During The Last Few
Centuries, When The Maps Of The World Were In Great Part Blank, The
Search For New
Worlds was fashionable business, and when such large
game was no longer to be found, islands lying unclaimed in the
Great
oceans, inhabited by useful and profitable people to be converted or
enslaved, became attractive objects; also new ways to India, seas,
straits, El Dorados, fountains of youth, and rivers that flowed over
golden sands.
Those early explorers and adventurers were mostly brave, enterprising,
and, after their fashion, pious men. In their clumsy sailing vessels
they dared to go where no chart or lighthouse showed the way, where
the set of the currents, the location of sunken outlying rocks and
shoals, were all unknown, facing fate and weather, undaunted however
dark the signs, heaving the lead and thrashing the men to their duty
and trusting to Providence. When a new shore was found on which they
could land, they said their prayers with superb audacity, fought the
natives if they cared to fight, erected crosses, and took possession
in the names of their sovereigns, establishing claims, such as they
were, to everything in sight and beyond, to be quarreled for and
battled for, and passed from hand to hand in treaties and settlements
made during the intermissions of war.
The branch of the river that bears the name of Columbia all the way to
its head takes its rise in two lakes about ten miles in length that
lie between the Selkirk and main ranges of the Rocky Mountains in
British Columbia, about eighty miles beyond the boundary line. They
are called the Upper and Lower Columbia Lakes. Issuing from these,
the young river holds a nearly straight course for a hundred and
seventy miles in a northwesterly direction to a plain called "Boat
Encampment," receiving many beautiful affluents by the way from the
Selkirk and main ranges, among which are the Beaver-Foot, Blackberry,
Spill-e-Mee-Chene, and Gold Rivers. At Boat Encampment it receives
two large tributaries, the Canoe River from the northwest, a stream
about a hundred and twenty miles long; and the Whirlpool River from
the north, about a hundred and forty miles in length.
The Whirlpool River takes its rise near the summit of the main axis of
the range on the fifty-fourth parallel, and is the northmost of all
the Columbia waters. About thirty miles above its confluence with the
Columbia it flows through a lake called the Punch-Bowl, and thence it
passes between Mounts Hooker and Brown, said to be fifteen thousand
and sixteen thousand feet high, making magnificent scenery; though the
height of the mountains thereabouts has been considerably
overestimated. From Boat Encampment the river, now a large, clear
stream, said to be nearly a third of a mile in width, doubles back on
its original course and flows southward as far as its confluence with
the Spokane in Washington, a distance of nearly three hundred miles in
a direct line, most of the way through a wild, rocky, picturesque mass
of mountains, charmingly forested with pine and spruce - though the
trees seem strangely small, like second growth saplings, to one
familiar with the western forests of Washington, Oregon, and
California.
About forty-five miles below Boat Encampment are the Upper Dalles, or
Dalles de Mort, and thirty miles farther the Lower Dalles, where the
river makes a magnificent uproar and interrupts navigation. About
thirty miles below the Lower Dalles the river expands into Upper Arrow
Lake, a beautiful sheet of water forty miles long and five miles wide,
straight as an arrow and with the beautiful forests of the Selkirk
range rising from its east shore, and those of the Gold range from the
west. At the foot of the lake are the Narrows, a few miles in length,
and after these rapids are passed, the river enters Lower Arrow Lake,
which is like the Upper Arrow, but is even longer and not so straight.
A short distance below the Lower Arrow the Columbia receives the
Kootenay River, the largest affluent thus far on its course and said
to be navigable for small steamers for a hundred and fifty miles. It
is an exceedingly crooked stream, heading beyond the upper Columbia
lakes, and, in its mazy course, flowing to all points of the compass,
it seems lost and baffled in the tangle of mountain spurs and ridges
it drains. Measured around its loops and bends, it is probably more
than five hundred miles in length. It is also rich in lakes, the
largest, Kootenay Lake, being upwards of seventy miles in length with
an average width of five miles. A short distance below the confluence
of the Kootenay, near the boundary line between Washington and British
Columbia, another large stream comes in from the east, Clarke's Fork,
or the Flathead River. Its upper sources are near those of the
Missouri and South Saskatchewan, and in its course it flows through
two large and beautiful lakes, the Flathead and the Pend d'Oreille.
All the lakes we have noticed thus far would make charming places of
summer resort; but Pend d'Oreille, besides being surpassingly
beautiful, has the advantage of being easily accessible, since it is
on the main line of the Northern Pacific Railroad in the Territory of
Idaho. In the purity of its waters it reminds one of Tahoe, while its
many picturesque islands crowned with evergreens, and its winding
shores forming an endless variety of bays and promontories lavishly
crowded with spiry spruce and cedar, recall some of the best of the
island scenery of Alaska.
About thirty-five miles below the mouth of Clark's Fork the Columbia
is joined by the Ne-whoi-al-pit-ku River from the northwest. Here too
are the great Chaudiere, or Kettle, Falls on the main river, with a
total descent of about fifty feet. Fifty miles farther down, the
Spokane River, a clear, dashing stream, comes in from the east.
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