,
+three miles below Schofield's Rapids. Landing here to ask about the
+channel through a rather noisy rapid beginning to boom ahead, I found a
+delectable apple-cheeked miss of about twelve in charge, her father and
+mother having gone across to Biggs for the day. She was in sore trouble
+at the moment of my advent because her newly-born brindle bull calf--her
+really-truly very own--wouldn't take nourishment properly. Now as luck
+would have it, teaching a calf table-manners chanced to be one of the
+few things I knew about stock-farming. So I showed her how to start in
+by letting _Cultus_ (that was merely a temporary name, she said, because
+he was so bad) munch her own finger for a spell, from which, by slow
+degrees, the lacteal liaison with "Old Mooley" was established. It took
+us half an hour to get _Cultus_ functioning on all fours, and rather
+longer than that to teach her collie, tabby cat, and the latter's three
+kittens to sit in a row and have their mouths milked into. It didn't
+take us long to exhaust "Old Mooley's" milk supply at that game, and
+when I finally climbed over the barnyard fence on the way down to my
+boat, poor _Cultus_ was left butting captiously at an empty udder.
+"Apple Cheek" rather wanted me to stay until her father came back,
+saying that he had gone to Biggs to get a 'breed for a hired man, and
+that, if he didn't get the 'breed, maybe I would do. She almost burst
+into tears with shame when I told her I was a moving picture actor
+seeking rest and local colour on the Columbia. "You a actor, and I made
+you milk 'Old Mooley!'" she sobbed; and it took all my lunch ration of
+milk chocolate to bring back her smile. Then, like the Scotch bride at
+Windermere, she asked me if I was Bill Hart. Somehow, I wasn't quite
+base enough to tell her a concrete lie like that; so I compromised with
+a comparative abstraction. I was a rising star in the movie firmament, I
+said; an eclectic, taking the best of all the risen stars, of whom much
+would be heard later. She was still pondering "_eclectic_" when I pushed
+off into the current. Bless your heart, little "Apple Cheek," I hope you
+didn't get a spanking for wasting all of _Cultus'_ dinner on the dogs
+and cats and the side of the barn! You were about the first person I met
+on the Columbia who didn't accuse me of being a boot-legger, and the
+only one who believed me hot off the bat when I said I was a movie star.
+
+The rapid ahead became noisier as I drew nearer, and when I saw it came
+from a reef which reached four-fifths of the way across the river from
+the left bank, I pulled in and landed at Biggs to inquire about the
+channel. The first man I spoke to called a second, and the latter a
+third, and so on _ad infinitum_. Pretty near to half the town must have
+been gathered at the railway station giving me advice at the end of a
+quarter of an hour. Each of them had a different suggestion to make,
+ranging from dragging through a half-empty back channel just below the
+town to taking the boat out and running it down the track on a
+push-cart. As they all were agreed that the steamers used to go down the
+opposite side, I finally decided that would be the best way through. Not
+to run too much risk of being carried down onto the reef in pulling
+across, I lined and poled a half mile up-stream before pushing off. Once
+over near the right bank, I found a channel broad and deep enough to
+have run at night.
+
+A couple of miles below Biggs the Columbia is divided by a long narrow
+rocky island. The deep, direct channel is that to the right, and is
+called Hell Gate--the third gorge of that hackneyed name I had
+encountered since pushing off from Beavermouth. Possibly it was because
+I was fed-up with the name and all it connoted that I avoided this
+channel; more likely it was because Romance was at the tow-line. At any
+rate, I headed into the broad shallow channel that flows by the mouth of
+the River Des Chutes. It was up this tumultuous stream that Fremont,
+after camping at the Dalles and making a short boat voyage below,
+started south over the mountains in search of the mythical river that
+was supposed to drain from the Utah basin to the Pacific in the vicinity
+of San Francisco--one of the indomitable "Pathfinder's" hardest
+journeys.
+
+Just beyond where the River of the Falls, true to name to the last, came
+cascading into the Columbia, Romance again raised her golden head--this
+time out of the steam rising above an Indian "Turkish-bath." The first
+time I had found her in the guise of a twelve-year-old; this time it was
+more like a hundred and twelve. One can't make certain within a year or
+two about a lady in a Turkish-bath; it wouldn't be seemly even to _try_
+to do so. Pulling in close to the left bank to look at some queer
+mud-plastered Indian wickiups, a rush of steam suddenly burst from the
+side of the nearest one, and out of that spreading white cloud, rising
+like Aphrodite from the sea-foam, emerged the head and shoulders of an
+ancient squaw. She was horribly old--literally at the sans eyes, sans
+hair, sans teeth, sans everything (including clothes) stage. Cackling
+and gesticulating in the rolling steam, she was the _belle ideal_ of
+the witch of one's fancy, muttering incantations above her boiling
+cauldron.
+
+Fremont, in somewhat humorous vein, tells of visiting an Indian camp in
+this vicinity on the Columbia, and of how one of the squaws who had
+rushed forth in complete _deshabille_ on hearing the voices of
+strangers, "properized" herself at the last moment by using her
+papoose--as far as it would go--as a shield. But this old "Aphrodite" I
+had flushed from cover was so old that, if her youngest child had been
+ready to hand, and that latter had had one of her own children within
+reach, and this third one had had a child available, I am certain that
+still another generation or two would have had to be descended before a
+papoose sufficiently young enough to make "properization" proper would
+have been found. I trust I make that clear. And when you _have_
+visualized it, isn't it a funny pyramid?
+
+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 canal. 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 canal, 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 assured 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.
+
+[Illustration: LIFTED DRAWBRIDGE ON CELILO CANAL (_above_)]
+
+[Illustration: TUMWATER GORGE OF THE GRAND DALLES (_below_)]
+
+[Illustration: "IMSHALLAH" IN THE LOCK AT FIVE-MILE]
+
+[Illustration: "IMSHALLAH" HALF WAY THROUGH THE CELILO CANAL]
+
+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 Canal 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 Canal, 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 canal, down which I
+pulled with the thunder of the falls on one side and on the other the
+roar of a passing 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 Canal 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 massive 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 passed 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 passing, 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 Canal, 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 canal 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 Canal rendered was the indirect one of forcing a very
+considerable reduction of railway freight rates. That alone is said to
+have saved the shippers of eastern Oregon and Washington many times the
+cost of this highly expensive undertaking.
+
+I pulled at a leisurely gait down the Canal, 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 shift 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 Canal 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,
+passing 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 passage
+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 fishing 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-shipping 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 passed that unavoidable portage. They were lying,
+thieving scoundrels for the most part, easily intimidated by a show of
+force and far less prone to stage a real fight than their more warlike
+brethren who disputed the passage 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 passing tourist until I made my
+Columbia voyage.
+
+I had intended, by making an early start from The Dalles, to endeavour
+to cover the forty odd miles to the head of the Cascades before dark of
+the same day. Two things conspired to defeat this ambitious plan: first,
+some unexpected mail which had to be answered, and, second, my equally
+unexpected booking of a passenger--a way passenger who had to be landed
+well short of the Cascades. Just as I was cleaning up the last of my
+letters, the hotel clerk introduced me to the "Society Editor" of The
+Dalles _Chronicle_, who wanted an interview. I told her that I was
+already two hours behind schedule, but that if she cared to ride the
+running road with me for a while, she could have the interview, with
+lunch thrown in, on the river. She accepted with alacrity, but begged
+for half an hour to clean up her desk at the _Chronicle_ office and
+change to out-door togs. Well within that limit, she was back again at
+the hotel, flushed, pant-ing and pant-ed, and announced that she was
+ready. Picking up a few odds and ends of food at the nearest grocery, we
+went down to the dock, where I launched and loaded up _Imshallah_ in
+time to push off at ten o'clock. I had, of course, given up all idea of
+making the Cascades that day, and reckoned that Hood River, about
+twenty-five miles, would be a comfortable and convenient halting place
+for the night. And so it would have been....
+
+[Illustration: PALISADE ROCK, LOWER COLUMBIA RIVER]
+
+[Illustration: MULTNOMAH FALLS COLUMBIA RIVER HIGHWAY, NEAR PORTLAND]
+
+I don't remember whether or not we ever got very far with the
+"interview," but I do recall that Miss S---- talked very interestingly
+of Johan Bojer and his work, and that she was in the midst of a keenly
+analytical review of "The Great Hunger" when a sudden darkening of what
+up to then had been only a slightly overcast sky reminded me that I had
+been extremely remiss in the matter of keeping an eye on the weather.
+Indeed, up to that moment the menace of storms on the river had been of
+such small moment as compared to that of rapids that I had come to rate
+it as no more than negligible. Now, however, heading into the heart of
+the Cascades, I was approaching a series of gorges long notorious among
+river _voyageurs_ as a veritable "wind factory"--a "storm-breeder" of
+the worst description. After all that I had read of the way in which the
+early pioneers had been held up for weeks by head winds between the
+Dalles and the Cascades, there was no excuse for my failure to keep a
+weather eye lifting at so treacherous a point. The only _alibi_ I can
+think of is Adam's: "The woman did it." Nor is there any ungallantry in
+that plea. Quite the contrary, in fact; for I am quite ready to
+confess that I should probably fail to watch the clouds again under
+similar circumstances.
+
+There were a few stray mavericks of sunshine shafts trying to struggle
+down to the inky pit of the river as I turned to give the weather a
+once-over, but they were quenched by the sinister cloud-pall even as I
+looked. The whole gorge of the river-riven Cascades was heaped full of
+wallowing nimbus which, driven by a fierce wind, was rolling up over the
+water like an advancing smoke-barrage. The forefront of the wind was
+marked by a wild welter of foam-white water, while a half mile behind a
+streaming curtain of gray-black indicated the position of the advancing
+wall of the rain. It would have been a vile-looking squall even in the
+open sea; here the sinister threat of it was considerably accentuated by
+the towering cliffs and the imminent outcrops of black rock studding the
+surface of the river. I had no serious doubt that _Imshallah_, after all
+the experience she had had in rough water, would find any great
+difficulty in riding out the blow where she was, but since it hardly
+seemed hospitable to subject my lady guest to any more of a wetting than
+could be avoided, I turned and headed for the lee shore. Miss S---- was
+only about half muffled in the rubber saddle _poncho_ and the light
+"shed" tent I tossed to her before resuming my oars when the wall of the
+wind--hard and solid as the side of a flying barn--struck us full on the
+starboard beam. It was rather careless of me, not heading up to meet
+that squall before it struck; but the fact was that I simply couldn't
+take seriously anything that it seemed possible _could_ happen on such a
+deep, quiet stretch of river. The consequence of taking that buffet on
+the beam was quite a merry bit of a mix-up. The shower-bath of blown
+spray and the dipping under of the lee rail were rather the least of my
+troubles. What did have me guessing for a minute, though, was the result
+of the fact that that confounded fifty-miles-an-hour zephyr got under
+the corners of the tent and, billowing it monstrously, carried about
+half of it overboard; also a somewhat lesser amount of Miss S----, who
+was just wrapping herself in it. I had to drop my oars to effect
+adequate salvage operations, and so leave the skiff with her port
+gunwale pretty nearly hove under. As soon as I got around to swing her
+head up into the teeth of the wind things eased off a bit.
+
+The river was about a mile wide at this point--ten miles below The
+Dalles and about opposite the station of Rowena--and, save for
+occasional outcroppings of black bedrock, fairly deep. The north shore
+was rocky all the way along, but that to the south (which was also the
+more protected on account of a jutting point ahead) was a broad sandy
+beach. That beach seemed to offer a comparatively good landing, and, as
+it extended up-stream for half a mile, it appeared that I ought to have
+no great difficulty in fetching it. The first intimation I had that this
+might not be as easy as I had reckoned came when, in spite of the fact
+that I was pulling down-stream in a three or four-mile current, the wind
+backed the skiff up-stream past a long rock island at a rate of five or
+six miles an hour. That was one of the queerest sensations I experienced
+on the whole voyage--having to avoid bumping the _lower_ end of a rock
+the while I could see the riffle where a strong current was flowing
+around the _upper_ end.
+
+I settled down to pulling in good earnest after that rather startling
+revelation, trying to hold the head of the skiff just enough to the left
+of the eye of the wind to give her a good shoot across the current.
+Luckily, I had been pretty well over toward the south bank when the wind
+struck. There was only about a quarter of a mile to go, but I was blown
+back just about the whole length of that half mile of sandy beach in
+making it. The last hundred yards I was rowing "all out," and it was
+touch-and-go as to whether the skiff was going to nose into soft sand or
+the lower end of a long stretch of half-submerged rocks. I was a good
+deal relieved when it proved to be the beach--by about twenty feet. We
+would have made some kind of a landing on the rocks without doubt, but
+hardly without giving the bottom of the boat an awful banging.
+
+The sand proved unexpectedly soft when I jumped out upon it, but I
+struck firm bottom before I had sunk more than an inch or two above my
+boot tops and managed to drag the skiff up far enough to escape the
+heaviest of the wash of the waves. It was rather a sodden bundle of wet
+canvas that I carried out and deposited under a pine tree beyond
+high-water mark, but the core of it displayed considerable life after it
+had been extracted and set up to dry before the fire of pitchy cones
+that I finally succeeded in teasing into a blaze. To show Miss S----
+that the storm hadn't affected my equanimity, I asked her to go on with
+her review of "The Great Hunger;" but she replied her own was more
+insistent, and reminded me that I hadn't served lunch yet. Well,
+rain-soaked biscuit and milk chocolate are rather difficult to take
+without a spoon; but a pound of California seedless raisins, if munched
+slowly, go quite a way with two people.
+
+The worst of the squall was over in half an hour, and, anxious to make
+hay while the sun shone, I pushed off again in an endeavor to get on as
+far as I could before the next broadside opened up. Miss S---- and I
+landed at the Rowena Ferry, to catch the afternoon train back to The
+Dalles. She was a good ship-mate, and I greatly regret she had the bad
+luck to be my passenger on the only day I encountered a really hard blow
+in all of my voyage.
+
+There was another threatening turret of black cloud beginning to train
+its guns as I pulled out into the stream beyond Rowena, and it opened
+with all the big stuff it had before I had gone a mile. While it lasted,
+the bombardment was as fierce as the first one. Fortunately, its
+ammunition ran out sooner. I kept the middle of the current this time,
+pulling as hard as I could against the wind. I got a thorough raking,
+fore-and-aft, for my temerity, but, except at the height of the wind, I
+managed to avoid the ignominy of being forced back against the stream.
+
+The third squall, which opened up about three-thirty, was a better
+organized assault, and gave me a pretty splashy session of it. When that
+blow got the range of me I was just pulling along to the left of a
+desolate tongue of black basalt called Memaloose Island. For many
+centuries this rocky isle was used by the Klickatats as a burial place,
+which fact induced a certain Indian-loving pioneer of The Dalles, Victor
+Trevett by name, to order his own grave dug there. A tall marble shaft
+near the lower end of the island marks the spot. Now I have no objection
+to marble shafts in general, nor even to this one in particular--as a
+shaft. I just got tired of seeing it, that was all. If any skipper on
+the Columbia ever passed Vic Trevett's monument as many times in a year
+as I did in an hour, I should like to know what run he was on.
+
+Swathed in oilskins, my potential speed was cut down both by the
+resistance my augmented bulk offered to the wind and the increased
+difficulty of pulling with so much on. Down past the monument I would go
+in the lulls, and up past the monument I would go before the gusts.
+There, relentless as the _Flying Dutchman_, that white shaft hung for
+the best part of an hour. I only hope what I said to the wind didn't
+disturb old Vic Trevett's sleep. Finally, a quarter of an hour's easing
+of the blow let me double the next point; and then it turned loose with
+all its guns again. Quite gone in the back and legs, I gave up the
+unequal fight and started to shoot off quartering toward the shore.
+Glancing over my shoulder in an endeavour to get some kind of an idea of
+where, and against what, I might count on striking, an astounding sight
+met my eyes, a picture so weird and infernal that I had to pause
+(mentally) and assure myself that those raisins I had for lunch had not
+been "processed."
+
+Of all the sinister landscapes I ever saw--including the lava fields of
+a good many volcanoes and a number of the world's most repulsive "bad
+lands"--that which opened up to me as I tried to head in beyond that
+hard-striven-for point stands alone in my memory for sheer awesomeness.
+The early winter twilight had already begun to settle upon the gloomy
+gorge, the duskiness greatly accentuating the all-pervading murk cast
+upon the river by the pall of the sooty clouds. All round loomed walls
+of black basalt, reflecting darkly in water whose green had been
+completely quenched by the brooding purple shadows. The very pines on
+the cliffs merged in the solid opacity behind their scraggly forms, and
+even the fringe of willows above high-water-mark looped round the
+crescent of beach below like a fragment of mourning band. And that
+stretch of silver sand--the one thing in the whole infernal landscape
+whose whiteness the gloom alone could not drown: how shall I describe
+the jolt it gave me when I discovered that six or seven black devils
+were engaged in systematically spraying it with an inky liquid that left
+it as dark and dead to the eye as a Stygian strand of anthracite? It was
+a lucky thing those raisins had _not_ been "processed;" else I might not
+have remembered readily what I had heard of the way the "South-Bank"
+railway had been keeping the sand from drifting over its tracks by
+spraying with crude oil the bars uncovered at low water.
+
+With that infernal mystery cleared up, my mind was free to note and take
+advantage of a rather remarkable incidental phenomenon. The effect of
+oil on troubled waters was no new thing to me, for on a number of
+occasions I had helped to rig a bag of kerosene-soaked oakum over the
+bows of a schooner hove-to in a gale; but to find a stretch of water
+already oiled for me at just the time and place I was in the sorest need
+of it--well, I couldn't see where those manna-fed Children of Israel
+wandering in the desert found their advance arrangements looked to any
+better than that. The savage wind-whipped white-caps that were buffeting
+me in mid-stream dissolved into foam-streaked ripples the moment they
+impinged upon the broadening oil-sleeked belt where the petroleum had
+seeped riverward from the sprayed beach. A solid jetty of stone could
+not have broken the rollers more effectually. On one side was a wild
+wallow of tossing water; on the other--as far as the surface of the
+river was concerned--an almost complete calm.
+
+It was a horrible indignity to heap upon _Imshallah_ (and, after the way
+she had displayed her resentment following her garbage shower under the
+Wenatchee bridge, I knew that spirited lady would make me pay dear for
+it if ever she had the chance); still--dead beat as I was--there was
+nothing else to do but to head into that oleaginous belt of calm and
+make the best of it. The wind still took a deal of bucking, but with the
+banging of the waves at an end my progress was greatly accelerated.
+Hailing the black devils on the bank, I asked where the nearest village
+was concealed, to learn that Moosier was a couple of miles below, but
+well back from the river. They rather doubted that I could find my way
+to the town across the mudflats, but thought it might be worth trying
+in preference to pushing on in the dark to Hood River.
+
+Those imps of darkness were right about the difficulty of reaching
+Moosier after nightfall. A small river coming in at that point seemed to
+have deposited a huge bar of quicksand all along the left bank, and I
+would never have been able to make a landing at all had not a belated
+duck-hunter given me a hand. After tying up to an oar, he very
+courteously undertook to pilot me to the town through the
+half-overflowed willow and alder flats. As a consequence of taking the
+lead, it was the native rather than the visitor who went off the caving
+path into the waist-deep little river. Coming out of the woods, a
+hundred-yards of slushing across a flooded potato-patch brought us to
+the railway embankment, and from there it was comparatively good going
+to the hotel. Luckily, the latter had a new porcelain tub and running
+hot water, luxuries one cannot always be sure of in the smaller Columbia
+River towns.
+
+[Illustration: CITY OF PORTLAND WITH MT. HOOD IN THE DISTANCE]
+
+It was just at the close of the local apple season, and I found the
+hotel brimming over with departing packers. Most of the latter were
+girls from Southern California orange-packing houses, imported for the
+season. Several of them came from Anaheim, and assured me that they had
+packed Valencias from a small grove of mine in that district. They were
+a good deal puzzled to account for the fact that a man with a Valencia
+grove should be "hobo-ing" round the country like I was, and seemed
+hardly to take me seriously when I assured them it was only a matter of
+a year or two before all farmers would be hobos. It's funny how
+apple-packing seems to bring out all the innate snobbery in a lady
+engaging in that lucrative calling; they didn't seem to think tramping
+was quite respectable. I slept on the parlour couch until three in the
+morning, when I "inherited" the room occupied by a couple of packettes
+departing by the Portland train. As they seem to have been addicted to
+"_attar of edelweiss_," or something of the kind, and there hadn't been
+time for fumigation, I rather regretted making the shift.
+
+[Illustration: BRIDGE ON COLUMBIA HIGHWAY NEAR PORTLAND, OREGON]
+
+When I had splashed back to the river in the morning, I found that
+_Imshallah_ anxious to hide the shame of that oil-bath, had spent the
+night trying to bury herself in the quicksand. Dumping her was out of
+the question, and I sank mid-thigh deep two or three times myself before
+I could persuade the sulking minx even to take the water. I knew she
+would take the first chance that offered to rid herself of the filth,
+just as she had before; but, with no swift water above the Cascades,
+there seemed small likelihood of her getting out-of-hand. Knowing that
+she was quite equal to making a bolt over the top of that terrible
+cataract if she hadn't managed to effect some sort of purification
+before reaching there, I made an honest attempt at conciliation by
+landing at the first solid beach I came to and giving her oily sides a
+good swabbing down with a piece of carpet. That seemed to mollify the
+temperamental lady a good deal, but just the same I knew her too well to
+take any chances.
+
+Of all the great rivers in the world, there are only two that have had
+the audacity to gouge a course straight through a major range of
+mountains. These are the Brahmaputra, which clove a way through the
+Himalaya in reaching the Bay of Bengal from Tibet, and the Columbia,
+which tore the Cascades asunder in making its way to the Pacific. But
+the slow process of the ages by which the great Asian river won its way
+to the sea broke its heart and left it a lifeless thing. It emerges from
+the mountains with barely strength enough to crawl across the most
+dismal of deltas to lose its identity in the brackish estuaries at its
+many insignificant mouths. The swift stroke by which the Cascades were
+parted for the Columbia left "The Achilles of Rivers" unimpaired in
+vigour. It rolls out of the mountains with a force which endless aeons
+have not weakened to a point where it was incapable of carrying the silt
+torn down by its erosive actions far out into the sea. It is the one
+great river that does not run for scores, perhaps hundreds, of miles
+through a flat, monotonous delta; the one great stream that meets the
+ocean strength for strength. The Nile, the Niger, the Amazon, the
+Yangtse, the Mississippi--all of the other great rivers--find their way
+to the sea through miasmic swamps; only the Columbia finishes in a
+setting worthy of that in which it takes its rise. Nay, more than that.
+Superlative to the last degree as is the scenery along the Columbia,
+from its highest glacial sources in the Rockies and Selkirks right down
+to the Cascades, there is not a gorge, a vista, a panorama, a cascade of
+which I cannot truthfully say: "That reminds me of something I have seen
+before." The list would include the names of most of the scenic wonders
+that the world has come to know as the ultimate expression of the grand
+and the sublime; but in time my record of comparisons would be complete.
+But for the distinctive grandeur of that fifty miles of cliff-walled
+gorge where the Columbia rolls through its Titan-torn rift in the
+Cascades, I fail completely to find a comparison. It is unique; without
+a near-rival of its kind.
+
+Because so many attempts--all of them more or less futile--have been
+made to describe the Cascade Gorge of the Columbia, I shall not rush in
+here with word pictures where even railway pamphleteers have failed. The
+fact that several of the points I attained in the high Selkirks are
+scarcely more than explored, and that many stretches I traversed of the
+upper river are very rarely visited, must be the excuse for such essays
+at descriptions as I have now and then been tempted into in the
+foregoing chapters. That excuse is not valid in connection with the
+Cascade Gorge, and, frankly, I am mighty glad of the chance to side-step
+the job. I must beg leave, however, to make brief record of an
+interesting "scenic coincidence" that was impressed on my mind the
+afternoon that I pulled through the great chasm of the Cascades.
+
+It was a day of sunshine and showers, with the clouds now revealing, now
+concealing the towering mountain walls on either hand. The almost
+continuous rains of the last four days had greatly augmented the flow of
+the streams, and there was one time, along toward evening, that I
+counted seven distinct waterfalls tumbling over a stretch of tapestried
+cliff on the Oregon side not over two miles in length. And while these
+shimmering ribbons of fluttering satin were still within eye-scope, a
+sudden shifting of the clouds uncovered in quick succession three
+wonderful old volcanic cones--Hood, to the south, Adams, to the north,
+and a peak which I think must have been St. Helens to the west.
+Instantly the lines of Tennyson's _Lotos Eaters_ came to my mind.
+
+    "A land of streams! some, like a downward smoke,
+    Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go;
+    And some thro' wavering lights and shadows broke,
+    Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below.
+    They saw the gleaming river seaward flow
+    From the inner land: far off, three mountain-tops,
+    Three silent pinnacles of aged snow,
+    Stood sunset-flushed; and, dew'd with showery drops,
+    Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse."
+
+Tennyson, of course, was writing of some tropic land thirty or forty
+degrees south of Oregon, for in the next verse he speaks of palms and
+brings the "mild-eyed melancholy Lotos-eaters" swimming about the keel;
+and yet there is his description, perfect to the last, least word, of
+what any one may see in a not-too-cloudy day from the right point on the
+lower Columbia.
+
+The Hood and the White Salmon flow into the Columbia almost opposite
+each other, the former from Mount Hood, to the south, and the latter
+from Mount Adams, to the north. White Salmon, perched on the mountains
+of the Washington side, is, so far as I can recall, the "Swiss-iest"
+looking village in America. At close range it would doubtless lose much
+of its picturesqueness, but from the river it is a perfect bit of the
+Tyrol or the Bernese-Oberland. The Hood River Valley is one of the very
+richest in all the West, running neck-and-neck with Yakima and Wenatchee
+for the Blue Ribbon honours of Northwestern apple production. It is
+also becoming a dairying centre of considerable importance. I was
+genuinely sorry that my "through" schedule made it impossible to visit a
+valley of which I had heard so much and so favourably.
+
+Nearing the Cascades, I headed over close to the Oregon bank for a
+glimpse of the famous "sunken forest." This is one of the strangest
+sights on the lower river. For a considerable distance I pulled along
+the stumps of what had once been large forest trees, the stubby boles
+showing plainly through the clear water to a very considerable depth.
+There is some division of opinion as to whether these trees were
+submerged following the damming up of the river by the slide which
+formed the Cascades, or whether they have slid in from the mountainside
+at a later date. As there is still enough of a riverward earth-movement
+to necessitate a realignment of the rails on the south bank of the
+Cascades, it is probable that the latter is the correct theory. The
+self-preservative character of Oregon pine is proverbial, but it hardly
+seems reasonable to believe that it would last through the very
+considerable geologic epoch that must have elapsed since the Cascades
+were formed.
+
+Hugging the Oregon shore closely, I pulled down toward the head of the
+Cascades canal. The water continued almost lake-like in its slackness
+even after the heavy rumble of the fall began to beat upon the air. I
+was taking no chances of a last-minute bolt from the still restive
+_Imshallah_, however, and skirted the sandy bank so closely that twice I
+found myself mixed up in the remains of the past season's salmon-traps.
+Passing a big sawmill, I entered the canal and kept rowing until I came
+plump up against the lofty red gates. An astonishingly pretty girl who
+peered down from above said she didn't know what a lock-master was
+(being only a passenger waiting for the steamer herself), but thought a
+man hammering on the other side of the gate looked like he might be
+something of that kind. She was right. The lock-master said he would
+gladly put me through, but would be greatly obliged if I would wait
+until he locked down the steamer, as he was pretty busy at the moment.
+That would give me half an hour to go down and size up the tail of the
+Cascades, which I would have to run immediately on coming out at the
+foot of the lock.
+
+There is a fall of twenty-five feet at the Cascades, most of it in the
+short, sharp pitch at the head. It is this latter stretch that is
+avoided by the canal and locks, the total length of which is about half
+a mile. The two lock chambers are identical in dimensions, each being
+ninety feet by four hundred and sixty-five in the clear. They were
+opened to navigation in 1896, and were much used during the early years
+of the present century. With the extension of the railways, (especially
+with the building of the "North-bank" line), and the improvement of the
+roads, with the incidental increase of truck-freighting, it became more
+and more difficult for the steamers to operate profitably even on the
+lower river. One after another they had been taken off their runs, until
+the _J. N. Teal_, for which I was now waiting, was the last steamer
+operating in a regular service on the Columbia above Portland.
+
+Opening the great curving gates a crack, the lock-master admitted
+_Imshallah_ to the chamber, from where--in the absence of a ladder--I
+climbed up fifty feet to the top on the beams of the steel-work. That
+was a pretty stiff job for a fat man, or rather one who had so recently
+been fat. I was down to a fairly compact two hundred and twenty by now,
+but even that required the expenditure of several foot-tons of energy to
+lift it out of that confounded hole. The main fall of the Cascades was
+roaring immediately on my right, just beyond the narrow island that had
+been formed when the locks and canal were constructed. It was indeed a
+viciously-running chute, suggesting to me the final pitch of the
+left-hand channel of Rock Island Rapids rather than Grand Rapids, to
+which it is often compared. I had heard that on rare occasions steamers
+had been run down here at high water; at the present stage it looked to
+me that neither a large nor a small boat would have one chance in a
+hundred of avoiding disaster.
+
+The canal and locks avoided that first heavy fall of the Cascades
+completely, but the swift tumble of waters below was quite rough enough
+to make a preliminary survey well worth while. The steamer channel was
+on the Washington side, so that it was necessary for a boat to head
+directly across the current immediately on emerging from the lower lock
+chamber. The Oregon side of the river was thick with rocks right away
+round the bend, with not enough clear water to permit the passage of
+even a skiff. My course, therefore, would have to be the same as that of
+the steamer--just as sharply across to the opposite side as oars would
+take me. I had put _Imshallah_ through worse water than that a score of
+times, and, while it wasn't the sort of a place where one would want to
+break an oar or even catch a "crab," there was no reason to believe that
+we should have the least trouble in pulling across the hard-running
+swirls. Of course, if _Imshallah_ really was still smarting under the
+indignity of that oil-bath.... But no--I honestly think there was nothing
+of distrust of my well-tried little skiff behind my sudden change of
+plans. Rather, I should say, it was due to the fact that a remark of the
+lock-master had brought me to a sudden realization that I now arrived at
+what I had always reckoned as my ultimate objective--tide-water.
+
+I had been planning to run on four miles farther to Bonneville that
+afternoon, in the hope of being able to pull through the forty miles of
+slackening water to Vancouver the following day. There I would get a tug
+to take the skiff up the Willamette to Portland, where I intended to
+leave her. As some of the finest scenery on the Columbia is passed in
+the twenty miles below the Cascades, this promised me another memorable
+day on the river--provided that there was only an occasional decent
+interval between showers. It was the lock-master's forecast of another
+rainy day, together with his assurance that the foot of the locks was
+generally rated as the head of tide-water, that prompted me to change
+my mind a few moments before I was due to pull out again to the river,
+and book through to Portland on the _Teal_.
+
+With the idea of avoiding the wash of the steamer, I pulled down to the
+extreme lower end of the locks before she entered, taking advantage of
+the interval of waiting to trim carefully and look to my oars for the
+pull across the foot of the Cascades. I was intending to let the _Teal_
+lock out ahead of me, and then pull as closely as possible in her wake,
+so as to have her below me to pick up the pieces in case anything went
+wrong. It was close to twilight now, with the sodden west darkening
+early under the blank grey cloud-mass of another storm blowing up-river
+from the sea. If that impetuous squall could have curbed its impatience
+and held off a couple of minutes longer, it might have had the
+satisfaction of treating me to a good soaking, if nothing more. As it
+was, I flung up my hands and _kamerad-ed_ at the opening pelt of the big
+rain-drops. Speaking as one Columbia River skipper to another, I hailed
+the Captain of the _J. N. Teal_ and asked him if he would take me and my
+boat aboard.
+
+"Where bound?" he bawled back.
+
+"Portland," I replied.
+
+"Aw right. Pull up sta'bo'd bow lively--'fore gate open!"
+
+A dozen husky roustabouts, urged on by an impatient Mate, scrambled to
+catch the painter and give us a hand-up. I swung over the side all
+right, but _Imshallah_, hanging back a bit, came in for some pretty
+rough pulling and hauling before they got her on deck. The two or three
+of her planks that were started in the melee constituted about the worst
+injury the little lady received on the whole voyage.
+
+And so _Imshallah_ and I came aboard the _J. N. Teal_ to make the last
+leg of our voyage as passengers. The gates were turning back before I
+had reached the upper deck, and a few minutes later the
+powerfully-engined old stern-wheeler went floundering across the
+foam-streaked tail of the Cascades and off down the river. Castle
+Rock--nine hundred feet high and sheer-walled all around--was no more
+than a ghostly blur in the darkness as we slipped by in the still
+rapidly moving current. Multnomah's majesty was blanked behind the
+curtain of night and a driving rain, and only a distant roar on the port
+beam told where one of the loveliest of American waterfalls took its
+six-hundred-foot leap from the brink of the southern wall of the river.
+Cape Horn and Rooster Rock were swathed to their foundations in
+streaming clouds.
+
+Once the _Teal_ was out on the comparatively open waters of the lower
+river, the Captain came down for a yarn with me--as one Columbia skipper
+to another. He had spent most of his life on the Snake and lower
+Columbia, but he seemed to know the rapids and canyons below the
+Canadian line almost reef by reef, and all of the old skippers I had met
+by reputation. He said that he had never heard of any one's ever having
+deliberately attempted to run the Cascades in anything smaller than a
+steamer, although an endless lot of craft had come to grief by getting
+in there by accident. The only time a man ever went through in a small
+boat and came out alive was about ten years ago. That lucky navigator,
+after drinking most of a Saturday night in the town, came down to the
+river in the dim grey dawn of a Sunday, got into his boat and pushed
+off. It was along toward church-time that a ferry-man, thirty miles or
+more down river, picked up a half filled skiff. Quietly sleeping in the
+stern-sheets, with nothing but his nose above water, was the only man
+that ever came through the Cascades in a small boat.
+
+The Captain looked at me with a queer smile after he told that story. "I
+don't suppose you were heeled to tackle the Cascades just like that?" he
+asked finally.
+
+And so, for the last time, I was taken for a boot-legger. But no--not
+quite the last. I believe it was the porter at Hotel Portland who asked
+me if--ahem!--if I had got away with anything from Canada. And for all
+of that incessant trail of smoke, no fire--or practically none.
+
+The day of my arrival in Portland I delivered _Imshallah_ up to the
+kindest-faced boat-house proprietor on the Willamette and told him to
+take his time about finding her a home with some sport-loving Oregonian
+who knew how to treat a lady right and wouldn't give her any kind of
+menial work to do. I told him I didn't want to have her work for a
+living under any conditions, as I felt she had earned a rest; and to
+impress upon whoever bought her that she was high-spirited and not to be
+taken liberties with, such as subjecting her to garbage shower-baths and
+similar indignities. He asked me if she had a name, and I told him that
+she hadn't--any more; that the one she had been carrying had ceased to
+be in point now her voyage was over. It had been a very appropriate name
+for a boat on the Columbia, though, I assured him, and I was going to
+keep it to use if I ever made the voyage again.
+
+Portland, although it is not directly upon the Columbia, has always made
+that river distinctively its own. I had realized that in a vague way for
+many years, but it came home to me again with renewed force now that I
+had arrived in Portland after having had some glimpse of every town and
+village from the Selkirks to the sea. (Astoria and the lower river I had
+known from many steamer voyages in the past.) Of all the thousands
+living on or near the Columbia, those of Portland still struck me as
+being the ones who held this most strikingly individual of all the
+world's rivers at most nearly its true value. With Portlanders, I should
+perhaps include all of those living on the river from Astoria to The
+Dalles. These, too, take a mighty pride in their great river, and regard
+it with little of that distrustful reproach one remarks so often on the
+upper Columbia, where the settlers see it bearing past their parched
+fields the water and the power that would mean the difference to them
+between success and disaster. When this stigma has been wiped out by
+reclamation (as it soon will be), without a doubt the plucky pioneers of
+the upper Columbia will see in their river many beauties that escape
+their troubled eyes to-day.
+
+The early Romans made some attempt to give expression to their love of
+the Tiber in monuments and bridges. It would be hard indeed to conceive
+of anything in marble or bronze, or yet in soaring spans of steel, that
+would give adequate expression to the pride of the people of the lower
+Columbia in their river; and so it is a matter of felicitation that they
+have sought to pay their tribute in another way. There was inspiration
+behind the conception of the idea of the Columbia Highway, just as there
+was genius and rare imagination in the carrying out of that idea. I have
+said that the Cascade Gorge of the Columbia is a scenic wonder apart
+from all others; that it stands without a rival of its kind. Perhaps the
+greatest compliment that I can pay to the Columbia Highway is to say
+that it is worthy of the river by which it runs.
+
+
+(THE END)
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+TRANSCRIBER NOTES:
+
+
+    Alternate spellings and archaic words have been retained.
+
+    page 82: "experienced" changed to "inexperienced" (Roos was young
+    and inexperienced).
+
+    page 96: added closing quotation mark which was missing in the
+    original ("... than some the old girl's had.").
+
+    page 147: "rifflles" changed to "riffles" (four or five riffles
+    below).
+
+    page 160: "Lientenant" changed to "Lieutenant" (Lieutenant Thomas
+    W. Symons).
+
+    page 163: "avenue" changed to "Avenue" (Fifth Avenue).
+
+    page 300: "spilts" changed to "splits" (the river splits upon).
+
+    page 315: "goddes" changed to "goddess" (this goddess of the
+    Columbia).
+
+    page 320: "staight" changed to "straight" (straight on through
+    to).
+
+    page 331: "a" added to sentence for continuity (We were going to
+    have a run for our money).
+
+    page 366: added "and" (Miss S---- and I).
+
+    page 380: "of" changed to "or" (The two or three of her planks).
+
+    page 380: "melee" changed to "melee" (that were started in the
+    melee).
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Down the Columbia, by Lewis R. Freeman
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DOWN THE COLUMBIA ***
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