Page:Route Across the Rocky Mountains with a Description of Oregon and California.djvu/45



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 the most of those which were not thrown down by the motion, and agitation, would have been found standing in various inclined positions; but on the contrary, we find them nearly all standing erect.–And again, what is highly improbable, the slides must all have been very nearly simultaneous, as the trees are all, about in the same state of preservation. The most of them stand opposite where we considered the shores too gradual to admit of a slide. There are many large nooks in the Mountains, along this part of the River, which are suitable for small settlements. Fifty miles below the Mission we came to the Cascade Falls. – Here the River, compressed into two thirds of its usual width, descends over huge rocks, several hundred yards, with an inclination of about five degrees; and from the head to the foot of the Rapids, a distance of four miles, the water descends about fifty feet. From the great agitation of the water, caused by its rushing with such velocity, down its rocky channel, the surface of the River, for several hundred yards, is as white as a field of snow.—On the South, the dark basaltic walls, rising perpendicularly four of five hundred feet, are covered with Pines. There are small Islands of rock, both above and below the Falls; many of which are timbered, and huge volcanic fragments cover either shore. Here we were obliged to leave our canoes, and carry our baggage nearly four miles, over rocks, and hills, to the foot of the Rapids; where we found a bateau, which had been brought up from the Fort, for the accomodation of the Emigrants.