Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/298

242 "There is no such word as fail in my dictionary." He directed his son and another of the crew to take the small boat, load her with a long coil of rope, make their way up the stream until they got above the rapid, there to land on an islet of rock, fasten the rope to that rock, then pay it out till it was swept down the rapid. They were then to descend the rapid in the small boat. "Very likely you may be upset," added the skipper encouragingly, "but if you are, you know how to swim." They were upset, sure enough, but they did know how to swim. They righted their boat, picked up the end of the floating rope, and reached the sloop with it. The rope was attached to the capstan, and the sloop was wound up by it above the swiftest part of the rapid to a point where the sail was sufficient to carry, and on they went rejoicing. Any account of steamboating on the Columbia would be incomplete without reference to Captain James Troup, who was born on the Columbia, and almost from early boyhood ran steamers upon it and its tributaries. He made a specialty of running steamers down the Dalles and the Cascades, an undertaking sometimes rendered necessary by the fact that more boats were built in proportion to demand on the upper than the lower River. These were taken down the Dalles, and sometimes down the Cascades. Once down, they could not return. The first steamer to run down the Tumwater Falls was the Okanogan, on May 22, 1866, piloted by Captain T. J. Stump.

The author enjoyed the great privilege of descending the Dalles in the D. S. Baker in the year 1888, Captain Troup being in command. At that