Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/432

322, and we discover an occasional band of cattle or a settler's hut on the generally bare, brown prairie. We are now approaching the longest rapid and the most serious impediment to navigation in the whole course of the River from Kettle Falls to Tumwater Falls. This is Priest Rapids. It is ten miles in length and represents a descent in the River of seventy feet. It would certainly be impossible of navigation by steamboats, were it not that the descent is distributed quite uniformly over the ten miles and the River in general is quite straight and with a fair depth of water throughout. The old voyageurs had little difficulty in racing down, and they seem to have usually ascended by cordelling their bateaux beside the rocks, and at some especially difficult places by lightening the load and carrying around. Steamers have both ascended and descended, but it is so slow and tedious (on one occasion requiring a steamer three days to ascend the ten miles) that it cannot be considered commercially navigable. It will doubtless become necessary to construct a canal and locks at this point to render the River continuously and profitably navigable.

Alexander Ross, in his Adventures on the Columbia, tells us how Priest Rapids came to be named. The first expedition of the Pacific Fur Company, of which Ross was a member, was making its way from Astoria up the River in 1811, and had reached the lower end of this fall. While reconnoitring and making preparations for proceeding, a large body of Indians gathered, watching operations with great interest. Among them was a fantastically dressed individual, with many feathers on his head, who was going through