The Main Trunk Extends Back Through The
Coast And Cascade Mountains In A General Easterly Direction For Three
Hundred Miles, When It Divides Abruptly Into Two Grand Branches Which
Bend Off To The Northeastward And Southeastward.
The south branch, the longer of the two, called the Snake, or Lewis,
River, extends into the Rocky Mountains as far as the Yellowstone
National Park, where its head tributaries interlace with those of the
Colorado, Missouri, and Yellowstone.
The north branch, still called
the Columbia, extends through Washington far into British territory,
its highest tributaries reaching back through long parallel spurs of
the Rockies between and beyond the headwaters of the Fraser,
Athabasca, and Saskatchewan. Each of these main branches, dividing
again and again, spreads a network of channels over the vast
complicated mass of the great range throughout a section nearly a
thousand miles in length, searching every fountain, however small or
great, and gathering a glorious harvest of crystal water to be rolled
through forest and plain in one majestic flood to the sea, reinforced
on the way by tributaries that drain the Blue Mountains and more than
two hundred miles of the Cascade and Coast Ranges. Though less than
half as long as the Mississippi, it is said to carry as much water.
The amount of its discharge at different seasons, however, has never
been exactly measured, but in time of flood its current is
sufficiently massive and powerful to penetrate the sea to a distance
of fifty or sixty miles from shore, its waters being easily recognized
by the difference in color and by the drift of leaves, berries, pine
cones, branches, and trunks of trees that they carry.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 260 of 304
Words from 70287 to 70566
of 82482
