The Hood River glacier. (Hood River, Or.) 1889-1933, 1917-07-19
BOAT JOURNEY
Is APPEALING
INDIAN LEGENDS MAY BE STUDIED
Leisure Of the Trip Gives Time to Observe
Points that are Significant in
Lore Of Red Men

While the swifter means of trans
portation, the speeding trains, or the
more exhilarating journey in a motor
car makes its appeal to men and wom-
en- of the younger generations, the
pioneer family of the mid Columbia
still finds favor in the peaceful ssteam-
boat ride down the great Wauna to
Portland, and when the warm days of
summer have made brown the rolling
hills of Lyle, when the brilliant rays
are dancing on the'great shifting sand
banks around The Dalles, as the river
craft ply up and down the scenic
gorge, many elderly men and women
may be found seated in cabins, read
ing rooms or stationed on the cool,
windswept decks, drinking in the
glory of Mother Natures handiwork
and, perhaps, relating to grandchildren
some interesting legendary tale hand
ed down from the Indians.
The older generations of Oregon and
mid. Columbia people have come to
know the great gorge better than
we newcomers. For years it was the
only great through highway, and even
then tedious jaunts were necessary
around the portages at Tumwater Falls
and the Cascades. The beloved treas
ures of many Hood River valley, The
Dalles, White Salmon, Lyle and other
Mid Columbia homes were brought to
their final destinations af1oat on the
broad bosom of the great northwestern
waterway. The pioneer of Oregon
loves the Columbia with an affection
born from association.
Of recent years many of the younger
residents and newly arrived men and
women have travelled up and down the
stream to the locks of the Cascades
and the great canal at Cello. The pi-
oneer, too, likes to see these evidences
of development in the land he founded
and built up from the wilderness,
qualification filling his being as he
notes that his children and his chill
dren's children are privileged to enjoy
the blessings of mans enterprise and
genius of which he had but faint
dreams during his young manhood.
But the greatest call from the hur-
rying, wave. topped Columbia. as its
current IN swift race to the Pacific is
caught by the comforting west wind,
for the pioneer is that which he knows
will take him further than any back to
the olden days-the call to study from
observation again the legends he has
heard from the lips of the aborigines.
One journey from The Dalles to
Portland aboard one of the Columbia
steamers would be worth years
schooling to the children of Oregon,
if the youngsters were accompanied by
some pioneer man or woman, who with
legendary stories, woven about nearly
all of the innumerable points, could
bring to the Imagination the myths of
lore that should form more import
ant part in the present day lives of us
people of the northwest. Such jour-
ny, for old as we'll as the children,
would lift curtains from our eyes. and
we would see new and more wonder
full Columbia River gorge.
If not from mere sentiment, lit seems
that the Columbia river boat lines,
plying the mid Columbia, would give
greater publicity to the legends con-
nected with the gorge from one end to
the other because of its commercial
value. Today the boat lines passenger
business, except for occasional excur-
sons, is limited mainly to the families
of strawberry and cherry harvest
hands, who come up from Portland and
Willamette valley towns to pick the
fruit of local fields and to work in the
orchards around The Dalles.
While the writer has formerly made
the boat trip from here to The Dalles,
after seven years procrastination he
took the Bailey Gatzert, the queen
boat of the Regulator line, from Hood
River to Cascade Locks last week.
Of course, the boat trip is not the only
way of travelling the gorge. No 66
miles Journey in the United States
can excel for beauty of scenery that
aboard an .O.-W. r. & N. train be-
tween here and Portland, or North
Bank car between White Salmon and
Vancouver, and the motor ride over
the Columbia River Highway must be
taken to be appreciated.
But on the overland trips the travel
er does not have sufficient leisure to
contemplate fully the grandeur. On
the boat, too, one gets the broadest
panorama of the stream. From Wind
Mountain, near Carson. he may, with
| a half turn of his head see the great
mass of sliding, loose rock, Shell
Rock mountain on the Oregon side, at
the foot of which passes stone wall
bulwarks of the Highway, foot
above the steel lines of the O.-W. r.
en-, both of which must constantly
battle against the flood of shale.
From The Dalles to Portland the
boat passenger is privileged to view
two distinct types of Oregon scenery.
From The Dalles to Mosier, especially
on the Washington side of the stream,
the barren, BROWNIES of the hills
forms link between the arid section
of the eastern Oregon country and the
evergreen ravlnes and hilltops of the
Case AIDES. From The Dalles down as
far as Underwood Mount Hood is in
plain view a greater part of the time.
Just west of The Dalles, if the river
is not too high, one may see from the
upper deck the bleaching skull OF some
long dead warrior on Memaloose ISL
and, which for hundreds of years has
been the burying ground of mid-Co'
lumbia Indians.
1 Near Lyle, if pioneer happens tc
be aboard, he may point out to you q
tunnel through rocky promontory
and he will tell you how that cleft was
bored.
Scores of years ago, the Indians Of
the Inland Empire country and on the
headwaters of the Columbia and Snake
were engaged in so bitter a strife thai
Saghalie, the great spirit, fearful lest
his subjects exterminte each other, be
thought himself of means to end the
war. His warnings and prayers hao
failed, and he decided to starve the In
dians into submission. 1t was at tn,
season when the salmon were running
II b,,t Syddenlv puards of the mighty