STEEP TRAILS 



As the Willamette is one of the most food- 

 ful of valleys, so is the Columbia one of the 

 most foodful of rivers. During the fisher s 

 harvest-time salmon from the sea come in 

 countless millions, urging their way against 

 falls, rapids, and shallows, up into the very 

 heart of the Rocky Mountains, supplying 

 everybody by the way with most bountiful 

 masses of delicious food, weighing from twenty 

 to eighty pounds each, plump and smooth 

 like loaves of bread ready for the oven. The 

 supply seemed inexhaustible, as well it might. 

 Large quantities were used by the Indians as 

 fuel, and by the Hudson s Bay people as manure 

 for their gardens at the forts. Used, wasted, 

 canned and sent in shiploads to all the world, 

 a grand harvest was reaped every year while 

 nobody sowed. Of late, however, the salmon 

 crop has begun to fail, and millions of young 

 fry are now sown like wheat in the river every 

 year, from hatching-establishments belonging 

 to the Government. 



All of the Oregon waters that win their way 

 to the sea are tributary to the Columbia, save 

 the short streams of the immediate coast, and 

 the Umpqua and Rogue Rivers in southern 

 Oregon. These both head in the Cascade 

 Mountains and find their way to the sea 

 through gaps in the Coast Range, and both 



344 



