Down the Columbia Part 14

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 finis.h.i.+ng 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 h.e.l.l Gate were still below us, but Earl had evidently determined not to run them until his engine was. .h.i.tting 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 ash.o.r.e 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 unders.h.i.+rt. 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 s.h.i.+rt to be drawn over it, Ike went around for a couple of hours just as he was, for all the world like "the n.o.blest 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 h.e.l.l Gate without smas.h.i.+ng 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, a.s.suming 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SUSPENSION BRIDGE AT CHELAN FALLS (_above_)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLD RIVER VETERANS ON THE LANDING AT POTARIS. (CAPT.

McDERMID ON LEFT, IKE EMERSON ON RIGHT) (_below_)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: NIGHT WAS FALLING AS WE HEADED INTO BOX CANYON (_above_)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 cla.s.sic of its kind, and I am setting it down in full, just as I read it to Roos and Ike that afternoon in the c.o.c.kpit 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 sh.o.r.es of Nespilem Canyon are strewn with huge ma.s.ses 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 ma.s.ses 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 pa.s.ses 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 las.h.i.+ngs 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 h.e.l.l Gate, and his unm.u.f.fled 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 pa.s.sage 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-cla.s.s 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 a.s.sailed 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 pa.s.sing 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 h.e.l.l 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 b.u.t.ting 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 astonis.h.i.+ngly 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 swis.h.i.+ng about my knees for a few moments in the c.o.c.kpit, 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.

Rea.s.sured 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 plat.i.tudinous sub-t.i.tles; and finally, when word came that it was Harding beyond all doubt, they forgot the picture completely and gave their undivided attention to jos.h.i.+ng 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.