Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/351

Rh Francisco agent to make the trip with him and to offer a rate. After sitting in silence on the deck while the steamer whirled down the Jennings Cañon, the agent stated that his rate would be twenty-five per cent. of the cargo. The daring captain decided to take the risk himself. He had made a number of trips with entire success and immense profit. But just at the height of the season, when the twenty-six cars were on the track and a sack full of gold was waiting for him, the captain got into too much of a hurry. He was running the Gwendoline; one of his best pilots, the Ruth. The Ruth was ahead. Both were making their best possible time down the cañon to get a cargo. Captain Armstrong, at the wheel of the Gwendoline, was whizzing down the cañon at a rate which made stopping impossible, when to his dismay he saw the Ruth right ahead of him in a narrow turn, lying across the channel, wedged in the rocks. To stop was impossible. To select any comfortable landing-place was equally so. The Gwendoline piled right on top of the Ruth. Both were total wrecks, without a dollar of insurance. A two-thousand-dollar cargo gone in five minutes, to say nothing of boats and business that could not be replaced and a fortune within grasp that would never be so near again.

But such were the risks of steamboating on the Kootenai.

There are two historical notes of special interest to be made in connection with the journey to Windermere. One of these is a prehistoric drawing in some kind of red pigment on the smooth surface of a rock on the upper Columbia Lake. It seems to represent a battle scene, and, though rude, denotes some conception of