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DOWN THE COLUMBIA
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Courtesy of Byron Harmon, BanffMT. SIR DONALD, WHICH DRAINS FROM ALL SIDES TO THE COLUMBIA
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DOWN THE COLUMBIA
BY
LEWIS R. FREEMAN
AUTHOR OF “IN THE TRACKS OF THE TRADES,”
“HELL’S HATCHES,” ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1921
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Copyright 1921
By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.
The Quinn & Boden Company
BOOK MANUFACTURERS
RAHWAY NEW JERSEY
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TO
C. L. CHESTER
Hoping he will find in these pagessome compensation for the funhe missed in not being along.
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INTRODUCTION
The day on which I first conceived the idea of aboat trip down the Columbia hangs in a frame all itsown in the corridors of my memory. It was a numberof years ago—more than a dozen, I should say. Justpreviously I had contrived somehow to induce the Superintendentof the Yellowstone National Park togrant me permission to attempt a winter journey onski around this most beautiful of America’s greatplaygrounds. He had even sent a Government scoutalong to keep, or help, me out of trouble. We were aweek out from the post at Mammoth Hot Springs.
Putting the rainbow revel of the incomparable Canyonbehind, we had crossed Yellowstone Lake on theice and fared onward and upward until we came atlast to the long climb where the road under its tenfeet of snow wound up to the crest of the ContinentalDivide. It was so dry and cold that the powderysnow overlying the crust rustled under our ski likeautumn leaves. The air was diamond clear, so transparentthat distant mountain peaks, juggled in thewizardry of the lens of the light, seemed fairly tofloat upon the eyeball.
At the summit, where we paused for breath, an oldSergeant of the Game Patrol, letting down a tin canon a string, brought up drinks from an air-hole whichhe claimed was teetering giddily upon the very ridge-poleof North America.
“If I dip to the left,” he said, suiting the action to[Pg viii]the word, “it’s the Pacific I’ll be robbing of a pint ofRocky Mountain dew; while if I dip to the right it’sthe Atlantic that’ll have to settle back a notch. Andif I had a string long enough, and a wing strongenough, to cast my can over there beyond Jackson’sHole,” he went on, pointing southeasterly to theserrated peaks of the Wind River Mountains, “Icould dip from the fount of the Green River and keepit from feed