Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/59



E have told something of the mountains, rivers, and lakes which make up the framework of our Pacific North-west. We have also tried to see the land through the eyes of the native red men, and have called back a few of the grotesque, fantastic, sometimes heroic, sometimes pathetic legends which they associated with every phase of their country.

Now the very centre of Indian lore, the Parnassus, the Delphi, the Dodona, of the lower Columbia River Indians, is the stretch of mingled bluff, plain, lake, sand-dune, and mountain, marvellously diversified, from the south shore of the Columbia's mouth to the sacred Nekahni Mountain. It is a wonderously picturesque region. From it came Tallapus, the Hermes Trismegistus of the Oregon Indians. Its forests were haunted by the Skookums and Cheatcos. From the volcanic pinnacles of Swallallochast, now known as