Chapter III: THE FORESTS, by HAROLD DOUGLAS LANGILLE (1)

Outposts at timber line--The alpine parks--Zone of the great
trees--Douglas fir--From snow-line to ocean beach--Conservation
and reforestation 123

NOTES 140

ILLUSTRATIONS

The * indicates engravings from copyrighted photographs. See notice under the illustration.

THREE-COLOR HALFTONES.

Title Photographer Page
*Dawn on Spirit Lake, north side of Mount
St. Helens Dr. U. M. Lauman Frontispiece
*St. Peter's Dome, with the Columbia and
Mount Adams G. M. Weister 20
*Nightfall on the Columbia Kiser Photo Co. 37
*Columbia River and Mount Hood, from White
Salmon, Washington Kiser Photo Co. 56
*Mount Hood, with crevasses of Eliot glacier G. M. Weister 73
*Ice Castle and crevasse, Eliot glacier G. M. Weister 92
*Columbia River and Mount Adams, from Hood
River, Oregon Benj. A. Gifford 109
An Island of Color--Rhododendrons and Squaw
Grass Asahel Curtis 127

ONE-COLOR HALFTONES.

Title Photographer Page

*Climbing to summit of Mount Hood from Cooper
Spur G. M. Weister 6
Willamette River and Portland Harbor G. M. Weister 7
Mount Adams, from south slope of Mount St.
Helens G. M. Weister 8
Columbia River at Lyle William R. King 9
Mount Hood, seen from the Columbia at
Vancouver L. C. Henrichsen 14
Trout Lake and Mount Adams Prof. Harry Fielding Reid 15
Mount St. Helens, seen from the Columbia,
with railway bridge C. S. Reeves 15
*View up the Columbia, opposite Astoria G. M. Weister 16
Astoria in 1813 From an old print 16
*View north from Eliot glacier G. M. Weister 17
Columbia Slough, near mouth of the
Willamette George F. Holman 18
*Cape Horn Kiser Photo Co. 19
Mount Hood, seen from Columbia Slough L. C. Henrichsen 21
*Campfire of Yakima Indians at Astoria
Centennial Frank Woodfield 21
Sunset at mouth of the Columbia Frank Woodfield 22
Portland, the Willamette, and Mounts
Hood, Adams and St. Helens Angelus Photo Co. 22
"The Coming of the White Man" L. C. Henrichsen 23
"Sacajawea" G. M. Weister 23
Sunset on Vancouver Lake Jas. Waggener, Jr. 24
Fort Vancouver in 1852 From an old lithograph 24
*Rooster Rock G. M. Weister 25
Seining for Salmon on the lower Columbia Frank Woodfield 25
*The Columbia near Butler, looking
across to Multnomah Falls Kiser Photo Co. 26
Captain Som-kin, chief of Indian police Lee Moorehouse 26
*Multnomah Falls in Summer and Winter (2) Kiser Photo Co. 27
*View from the cliffs at Multnomah Falls Kiser Photo Co. 28
*The broad Columbia, seen from Lone Rock Kiser Photo Co. 29
Castle Rock, seen from Mosquito Island Kiser Photo Co. 29
*The Columbia opposite Oneonta Gorge and
Horsetail Falls Kiser Photo Co. 30
An Original American C. C. Hutchins 30
*View from elevation west of St. Peter's
Dome Kiser Photo Co. 31
*Oneonta Gorge G. M. Weister 32
Looking up the Columbia, near Bonneville H. J. Thorne 33
Salmon trying to jump the Falls of the
Willamette Jas. Waggener, Jr. 33
*In the Columbia Canyon at Cascade Kiser Photo Co. 34
*The Cascades of the Columbia G. M. Weister 35
*Fishwheel below the Cascades, with
Table Mountain G. M. Weister 36
*Sunrise on the Columbia, from top of
Table Mountain Kiser Photo Co. 36
Looking down the Columbia below the
Cascades L. J. Hicks 38
*Wind Mountain and submerged forest G. M. Weister 39
Steamboat entering Cascades Locks G. M. Weister 39
Moonlight on the Columbia, with clouds
on Wind Mountain C. S. Reeves 40
*White Salmon River and its Gorge (2) Kiser Photo Co. 41
Looking down the Columbia Canyon from
White Salmon, Washington S. C. Reeves 42
An Oregon Trout Stream L. C. Henrichsen 42
Looking up the Columbia from Hood
River, Oregon F. C. Howell 43
*Hood River, fed by the glaciers of
Mount Hood Benj. A. Gifford 43
A Late Winter Afternoon; the Columbia
from White Salmon C. C. Hutchins 44
*Memaloose Island G. M. Weister 44
"Gateway to the Inland Empire;" the
Columbia at Lyle Kiser Photo Co. 45
"Grant Castle" and Palisades of the
Columbia below The Dalles G. M. Weister 46
*The Dalles of the Columbia, lower
channel G. M. Weister 47
Cabbage Rock Lee Moorehouse 47
A True Fish Story of the Columbia Frank Woodfield 48
The Zigzag River in Winter T. Brook White 48
*The Dalles, below Celilo G. M. Weister 49
The "Witch's Head," an Indian picture rock Lee Moorehouse 50
Village of Indian tepees, Umatilla Reservation Lee Moorehouse 50
Mount Adams, seen from Eagle Peak Asahel Curtis 51
A Clearing in the Forest; Mount Hood from
Sandy, Oregon L. C. Henrichsen 51
An Indian Madonna and Child Lee Moorehouse 52
Finished portion of Canal at Celilo Ed. Ledgerwood 52
*Sentinels of "the Wallula Gateway" G. M. Weister 53
*Tumwater, the falls of the Columbia at
Celilo Kiser Photo Co. 54
*Summit of Mount Hood, from west end
of ridge G. M. Weister 55
North side of Mount Hood, from ridge west
of Cloud Cap Inn George R. Miller 57
Winter on Mount Hood Rodney L. Glisan 57
*Watching the Climbers, from Cloud Cap Inn G. M. Weister 58
Lower end of Eliot glacier, seen from
Cooper Spur E. D. Jorgensen 59
Snout of Eliot glacier Prof. W. D. Lyman 59
Cone of Mount Hood, seen from Cooper Spur F. W. Freeborn 60
Cloud Cap Inn George R. Miller 60
*Portland's White Sentinel, Mount Hood G. M. Weister 61
*Ice Cascade on Eliot glacier, Mount Hood G. M. Weister 62
Portland Snow-shoe Club members on Eliot
glacier in Winter Rodney L. Glisan 62
*Snow-bridge over great crevasse, Eliot
glacier G. M. Weister 63
*Coasting down east side of Mount Hood,
above Cooper Spur. G. M. Weister 63
*Mount Hood, from hills south of The
Dalles G. M. Weister 64
*Mount Hood, from Larch Mountain L. J. Hicks 65
Butterfly on summit of Mount Hood Shoji Endow 66
Portland Snow-shoe Club and Club House (2) Rodney L. Glisan 66
Fumarole, or gas vent, near Crater Rock L. J. Hicks 66
Looking across the head of Eliot glacier Shoji Endow 67
Mount Hood at night, from Cloud Cap Inn William M. Ladd 67
Climbing Mount Hood; the rope anchor (2)
George R. Miller and Shoji Endow 68
North side of Mount Hood, from moraine of
Coe glacier Prof. Harry Fielding Reid 69
*Looking west on summit, with Mazama
Rock below G. M. Weister 70
Summit of Mount Hood, from Mazama Rock F. W. Freeborn 70
Mount Hood, from Sandy Canyon L. J. Hicks 71
Crevasses of Coe glacier (2) Mary C. Voorhees 72
*Crevasse and Ice Pinnacles on Eliot glacier G. M. Weister 74
Mount Hood, seen from the top of Barret Spur
Prof. Harry Fielding Reid 75
Ice Cascade, south side of Mount Hood Prof. J. N. LeConte 75
Little Sandy or Reid glacier, west side of
Mount Hood Elisha Coalman 76
Portland Y. M. C. A. party starting for
the summit A. M. Grilley 76
Crater of Mount Hood, seen from south
side L. J. Hicks 77
South side of Mount Hood, from
Tom-Dick-and-Harry Ridge L. E. Anderson 78
Crag on which above view was taken H. J. Thorne 78
Part of the "bergschrund" above Crater Rock G. M. Weister 79
Prof. Reid and party exploring Zigzag glacier Asahel Curtis 79
Mazamas near Crater Rock (2) Asahel Curtis 80
Portland Ski Club on south side of Mount Hood E. D. Jorgensen 81
Mount Hood Lily William L. Finley 81
Mazama party exploring White River
glacier (2) Asahel Curtis 82
Newton Clark glacier, seen from Cooper Spur Shoji Endow 83
Looking from Mount Jefferson to Mount Hood L. J. Hicks 83
*Shadow of Mount Hood G. M. Weister 84
Snout of Newton Clark glacier Prof. Harry Fielding Reid 84
*Mount Hood and Hood River Benj. A. Gifford 85
Lava Flume near Trout Lake Ray M. Filloon 86
Y. M. C. A. party from North Yakima at Red
Butte Eugene Bradbury 86
Ice Cave in lava bed near Trout Lake Ray M. Filloon 87
*Mount Adams, from northeast side of Mount
St. Helens G. M. Weister 88
Mount Adams, from Trout Creek at Guler L. J. Hicks 89
Climbers on South Butte Ray M. Filloon 89
Dawn on Mount Adams, telephotographed from
Guler at 4 a.m. L. J. Hicks 90
Foraging in the Snow Crissie Cameron 90
*Steel's Cliff, southeast side of Mount Hood G. M. Weister 91
Mazamas Climbing Mount Adams Asahel Curtis 93
Mount Adams from lake, with hotel site above Ed. Hess 93
Climbing from South Peak to Middle Peak L. J. Hicks 94
Mount Adams, seen from Happy Valley Asahel Curtis 94
Mount Adams, from Snow-plow Mountain Ed. Hess 95
*Wind-whittled Ice near summit of Mount Adams S. C. Smith 95
Mazama glacier and Hellroaring Canyon (2) William R. King 96
Nearing the Summit of Mount Adams, south side Shoji Endow 97
Ice Cascade, above Klickitat glacier Ray M. Filloon 97
An Upland Park H. O. Stabler 97
Mount Adams and Klickitat glacier Prof. Harry Fielding Reid 98
Storm on Klickitat glacier, seen from the
Ridge of Wonders Prof. W. D. Lyman 99
Snow Cornice and Crevasse, head of
Klickitat glacier (2) H. V. Abel and Ray M. Filloon 100
Mount Adams, from the Northeast Prof. Harry Fielding Reid 101
*Mount Adams, from Sunnyside, Washington Asahel Curtis 102
Crevasse in Lava glacier Eugene Bradbury 102
North Peak, with the Mountaineers
starting for the summit W. M. Gorham 103
Snow-bridge over Killing Creek W. H. Gorham 103
Route up the Cleaver, north side of
Mount Adams Eugene Bradbury 104
Looking across Adams glacier Carlyle Ellis 104
"The Mountain that was 'God'" seen from
Mount Adams Asahel Curtis 105
Northwest slope of Mount Adams Prof. Harry Fielding Reid 106
Mount Adams from the southwest Prof. W. D. Lyman 107
Scenes in the Lewis River Canyon (3) Jas. Waggener, Jr. 108
*Mount Adams from Trout Lake Kiser Photo Co. 110
Scenes on Lava Bed, south of Mount St.
Helens (3) Jas. Waggener, Jr. 111
Lava Flume, south of Mount St. Helens Jas. Waggener, Jr. 112
Entrance to Lava Flume Rodney L. Glisan 112
Mount St. Helens, seen from Portland L. C. Henrichsen 113
*Mount St. Helens, from Chelatchie Prairie
Jas. Waggener, Jr. 114
Mount St. Helens, seen from Twin Buttes Ray M. Filloon 115
Canyons of South Toutle River U. S. Forest Service 116
Lower Toutle Canyon Jas. Waggener, Jr. 116
Northeast side of Mount St. Helens Dr. U. M. Lauman 117
Mazamas on summit of Mt. St. Helens
shortly before sunset Marion Randall Parsons 117
Mount St. Helens in Winter Dr. U. M. Lauman 118
Mount St. Helens, north side, from near
the snow line Dr. U. M. Lauman 119
Glacier Scenes, east of the "Lizard." (2) Dr. U. M. Lauman 120
*Finest of the St. Helens glaciers G. M. Weister 121
*Road among the Douglas Firs Asahel Curtis 122
Ships loading lumber at one of
Portland's mills The Timberman 123
Outposts of the Forest Shoji Endow 123
Alpine Hemlocks at the timber line Ray M. Filloon 124
Mazamas at the foot of Mount St. Helens E. S. Curtis 124
A Lowland Ravine E. S. Curtis 125
*The Noble Fir Kiser Photo Co. 125
Dense Hemlock Forest G. M. Weister 126
Mount Hood, from Ghost-tree Ridge George R. Miller 126
*A Group of Red Cedars Asahel Curtis 128
Road to Government Camp A. M. Grilley 129
Firs and Hemlocks, in Clarke County,
Washington Jas. Waggener, Jr. 130
*Where Man is a Pigmy G. M. Weister 130
Hemlock growing on Cedar log Asahel Curtis 131
Tideland Spruce Frank Woodfield 131
Sugar Pine, Douglas Fir and Yellow Pine Jas. Waggener, Jr. 132
Yellow Cedar, with young Silver Fir H. D. Norton 133
*One of the Kings of Treeland Benj. A. Gifford 133
*Firs and Vine Maples Jas. Waggener, Jr. 134
Log Raft Benj. A. Gifford 134
A "Burn" on Mount Hood, overgrown with
Squaw Grass Asahel Curtis 135
*A Noble Fir Benj. A. Gifford 136
Western White Pine Unknown 136
A Clatsop Forest H. D. Langille 137
Carpet of Firs J. E. Ford 137
Winter in the Forest, near Mount Hood E. D. Jorgensen 138
Rangers' Pony Trail A. P. Cronk 138
Forest Fire on East Fork of Hood River William M. Ladd 139
Reforestation; three generations of
young growth H. D. Langille 139
Klickitat River Canyon William R. King 144

MAPS.

The Scenic Northwest 13
Mount Hood 58
Mount Adams 87
Mount St. Helens 107

Relief Map to accompany

"THE GUARDIANS _of the_ COLUMBIA"

by John H. Williams

Designed by G. H. Mulldorfer.--Portland.]

THE GUARDIANS OF THE COLUMBIA

I.

THE RIVER

The Columbia, viewed as one from the sea to the
mountains, is like a rugged, broad-topped picturesque
old oak, about six hundred miles long, and nearly a
thousand miles wide, measured across the spread of its
upper branches, the main limbs gnarled and swollen
with lakes and lake-like expansions, while innumerable
smaller lakes shine like fruit among the smaller
branches.--_John Muir._

ON a frosty morning of last July, before sunrise, I stood upon the belvedere of the delightful Cloud Cap Inn, which a public-spirited man of Portland has provided for visitors to the north side of Mount Hood; and from that superb viewpoint, six thousand feet above sea level, watched the day come up out of the delicate saffron east. Behind us lay Eliot Glacier, sloping to the summit of the kindling peak. Before us rose--an ocean!

Never was a marine picture of greater stress. No watcher from the crags, none who go down to the sea in ships, ever beheld a scene more awful. Ceaselessly the mighty surges piled up against the ridge at our feet, as if to tear away the solid foundations of the mountain. Towers and castles of foam were built up, huge and white, against the sullen sky, only to hurl themselves into the gulf. Far to the north, dimly above this gray and heaving surface were seen the crests of three snow-mantled mountains, paler even than the undulating expanse from which they emerged. All between was a wild sea that rolled across sixty miles of space to assail those ghostly islands.

View up the Columbia on north side, opposite Astoria. Noon rest of the night fishermen. Much of the fishing on the lower Columbia is done at night with gill-nets from small boats. The river is here six miles wide.]

Yet the tossing breakers gave forth no roar. It was a spectral and pantomimic ocean. We "had sight of Proteus rising from the sea," but no Triton of the upper air blew his "wreathed horn." Cold and uncanny, all that seething ocean was silent as a windless lake under summer stars. It was a sea of clouds.

Looking north from lower end of Eliot Glacier on Mount Hood, across the Cascade ranges and the Columbia River canyon, twenty-five miles away, to Mount Adams (right), Mount Rainier-Tacoma (center), and Mount St. Helens (left). These snow-peaks are respectively 60, 100, and 60 miles distant.]

Swiftly the dawn marched westward. The sun, breaking across the eastern ridges, sent long level beams to sprinkle the cloud-sea with silver. Its touch was magical. The billows broke and parted. The mists fled in panic. Cloud after cloud arose and was caught away into space. The tops of the Cascade ranges below came, one by one, into view. Lower and lower, with the shortening shadows, the wooded slopes were revealed in the morning light. Here and there some deep vale was still white and hidden. Scattered cloud-fleeces clung to pinnacles on the cliffs. Northward, the snow-peaks in Washington towered higher. Great banks of fog embraced their forested abutments, and surged up to their glaciers. But the icy summits smiled in the gladness of a new day. The reign of darkness and mist was broken.

Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendor valley, rock or hill.

Clearer and wider the picture grew. Below us, the orchards of Hood River caught the fresh breezes and laughed in the first sunshine. The day reached down into the nearer canyons, and saluted the busy, leaping brooks. Noisy waterfalls filled the glens with spray, and built rainbows from bank to bank, then hurried and tumbled on, in conceited haste, as if the ocean must run dry unless replenished by their wetness ere the sun should set again. Rippling lakes, in little mountain pockets, signaled their joy as blankets of dense vapor were folded up and quickly whisked away.

Cape Horn, tall basaltic cliffs that rise, terrace upon terrace, on the north side of the Columbia, twenty-five miles east of Portland. Lone Rock is seen in the distance.]

St. Peter's Dome, an 800-foot crag on the south bank of the Columbia; Mt. Adams in the distance

"Uplift against the blue walls of the sky
Your mighty shapes, and let the sunshine weave
Its golden network in your belting woods;
Smile down in rainbows from your falling floods,
And on your kingly brows at morn and eve
Set crowns of fire."--Whittier.]

Campfire of Yakima Indians gathered at the Astoria Centennial, 1911, to take part in "The Bridge of the Gods," a dramatization of Balch's famous story. The celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of the Astor trading post at the mouth of the Columbia was made noteworthy by a revival of Indian folk lore, in which the myth of the great tamahnawas bridge held first place.] Thirty miles northeast, a ribbon of gold flashed the story of a mighty stream at The Dalles. Far beyond, even to the uplands of the Umatilla and the Snake, to the Blue Mountains of eastern Washington and Oregon, stretched the wheat fields and stock ranges of that vast "Inland Empire" which the great river watered; while westward, cut deep through a dozen folds of the Cascades, the chasm it had torn on its way to the sea was traced in the faint blue that distance paints upon evergreen hills. Out on our left, beyond the mountains, the Willamette slipped down its famous valley to join the larger river; and still farther, a hundred and fifty miles away, our glasses caught the vague gray line of the Pacific. Within these limits of vision lay a noble and historic country, the lower watershed of the Columbia.

Earth has not anything to show more fair.

Wide as was the prospect, however, it called the imagination to a still broader view; to look back, indeed,--how many millions of years?--to an earlier dawn, bounded by the horizons of geological time. Let us try to realize the panorama thus unfolded. As we look down from some aerial viewpoint, behold! there is no Mount Hood and no Cascade Range. The volcanic snow-peaks of Oregon and Washington are still embryo in the womb of earth. We stand face to face with the beginnings of the Northwest.

Far south and east of our castle-in-the-air, islands rise slowly out of a Pacific that has long rolled, unbroken, to the Rocky Mountains. We see the ocean bed pushed above the tide in what men of later ages will call the Siskiyou and the Blue Mountains, one range in southwestern, the other in eastern, Oregon. A third uptilt, the great Okanogan, in northern Washington, soon appears. All else is sea. Upon these primitive uplands, the date is written in the fossil archives of their ancient sea beaches, raised thousands of feet above the former shore-line level. At a time when all western Europe was still ocean, and busy foraminifers were strewing its floor with shells to form the chalk beds of France and England, these first lands of our Northwest emerged from the great deep. It is but a glimpse we get into the immeasurable distance of the Paleozoic. Its time-units are centuries instead of minutes.

Another glance, as the next long geological age passes, and we perceive a second step in the making of the West. It is the gradual uplift of a thin sea-dike, separating the two islands first disclosed, and stretching from the present Lower California to our Alaska. It is a folding of the earth's crust that will, for innumerable ages, exercise a controlling influence upon the whole western slope of North America. At first merely a sea-dike, we see it slowly become a far-reaching range of hills, and then a vast continental mountain system, covering a broad region with its spurs and interlying plateaus. "The highest mountains," our school geographies used to tell us, "parallel the deepest oceans." So here, bordering its profound depths, the Pacific ocean, through centuries of centuries, thrust upward, fold on fold, the lofty ridges of this colossal Sierra-Cascade barrier, to be itself a guide of further land building, a governor of climate, and a reservoir of water for valleys and river basins as yet unborn.

Rooster Rock, south bank of the Columbia.]

Behind this barrier, what revolutions are recorded! The inland sea, at first a huge body of ocean waters, becomes in time a fresh-water lake. In its three thousand feet of sediment, it buries the fossils of a strange reptilian life, covering hundreds of thousands of years. Cycle follows cycle, altering the face of all that interior basin. Its vast lake is lessened in area as it is cut off from the Utah lake on the south and hemmed in by upfolds on the north. Then its bed is lifted up and broken by forces of which our present-day experiences give us no example. Instead of one great lake, as drainage proceeds, we behold at last a wide country of many lakes and rivers. Their shores are clothed in tropical vegetation. Under the palms, flourish a race of giant mammals. The broad-faced ox, the mylodon, mammoth, elephant, rhinoceros, and mastodon, and with them the camel and the three-toed horse, roam the forests that are building the coal deposits for a later age. This story of the Eocene and Miocene time is also told in the fossils of the period, and we may read it in the strata deposited by the lakes.

The Columbia near Butler, looking across to Multnomah Falls.]

PHOTOS COPYRIGHT, KISER]

Age succeeds age, not always distinct, but often overlapping one another, and all changing the face of nature. The Coast Range rises, shutting in vast gulfs to fill later, and form the valleys of the Sacramento and San Joaquin in California and the Willamette in Oregon, with the partly filled basin of Puget Sound in Washington. Centering along the Cascade barrier, an era of terrific violence shakes the very foundation of the Northwest. Elevations and contours are changed. New lake beds are created. Watersheds and stream courses are remodeled. Dry "coulees" are left where formerly rivers flowed. Strata are uptilted and riven, to be cross-sectioned again by the new rivers as they cut new canyons in draining the new lakes. Most important of all, outflows of melted rock, pouring from fissures in the changing earth-folds, spread vast sheets of basalt, trap and andesite over most of the interior. Innumerable craters build cones of lava and scoriæ along the Cascade uptilt, and scatter clouds of volcanic ashes upon the steady sea winds, to blanket the country for hundreds of miles with deep layers of future soil.

A reign of ice follows the era of tropic heat. Stupendous glaciers grind the volcanic rocks, and carving new valleys, endow them with fertility for new forests that will rise where once the palm forests stood. With advancing age, the earth grows cold and quiet, awakening only to an occasional volcanic eruption or earthquake as a reminder of former violence. The dawn of history approaches. The country slowly takes on its present shape. Landscape changes are henceforth the work of milder forces, erosion by streams and remnant glaciers. Man appears.

View from the cliffs at Multnomah Falls (seen on right). Castle Rock is in distance on north side.]

The broad Columbia, seen from Lone Rock, a small island east of Cape Horn. Shows successive ranges of the Cascades cut by the river, with Archer and Arrowhead Mountains and Castle Rock in distance on north side.]

Throughout the cycles of convulsion and revolution which we have witnessed from our eyrie in the clouds, the vital and increasing influence in the building of the Northwest has been the Cascade upfold. First, it merely shuts in a piece of the Pacific. Rising higher, its condensation of the moist ocean wind feeds the thousand streams that convert the inland seas thus enclosed from salt to fresh water, and furnish the silt deposited over their floors. The fractures and faults resulting from its uptilting spread an empire with some of the largest lava flows in geological history. It pushes its snow-covered volcanoes upward, to scatter ashes far to the east. Finally, its increasing height converts a realm of tropical verdure into semi-arid land, which only its rivers, impounded by man, will again make fertile.

The Columbia, opposite Oneonta Bluffs and Gorge, and Horsetail Falls.]

In all this great continental barrier, throughout the changes which we have witnessed, there has been only one sea-level pass. For nearly a thousand miles northward from the Gulf of California, the single outlet for the waters of the interior is the remarkable canyon which we first saw from the distant roof of Cloud Cap Inn. Here the Columbia, greatest of Western rivers, has cut its way through ranges rising more than 4,000 feet on either hand. This erosion, let us remember, has been continuous and gradual, rather than the work of any single epoch. It doubtless began when the Cascade Mountains were in their infancy, a gap in the prolonged but low sea-dike. The drainage, first of the vast salt lake shut off from the ocean, and then of the succeeding fresh-water lakes, has preserved this channel to the sea, cutting it deeper and deeper as the earth-folds rose higher, until at last the canyon became one of the most important river gorges in the world. Thus nature prepared a vast and fruitful section of the continent for human use, and provided it with a worthy highway to the ocean.

View from 2,300 foot elevation, west of St. Peter's Dome. The Columbia here hurries down from The Cascades with a speed varying in different seasons from six to ten miles per hour. Mosquito Island lies below, with Castle Rock opposite. Beyond, the beautiful wooded ridges rise to 4,100 feet in Arrowhead and Table Mountains, and the snowy dome of Mount Adams closes the scene, fifty miles away.]

Over this beautiful region we may descry yet another dawn, the beginnings of the Northwestern world according to Indian legend. The Columbia River Indian, like his brothers in other parts of the country, was curious about the origin of the things he beheld around him, and oppressed by things he could not see. The mysteries both of creation and of human destiny weighed heavily upon his blindness; and his mind, pathetically groping in the dark, was ever seeking to penetrate the distant past and the dim future. So far as he had any religion, it was connected with the symbols of power in nature, the forces which he saw at work about him. These forces were often terrible and ruinous, so his gods were as often his enemies as his benefactors. Feeling his powerlessness against their cunning, he borrowed a cue from the "animal people," Watetash, who used craft to circumvent the malevolent gods.

Oneonta Gorge, south side of the Columbia, thirty-three miles east of Portland.]

These animal people, the Indian believed, had inhabited the world before the time of the first grandfather, when the sun was as yet only a star, and the earth, too, had grown but little, and was only a small island. The chief of the animal people was Speelyei, the coyote, not the mightiest but the shrewdest of them all. Speelyei was the friend of "people". He had bidden people to appear, and they "came out."

One of the most interesting attempts to account for the existence of the Red Man in the Northwest is the Okanogan legend that tells of an island far out at sea inhabited by a race of giant whites, whose chief was a tall and powerful woman, Scomalt. When her giants warred among themselves, Scomalt grew angry and drove all the fighters to the end of the island. Then she broke off the end of the island, and pushing with her foot sent it floating away over the sea. The new island drifted far. All the people on it died save one man and one woman. They caught a whale, and its blubber saved them from starving. At last they escaped from the island by making a canoe. In this they paddled many days. Then they came to the mainland, but it was small. It had not yet grown much. Here they landed. But while they had been in the canoe, the sun had turned them from white to red. All the Okanogans were their children. Hence they all are red. Many years from now the whole of the mainland will be cut loose from its foundations, and become an island. It will float about on the sea. That will be the end of the world.

In the Columbia Canyon at Cascade, with train on the "North Bank" road.]

The Cascades of the Columbia. The narrow, rock-filled channel has a fall of thirty-seven feet in four miles. Here the river meets the tides from the ocean, 160 miles away. On the opposite bank, at right, is seen Table Mountain, 4,100 feet, the north abutment of the legendary "Bridge of the Gods."]

Fishwheel below the Cascades, with Table Mountain on north side of river.]

To the aboriginal Americans in the Northwest the great river, "Wauna" in their vocabulary, was inevitably a subject of deep interest. It not only furnished them a highway, but it supplied them with food. Their most fascinating myths are woven about its history. One of these told of the mighty struggle between Speelyei and Wishpoosh, the greedy king beaver, which resulted in breaking down the walls of the great lakes of the interior and creating a passage for their waters through the mountains. Thus the Indians accounted for the Columbia and its canyon.

Sunrise on the Columbia; view at 4 a. m. from top of Table Mountain.]

Nightfall on the Columbia.

"O love, they die in yon rich sky,
They faint on hill or field or river:
Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow forever and forever."--Tennyson.]

But first among the river myths must always be the Klickitat legend of the famous natural bridge, fabled to have stood where the Cascades of the Columbia now are. This is one of the most beautiful legends connected with the source of fire, a problem of life in all the northern lands. Further, it tells the origin of the three snow-peaks that are the subject of this book.

Wind Mountain and remnant of submerged forest, above the Cascades, at low water.]

In the time of their remote grandfathers, said the Klickitats, Tyhee Saghalie, chief of the gods, had two sons. They made a trip together down the river to where The Dalles are now. The sons saw that the country was beautiful, and quarrelled as to its possession. Then Saghalie shot an arrow to the north and an arrow to the west. The sons were bidden to find the arrows, and settle where they had fallen. Thus one son settled in the fair country between the great river and the Yakima, and became the grandfather of the Klickitats. The other son settled in the Willamette valley and became the ancestor of the large Multnomah tribe. To keep peace between the two tribes, Saghalie raised the great mountains that separate those regions. But there were not yet any snow-peaks. The great river also flowed very deep between the country of the Klickitats and the country of the Multnomahs. That the tribes might always be friendly, Saghalie built a huge bridge of stone over the river. The Indians called it the tamahnawas bridge, or bridge of the gods. The great river flowed under it, and a witch-woman, Loowit, lived on it. Loowit had charge of the only fire in the world.

PHOTOS COPYRIGHT, KISER]

Loowit saw how miserable the tribes were without fire. Therefore she besought Saghalie to permit her to give them fire. Saghalie granted her request. Thus a fire was kindled on the bridge. The Indians came there and obtained fire, which greatly improved their condition. Saghalie was so much pleased with Loowit's faithfulness that he promised the witch-woman anything she might ask. Loowit asked for youth and beauty. So Saghalie transformed her into a beautiful maiden.

Many chiefs fell in love with Loowit because of her beauty. But she paid heed to none till there came two other chiefs, Klickitat from the north, Wiyeast from the west. As she could not decide which of them to accept as her husband, they and their people went to war. Great distress came upon the people because of this fighting. Saghalie grew angry at their evil doing, and determined to punish them. He broke down the tamahnawas bridge, and put Loowit, Wiyeast and Klickitat to death. But they had been beautiful in life, therefore Saghalie would have them beautiful in death. So he made of them the three famous snow-peaks. Wiyeast became the mountain which white men call Mount Hood; Klickitat became Mount Adams; Loowit was changed into Mount St. Helens. Always, said Saghalie, they should be clothed in garments of snow.

Thus was the wonderful tamahnawas bridge destroyed, and the great river dammed by the huge rocks that fell into it. That caused the Cascade rapids. Above the rapids, when the river is low, you can still see the forests that were buried when the bridge fell down and dammed the waters.

Hood River, fed by the glaciers of Mount Hood.]

This noteworthy myth, fit to rank with the folk-lore masterpieces of any primitive people, Greek or Gothic, is of course only a legend. The Indian was not a geologist. True, we see the submerged forests to-day, at low water. But their slowly decaying trunks were killed, perhaps not much more than a century ago, by a rise in the river that was not caused by the fall of a natural bridge, but by a landslide from the mountains.

Memaloose Island, or Island of the Dead, last resting place of thousands of Indians. The lone monument is that of Maj. Victor Trevitt, a celebrated pioneer, who asked to be buried here among "honest men."]

There is a slow and glacier-like motion of the hillsides here which from time to time compels the railways on either bank to readjust their tracks. The rapids at the Cascades, with their fall of nearly forty feet, are doubtless the result of comparatively recent volcanic action. Shaking down vast masses of rock, this dammed the river, and caused it to overflow its wooded shores above. But to the traveler on a steamboat breasting the terrific current below the government locks, as he looks up to the towering heights on either side of the narrowed channel, the invention of poor Lo's untutored mind seems almost as easy to believe as the simpler explanation of the scientist.

Remarkable as is this fire myth of the tamahnawas bridge, the legend inspired by the peculiarities of northwestern climate is no less beautiful. This climate differs materially, it is well known, from that of eastern America in the same latitude. The Japan Current warms the coast of Oregon and Washington just as the Gulf Stream warms the coast of Ireland. East of the Cascade Mountains, the severe cold of a northern winter is tempered by the "Chinook" winds from the Pacific. A period of freezing weather is shortly followed by the melting of the snow upon the distant mountains; by night the warm Chinook sweeps up the Columbia canyon and across the passes, and in a few hours the mildness of spring covers the land.

Such a phenomenon inevitably stirred the Indian to an attempt to interpret it. Like the ancients of other races, he personified the winds. The Yakima account of the struggle between the warm winds from the coast and the icy blasts out of the Northeast will bear comparison with the Homeric tale of Ulysses, buffeted by the breezes from the bag given him by the wind-god Aeolus.

The Dalles of the Columbia, lower channel, east of Dalles City. The river, crowded into a narrow flume, flows here at a speed often exceeding ten miles an hour.]

Five Chinook brothers, said the Yakima tradition, lived on the great river. They caused the warm winds to blow. Five other brothers lived at Walla Walla, the meeting place of the waters. They caused the cold winds. The grandparents of them all lived at Umatilla, home of the wind-blown sands. Always there was war between them. They swept over the country, destroying the forests, covering the rivers with ice, or melting the snows and causing floods. The people suffered much because of their violence.

Then Walla Walla brothers challenged Chinook brothers to wrestle. Speelyei, the coyote god, should judge the contest. He should cut off the heads of those who fell.

The crafty Speelyei secretly advised the grandparents of Chinook brothers that if they would throw oil on the ground, their sons would not fall. This they did. But Speelyei also told the grandparents of Walla Walla brothers that if they would throw ice on the ground, their sons would not fall. This they did. So the Chinook brothers were thrown one after another, and Speelyei cut off their heads, according to the bargain. So the five Chinook brothers were dead.

But the oldest of them left an infant son. The child's mother brought him up to avenge the killing of his kinsmen. So the son grew very strong, until he could pull up great fir trees as if they were weeds. Then Walla Walla brothers challenged Young Chinook to wrestle. Speelyei should judge the contest. He should cut off the heads of those who fell. Secretly Speelyei advised Young Chinook's grandparents to throw oil on the ground last. This they did. So Walla Walla brothers were thrown one after another by Young Chinook, until four of them had fallen. Only the youngest of them was left. His heart failed him, and he refused to wrestle. Speelyei pronounced this sentence upon him: "You shall live, but you shall no longer have power to freeze people." To Young Chinook, he said: "You must blow only lightly, and you must blow first upon the mountains, to warn people of your coming."

The Dalles. This name, meaning literally flat stones, was given by the early French-Canadian voyageurs to the twelve-mile section below Celilo, where, the Columbia has cut through the level lava strata, forming a channel in some places less than 200 feet wide and nearly 200 feet deep at low water. At higher stages the river fills many lateral channels and roars past many islands of its own carving.]

The last dawn of all opens upon the white man's era. On the Columbia, recorded history is recent, but already epic. Its story is outside the purpose of this volume. But it is worth while, in closing our brief glance at the field, to note that this story has been true to its setting. Rich in heroism and romance, it is perhaps the most typical, as it is the latest, chapter in the development of the West. For this land of the river, its quarter-million square miles stretching far northward to Canada, and far eastward to the Yellowstone, built about with colossal mountains, laced with splendid waterways, jeweled with beautiful lakes, where upheaval and eruption, earthquake and glacier have prepared a home for a great and happy population, has already been the scene of a drama of curious political contradictions and remarkable popular achievement.

The Columbia River basin, alone of all the territories which the United States has added to its original area, was neither bought with money nor annexed by war. Its acquisition was a triumph of the American pioneer. Many nations looked with longing to this Northwest, but it fell a prize to the nation that neglected it. Spain and Russia wished to own it. Great Britain claimed and practically held it. The United States ignored it. For nearly half a century after the discovery of the river by a Yankee ship captain, Robert Gray, in 1792, and its exploration by Jefferson's expedition under Lewis and Clark, in 1805, its ownership was in question. For several decades after an American merchant, John Jacob Astor, had established the first unsuccessful trading post, in 1811, the country was actually ruled by the British through a private corporation. The magic circle drawn about it by the Hudson's Bay Company seemed impenetrable. Held nominally by the American and British governments in joint occupancy, it was in fact left to the halfbreed servants of a foreign monopoly that sought to hold an empire for its fur trade, and to exclude settlers because their farms would interfere with its beaver traps. Congress deemed the region worthless.

But while sleepy diplomacy played its game of chess between Washington and London, the issue was joined, the title cleared and possession taken by a breed of men to whom the United States owes more than it can ever pay. From far east came the thin vanguard of civilization which, for a century after the old French and Indian war, pushed our boundaries resistlessly westward. It had seized the "dark and bloody ground" of Kentucky. It had held the Ohio valley for the young republic during the Revolution. It had built states from the Alleghanies to the Mississippi. And now, dragging its wagons across the plains and mountains, it burst, sun-browned and half-starved, into Oregon. Missionaries and traders, farmers, politicians and speculators, it was part of that army of restless spirits who, always seeing visions of more fertile lands and rising cities beyond, stayed and long in no place, until at last they found their way barred by the Pacific, and therefore stayed to build the commonwealths of Oregon, Washington and Idaho.

The arena of their peaceful contest was worthy of their daring. "'A land of old upheaven from the abyss,' a land of deepest deeps and highest heights, of richest verdure here, and barest desolation there, of dense forest on one side, and wide extended prairies on the other; a land of contrasts, contrasts in contour, hues, productions, and history,"--thus Professor Lyman describes the stage which the pioneers found set for them.

The tremendous problems of its development, due to its topography, its remoteness, its magnificent distances, and its lack of transportation, demanded men of sturdiest fiber and intrepid leading. No pages of our history tell a finer story of action and initiative than those which enroll the names of McLoughlin, the great Company's autocratic governor, not unfitly called "the father of Oregon," and Whitman, the martyr, with the frontier leaders who fashioned the first ship of state launched in the Northwest, and their contemporaries, the men who built the first towns, roads, schools, mills, steamboats and railways.

The grim sentinels of "the Wallula Gateway," huge basaltic pillars that rise on the south bank of the river, where it crosses the Washington-Oregon line. View looking south.]

Tumwater, the falls of the Columbia at Celilo; total drop, twenty feet at low water. In Summer, when the snow on the Bitter Root and Rocky Mountains is melting, the river rises often more than sixty feet. Steamboats have then passed safely down. Wishram, an ancient Indian fishing village, was on the north bank below the falls, and Indians may often still be seen spearing salmon from the shores and islands here.]

Macaulay tells us that a people who are not proud of their forebears will never deserve the pride of their descendants. The makers of Old Oregon included as fair a proportion of patriots and heroes as the immigrants of the Mayflower. We who journey up or down the Columbia in a luxurious steamer, or ride in a train _de luxe_ along its banks, are the heirs of their achievement. Honor to the dirt-tanned ox-drivers who seized for themselves and us this empire of the river and its guardian snow-peaks!

A lordly river, broad and deep,
With mountains for its neighbors, and in view
Of distant mountains and their snowy tops.

Summit of Mount Hood, viewed from western end of the ridge, showing north side of the peak in July.]

Columbia River and Mt. Hood, seen from White Salmon, Washington.

"Beloved mountain, I
Thy worshiper, as thou the sun's, each morn
My dawn, before the dawn, receive from thee;
And think, as thy rose-tinted peak I see,
That thou wert great when Homer was not born,
And ere thou change all human song shall die."--Helen Hunt Jackson.]

II.

THE MOUNTAINS.

Silent and calm, have you e'er scaled the height
Of some lone mountain peak, in heaven's sight?
--_Victor Hugo._

There stood Mount Hood in all the glory of the alpen
glow, looming immensely high, beaming with
intelligence. It seemed neither near nor far.... The
whole mountain appeared as one glorious manifestation
of divine power, enthusiastic and benevolent, glowing
like a countenance with ineffable repose and beauty,
before which we could only gaze with devout and lowly
admiration.--_John Muir._

FROM the heights which back the city of Portland on the west, one may have a view that is justly famous among the fairest prospects in America. Below him lies the restless city, busy with its commerce. Winding up from the south comes the Willamette, its fine valley narrowed here by the hills, where the river forms Portland's harbor, and is lined on either side with mills and shipping. Ten miles beyond, the Columbia flows down from its canyon on the east, and turns northward, an expanding waterway for great vessels, to its broad pass through the Coast Range. In every direction, city and country, farm and forest, valley and mountain, stretches a noble perspective. From the wide rivers and their shining borders, almost at sea level, the scene arises, terrace upon terrace, to the encircling hills, and spreads across range after range to the summits of the great Cascades.

Watching the climbers from the plaza at Cloud Cap Inn, northeast side of Mount Hood. Immediately in front, Eliot glacier is seen, dropping into its canyon on the right. On the left is Cooper Spur, from which a sharp ascent leads to the summit of the peak.]

Dominating all are the snow-peaks, august sentinels upon the horizon. On a clear day, the long line of them begins far down in central Oregon, and numbers six snowy domes. But any average day includes in its glory the three nearest, Hood, Adams, and St. Helens. Spirit-like, they loom above the soft Oregon haze, their glaciers signaling from peak to peak, and their shining summits bidding the sordid world below to look upward.

Nature has painted canvases more colorful, but none more perfect in its strength and rest. Here is no flare of the desert, none of the flamboyant, terrible beauty of the Grand Canyon. It is a land of warm ocean winds and cherishing sunshine, where the emeralds and jades of the valleys quickly give place to the bluer greens of evergreen forests that cover the hill country; and these, in turn, as distance grows, shade into the lavenders and grays of the successive ranges. The white peaks complete the picture with its most characteristic note. They give it distinction.

Such a panorama justifies Ruskin's bold assertion: "Mountains are the beginning and end of all natural scenery." Without its mountains, the view from Council Crest would be as uninteresting as that from any tower in any prairie city. But all mountains are not alike. In beginning our journey to the three great snow-peaks which we have viewed from Portland heights, it is well to define, if we may, the special character of our Northwestern scene. We sometimes hear the Cascade district praised as "the American Switzerland." Such a comparison does injustice alike to our mountains and to the Alps. As a wild, magnificent sea of ice-covered mountain tops, the Alps have no parallel in America. As a far-reaching system of splendid lofty ranges clothed in the green of dense forests and surmounted by towering, isolated summits of snowy volcanoes, the Cascades are wholly without their equal in Europe. This is the testimony of famous travelers and alpinists, among them Ambassador Bryce, who has written of our Northwestern mountain scenery:

We have nothing more beautiful in Switzerland or
Tyrol, in Norway or in the Pyrenees. The combination
of ice scenery with woodland scenery of the grandest
type is to be found nowhere in the Old World, unless
it be in the Himalayas, and, so far as we know,
nowhere else on the American continent.

In his celebrated chapter of the "Modern Painters" which describes the sculpture of the mountains, Ruskin draws a picture of the Alps that at once sets them apart from the Cascades:

The longer I stayed among the Alps, the more I was
struck by their being a vast plateau, upon which
nearly all the highest peaks stood like children set
upon a table, removed far back from the edge, as if
for fear of their falling. The most majestic scenes
are produced by one of the great peaks having
apparently walked to the edge of the table to look
over, and thus showing itself suddenly above the
valley in its full height. But the raised table is
always intelligibly in existence, even in these
exceptional cases; and for the most part, the great
peaks are not allowed to come to the edge of it, but
remain far withdrawn, surrounded by comparatively
level fields of mountain, over which the lapping
sheets of glacier writhe and flow. The result is the
division of Switzerland into an upper and lower
mountain world; the lower world consisting of rich
valleys, the upper world, reached after the first
steep banks of 3,000 to 4,000 feet have been
surmounted, consisting of comparatively level but most
desolate tracts, half covered by glacier, and
stretching to the feet of the true pinnacles of the
chain.

Portland's White Sentinel, Mount Hood. Telephoto view from City Park, showing a portion of the city, with modern buildings and smoke of factories.]

Ice cascade on Eliot glacier, Mount Hood.]

Nothing of this in the Cascades! Instead, we have fold upon fold of the earth-crust, separated by valleys of great depth. The ranges rise from levels but little above the sea. For example, between Portland and Umatilla, although they are separated by the mountains of greatest actual elevation in the United States, there is a difference of less than two hundred and fifty feet, Umatilla, east of the Cascades, being only two hundred and ninety-four feet above tide. Trout Lake, lying below Mount Adams, at the head of one of the great intermountain valleys, has an elevation of less than two thousand feet.

Thus, instead of the Northwestern snow-peaks being set far back upon a general upland and hidden away behind lesser mountains, to be seen only after one has reached the plateau, thousands of feet above sea level, they actually rise either from comparatively low peneplanes on one side of the Cascades, as in the case of St. Helens, or from the summit of one of the narrow, lofty ridges, as do Hood and Adams. But in either case, the full elevation is seen near at hand and from many directions--an elevation, therefore, greater and more impressive than that of most of the celebrated Alpine summits.

Snow-bridge over great crevasse, near head of Eliot glacier.]

Coasting down east side of Mount Hood, above Cooper Spur. Mount Adams in distance.]

Mount Hood from the hills south of The Dalles, showing the comparatively timberless country east of the Cascades. Compare this treeless region, as well as the profile of Mount Hood here shown, with the view from Larch Mountain.]

Famous as is the valley of Chamonix, and noteworthy as are the glaciers to which it gives close access, its views of Mont Blanc are disappointing. Not until the visitor has scaled one of the neighboring _aiguilles_, can he command a satisfactory outlook toward the Monarch of the Alps. And nowhere in Switzerland do I recall a picture of such memorable splendor as greets the traveler from the Columbia, journeying either southward, up the Hood River Valley toward Mount Hood, or northward, up the White Salmon Valley toward Trout Lake and Mount Adams. Here is unrolled a wealth of fertile lowlands, surrounded by lofty ranges made beautiful by their deep forests and rising to grandeur in their snow-peaks.

Mount Hood, seen from Larch Mountain, on the Columbia River. View looking southeast across the heavily forested ranges of the Cascades to the deep canyons below Ladd and Sandy glaciers.]

Leaving the canyon of the Columbia, in either direction the road follows swift torrents of white glacial water that tell of a source far above. It crosses a famous valley, among its orchards and hayfields, but always in view of the dark blue mountains and of the snow-covered volcanoes that rise before and behind, their glaciers shining like polished steel in the sunlight. So the visitor reaches the foot of his mountain. Losing sight of it for a time, he follows long avenues of stately trees as he climbs the benches. In a few hours he stands upon a barren shoulder of the peak, at timber line. A new world confronts him. The glaciers reach their icy arms to him from the summit, and he breathes the winds that sweep down from their fields of perennial snow.