Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/301

Rh the remainder of the cargo was discharged, to be hauled in waggons to the Oro Fino mines. The steamer Okanogan followed the Colonel Wright within a few weeks, and navigation on the Snake may be said to have fairly begun. During that same time the city of Lewiston, named in honour of Meriwether Lewis, the explorer, was founded at the junction of the Snake and Clearwater rivers.

While parts of the Columbia and it chief tributary, the Snake, were thus opened to navigation by 1860, no "fire-canoe" had yet appeared on that magnificent stretch of navigable water from Colville into the Arrow Lakes. From contemporary files of the Daily Mountaineer of The Dalles, we learn that Captain Lew White launched the Forty-nine in November, 1865, at Colville. In December the Forty-nine ascended the Columbia one hundred and sixty miles, nearly to the head of lower Arrow Lake, whence, meeting floating ice, she returned. From the Mountaineer we learn also that in the early months of 1866 a steamer was constructed at the mouth of Boisé River for navigation of the far upper Snake. At the same time also the steamer Mary Moody was constructed by Z. F. Moody, on Pend Oreille Lake, the first steamer on any of the lakes except the Arrow Lakes of the Columbia.

With the close of the decade of the sixties, it may be said that the Columbia and its tributaries had fairly entered upon the steamboat era. While many steamers were added within the succeeding years, the steamboat business was never so active on the upper River as during that early age. After the building of the railroads along the River and into interior