Page:The Overland Monthly, Jan-June 1894.djvu/257



1894.]

U-p the Columbia in 1857.

193

Captain Coe ordered the lines cast off, and started anew. The boat shot out in- to the stream ; but there was not steam enough on to stem the current, and she was carried stern first down over the rapids. Captain Coe stuck to the wheel, with practiced eye watching the boiling waters, and guiding the boat past threat- ening rocks, shot her safely into an eddy at the foot of the rapids. Only one life was lost, that of a passenger who jumped over to swim to shore.

The boat was soon after sold to Cap- tain Wright (" Bully Wright"), and was placed on the Frazer River route : she was the first steamboat that ever went up to Fort Yale.

The second affair of the kind was the deliberate act of Capt. J. C. Ainsworth, taking the large side-wheel steamboat Oneonta over the Cascades in 1870. The undertaking clearly shows the fearless- ness and skill of the man. Captains Stump, Holmes, and Miller, three of the best pilots and navigators of the upper Columbia, were his guests on board. Captain Ainsworth, understanding fully the great peril of the undertaking, went into the pilot-house and locked the door, said grace, ordered the lines cast off, and backed out into the stream. A moment more and she caught the current, and shot down over the great fall. At the big eddy below the main fall she touched a rock, slid off, and made the full pas- sage without damage. On being asked why he took the boat over alone, refus- ing the services of three of the most experienced pilots on the river, Captain Ainsworth said : "One man can lay the course better than two, if he is strong enough to hold the boat up to her work. I was President of the Company, and if any serious accident happened, I alone was to blame. Had either of the others been at the wheel when she struck, it might have injured their prestige with my associate directors. I took all the responsibility, and am always ready to take it."

VOL. xxiii 21.

As we left the Upper Cascades on the little steamer Wasco, with Captain Dan Baughman at the wheel, new scenes ap- peared ; the river widened out, and for a few miles it had the appearance of a lake. It was early in the day, and the chinook wind had not yet ruffled the surface of the water, which was so smooth and bright one could almost fancy the boat gliding over a sea of ice.

A run of twenty miles found us abreast of Hood River, and passing between the great white sentinels, Mount Hood on the right and Adams on the left. Next on the left appeared the small block house that marked the mouth of White Salmon River, flowing from the base of Mount Adams.

Soon Memaluse Island, for ages past the favorite burial place for the Indian dead, was passed, and as we rounded a point of land the city of The Dalles came to view, nestled under the rocky bluff that formed the background, with the fine new buildings of the Fort on the higher land to the right.

The Dalles was a city in miniature only, but as it was at the time the head of steamboat navigation, with an im- mense country to the east being opened for settlement, it was the key to the en- tire upper country, and a city of great expectations. For a time it was an active business place, being the distrib- uting point of the government for all the goods and supplies for the forts and the several Indian reservations. Father Wilbur had charge of the Yakima re- serve at Simcoe, about fifty miles east of The Dalles, in Washington Territory; and Col. A. P. Denison of the Warm Springs Agency, some forty miles southerly. All supplies for Forts Walla Walla and Colville and the settlers in that region were hauled by teams over- land from The Dalles. The city boasted a fine hotel, "The Umatilla," with Col- onel Graves as host, and a half dozen stores, those of Greene, Heath & Al- len and H. P. Isaacs were built of stone.