Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 7.pdf/105

Rh these stumps came to occupy their present position; but none of them were able to inform us. They have a tradition among them that long ago the Columbia, in some part, ran under the ground, and that during an eruption of Mt. St. Helens the bridge fell in. Some such circumstance as this is the only way possible in which this anomaly can be accounted for, unless Captain Fremont is correct, (which is certainly extremely doubtful,) in supposing them to be land slides. For they are found no where below the Cascade Falls, although the character of the River and its shores is, above and below these Falls, very much alike. They are found immediately above the Falls, and as far up as the still water extends, which lack of current in the River we consider to be the effect of some vast impediment having been thrown into it at the Cascade Falls. The Falls seem to be composed of large detached masses of rocks, which circumstance also favors our opinion. A short distance below the Wascopin Mission and the Rapids of the Great Dales we found the first of these submerged stumps. They increased in number as we descended the River, as is always the case wherever there has been an impediment thrown into the channel of a stream, so as to raise the water over its natural shores. Immediately above the Wascopin Mission, as we have before noticed, and at least as far up as Fort Walawala, the River is full of Falls and Rapids, and such also we believe to have been the original character of the River below, where we find, at the present time, these stumps and an entire lack of current; as this portion of it includes the breach through the Cascade Mountains, the most rugged country, perhaps, through which the Columbia flows. If these stumps and trees, (for many of them are still sixty or seventy feet above the water in the River) had been brought into their present position by land slides, as Captain Fremont suggests, it seems to us to be a matter of course that