Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/399

Rh this vast cordon of mountains there are more glaciers than in all the rest of the United States combined, and, with the exception of the Sierras and the Canadian Rockies, there is certainly no other region on this continent that can for a moment enter into competition with it. Travellers have assured the author that the Alps in no respect except historical association, surpass, and some say, do not equal this crowning glory of our great North-west State.

Amid the bewildering profusion of great cañons radiating from the lake, the two most accessible are those of the Stehekin River and Railroad Creek. The former enters the head of the lake, after a course of probably fifty miles from Skagit Pass. To ascend this cañon we must commit our lives and fortunes to cayuse ponies and a mountain trail, which, though good enough to the initiated, is a terror to the "tenderfoot."

Four miles up the Stehekin we reach Rainbow Falls, heralded by distant gusts and eddies of mist, which at first seem to be from woods on fire. But a dull roar, a harsh rumble, then a lighter splash,—and we see that what at first had seemed smoke eddying out of the cañon wall is the mist driven before the gusts created by the falling torrents. With a few more hurried steps we find ourselves before a fall three hundred and fifty feet high. Its clouds of spray swirl like a thunder-shower, drenching the rocks and trees far around. Picking our way amid the pelting mist to the top of a slippery hillock from which we can look right down into the very heart of the fall, we see, swinging against the mist, a perfect rainbow, a complete double circle, a blaze of lustre. The thrilling roar deepens as we hang over the