Near The
Mouth Of The Deschutes Are The Falls Of The Columbia, Where The River
Passes A Rough Bar Of Lava.
The descent is not great, but the immense
volume of water makes a grand display.
During the flood season the
falls are obliterated and skillful boatmen pass over them is safety;
while the Dalles, some six or eight miles below, may be passed during
low water but are utterly impassable in flood time. At the Dalles the
vast river is jammed together into a long, narrow slot of unknown
depth cut sheer down in the basalt.
This slot, or trough, is about a mile and a half long and about sixty
yards wide at the narrowest place. At ordinary times the river seems
to be set on edge and runs swiftly but without much noisy surging with
a descent of about twenty feet to the mile. But when the snow is
melting on the mountains the river rises here sixty feet, or even more
during extraordinary freshets, and spreads out over a great breadth of
massive rocks through which have been cut several other gorges running
parallel with the one usually occupied. All these inferior gorges now
come into use, and the huge, roaring torrent, still rising and
spreading, at length overwhelms the high jagged rock walls between
them, making a tremendous display of chafing, surging, shattered
currents, counter-currents, and hollow whirls that no words can be
made to describe. A few miles below the Dalles the storm-tossed river
gets itself together again, looks like water, becomes silent, and with
stately, tranquil deliberation goes on its way, out of the gray region
of sage and sand into the Oregon woods. Thirty-five or forty miles
below the Dalles are the Cascades of the Columbia, where the river in
passing through the mountains makes another magnificent display of
foaming, surging rapids, which form the first obstruction to
navigation from the ocean, a hundred and twenty miles distant. This
obstruction is to be overcome by locks, which are now being made.
Between the Dalles and the Cascades the river is like a lake a mile or
two wide, lying in a valley, or canyon, about three thousand feet
deep. The walls of the canyon lean well back in most places, and
leave here and there small strips, or bays, of level ground along the
water's edge. But towards the Cascades, and for some distance below
the, the immediate banks are guarded by walls of columnar basalt,
which are worn in many places into a great variety of bold and
picturesque forms, such as the Castle Rock, the Rooster Rock, the
Pillars of Hercules, Cape Horn, etc., while back of these rise the
sublime mountain walls, forest-crowned and fringed more or less from
top to base with pine, spruce, and shaggy underbrush, especially in
the narrow gorges and ravines, where innumerable small streams come
dancing and drifting down, misty and white, to join the mighty river.
Many of these falls on both sides of the canyon of the Columbia are
far larger and more interesting in every way than would be guessed
from the slight glimpses one gets of them while sailing past on the
river, or from the car windows. The Multnomah Falls are particularly
interesting, and occupy fern-lined gorges of marvelous beauty in the
basalt. They are said to be about eight hundred feet in height and,
at times of high water when the mountain snows are melting, are well
worthy of a place beside the famous falls of Yosemite Valley.
According to an Indian tradition, the river of the Cascades once
flowed through the basalt beneath a natural bridge that was broken
down during a mountain war, when the old volcanoes, Hood and St.
Helen's, on opposite sides of the river, hurled rocks at each other,
thus forming a dam. That the river has been dammed here to some
extent, and within a comparatively short period, seems probable, to
say the least, since great numbers of submerged trees standing erect
may be found along both shores, while, as we have seen, the whole
river for thirty miles above the Cascades looks like a lake or mill-pond. On the other hand, it is held by some that the submerged groves
were carried into their places by immense landslides.
Much of interest in the connection must necessarily be omitted for
want of space. About forty miles below the Cascades the river
receives the Willamette, the last of its great tributaries. It is
navigable for ocean vessels as far as Portland, ten miles above its
mouth, and for river steamers a hundred miles farther. The Falls of
the Willamette are fifteen miles above Portland, where the river,
coming out of dense woods, breaks its way across a bar of black basalt
and falls forty feet in a passion of snowy foam, showing to fine
advantage against its background of evergreens.
Of the fertility and beauty of the Willamette all the world has heard.
It lies between the Cascade and Coast Ranges, and is bounded on the
south by the Calapooya Mountains, a cross-spur that separates it from
the valley of the Umpqua.
It was here the first settlements for agriculture were made and a
provisional government organized, while the settlers, isolated in the
far wilderness, numbered only a few thousand and were laboring under
the opposition of the British Government and the Hudson's Bay Company.
Eager desire in the acquisition of territory on the part of these
pioneer state-builders was more truly boundless than the wilderness
they were in, and their unconscionable patriotism was equaled only by
their belligerence. For here, while negotiations were pending for the
location of the northern boundary, originated the celebrated "Fifty-four forty or fight," about as reasonable a war-cry as the "North Pole
or fight." Yet sad was the day that brought the news of the signing
of the treaty fixing their boundary along the forty-ninth parallel,
thus leaving the little land-hungry settlement only a mere quarter-million of miles!
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