Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/560

388 to another, evading officers of both States and of Federal Government alike. Sometime a novelist will be inspired with the poetry and humour and tragedy and pathos of this fisher life on the lower River, with its mingling of the life of law-breaker and desperado, and this section of our River will blossom into literature and find a place with the moonshiners of the South and the cowboys of the Rockies. All the material is ready. The River waits only for its Owen Wister or Hamlin Garland or Jack London to introduce it to the world of readers.

But the River moves and we must move with it. Many signs indicate to us that we are approaching the ocean. If we are moving in a small boat, we may pause to camp under some one of the thick-topped spruce trees whose stiff spicules pierce our unwary hands like pins. If we should spend a night we would find the water heaving and falling two, four, or five feet, with the ocean tides. Broader and broader grows the River. Numerous salmon canneries and seining stations appear. Passing a fishing village on the north bank called Brookfield, we notice a very curious rock, Pillar Rock, in the River a quarter of a mile from shore. It rises forty feet directly out of the water. We are told by one versed in Indian lore that this is the transformed body of a chief who tried to imitate the god Speelyei by wading across the River. For his presumption he was turned into a rock.

Soon after passing Pillar Rock we see the curious spectacle of a house on piles apparently right in the middle of the River. More curious still, we see horses seemingly engaged in drawing a load through the very water itself. The mystery is soon solved.