Part 23 (1/2)
”Joe McLimanee he come this far from Revelstruck,” said Leo. ”Take him twenty-nine day, not on high water.”
”Then there must be bad rapids below here,” said John.
”Yes,” said his uncle, ”and, as I went up the Canoe myself from here, I've never seen that part of this river, but they say that at the time of the big gold excitements a generation ago, when the miners tried to get out of this country, they took to rafts. The story is that a hundred and sixty-five men of that stampede were drowned in one year on the Death Rapids.”
Leo picked up a stick and began to make a map on the sand, showing the Big Bend of the Columbia and some of its side-streams.
”You start Beaver Mouth,” said he, ”all right, till you come on Surprise Rapids--all at once, right round bend. Surprise Rapids, him very bad. Much portage there. Very bad to get boat through even on line. Portage three mile there, maybe-so.
”Here was old man Brinkman, his rapid--not so bad, but bad enough for to scare old man Brinkman, so they name it on him, 'Brinkman's Terror.'
”Here is what Walt Steffen calls 'Double Eddy'--bad place sometam in high water. Bime-by we come on Lake Timbasket, up there, maybe thirty mile, maybe-so.”
Leo made a tracing of the outline of the lake, then followed his scratch in the sand on around.
”Now begin Twenty-six Mile Rapid, all bad--Gordon Rapids here, Big Eddy here, Rock Canon here. Now we come on Boat Encampment. This way Revelstruck. Death Rapids here; Priest Rapids down here; and then Revelstruck Canon; him bad, very bad, plenty man drown there, too.
That five miles from Revelstruck; we get out and walk there.
”Now here”--and he pointed on his sand map--”is Boat Encampment. Right around corner there is one of most bad places on whole river.”
”But you've been through, Uncle d.i.c.k. Tell us about it.”
”Yes, I came through once last year, and that's enough for me,” said Uncle d.i.c.k. ”That's the Rock Canon and the Grand Eddy. Leo has shown it all pretty plainly here. I don't want to make that trip again, myself. But when we got to Lake Timbasket we didn't any of us know how bad it was going to be--the old trapper who acted as our guide had never been through when the water was high. But when we got at the head of the Twenty-six Mile Rapids, below Lake Timbasket, it was like the bottom had dropped out of things, and we had to go through, for we couldn't get back.
”Of course, we could line sometimes, and many of the chutes we did not attempt. The first day below Timbasket we made about ten miles, to a camp somewhere below the c.u.mmins Creek chute. We could hear the water grinding--it sounded like breaking gla.s.s--all night long, right near the place where we slept, and it kept me awake all night. I suppose it is the gravel down at the bottom of the deep water. Then there were growlings and rumblings--the Indians say there are spirits in the river, and it sounded like it.
”There was one Swede that the trapper told us of, who started through the c.u.mmins Rapids on a raft and was wrecked. He got ash.o.r.e and walked back to the settlements. He had only money enough left to buy one sack of flour, then he started down the river again. From that day to this he has never been heard of, and no one knows when or where he was drowned.
”We pa.s.sed one big boulder where the trapper said the name of another Swede was cut on the rock by his friends who were wrecked with him near by. I believe they were some miners trying to get out of this country in boats. That man's body was never found, for the Columbia never gives up her dead. We saw Leo's broken boat, as I told you; and on the sh.o.r.es of Lake Timbasket we found the wrecks of two other boats, washed down. You see, this wild country has no telegraph or newspaper in it. When a man starts down the Big Bend of the Columbia he leaves all sort of communication behind him. Many an unknown man had started down this stream and never been seen again and never missed--this river can hold its own mysteries.”
”Well, tell us about this rapid just above here, Uncle d.i.c.k,” went on Jesse. ”Wasn't it pretty bad?”
”The worst I ever saw, at least. When we stopped above the head of that canon the trapper told me where the trail was down here to the Encampment, but of course I concluded to run on through if the others did. Before we got that far I was pretty well impressed with the Columbia, myself. When we landed at the head of Upper Death Canon I don't believe any of us were very sure that our boat would go through.
No one was talking very much, I'll promise you that.
”The worst part of that long stretch of bad water of the Rock Canon can't be more than four or five miles in all, and there isn't a foot of good water in the whole distance, as I remember it. Of course, the worst is the Giant Eddy--it lies just over there, beyond the edge of the hill from us. In there the water runs three different ways all at once. There is no boat on earth can go up this river through the Giant Eddy, and lucky enough is the one which comes down through it.
”You see, once you get in there, you can't get either up again or out on either side--the rock walls come square down to the river, which boils down through a narrow, crooked gorge. It is like a big letter Z, with all the flood of the Columbia pouring through the bent legs; no one knows how deep, but not half the width which we see here.
”That's the worst water I ever saw myself--it runs so strong that there is a big ridge thrown up in the middle of the river, many feet higher than the water on either side. There is a crest of white water all down the sides of the top of that high ridge. The water looks as though it were hard, so that you couldn't drive a nail through it, it's flung through there at such tremendous pressure.
”You don't have much time to look as you go through, and there is no place where you can see the Giant Eddy except from the Giant Eddy itself. All I can remember is that we were clawing to keep on top of that high rib of the water mid-stream. I can see it now, that place--with green water running up-stream on each side, and the ridge of white water in the middle, and the long bent slope, like a show-case gla.s.s, running on each side from us to the edges of the up-stream currents. It was a very wonderful and terrible sight, and seeing it once was quite enough for me.
”About half-way down that long, bad chute I saw a hole open up in the crown of that ridge and could look down into it, it seemed to me, fifteen feet--some freak in the current made it--no one can tell what.
It seemed to chase us on down, and all our men paddled like mad. If our stern had got into that whirlpool a foot, no power on earth could have saved us. As luck would have it, we kept just outside the rim of the suckhole, and finally escaped it.