i8o An Indian Legend. 



obstructing the channel and retarding the 

 current so as to cause the river above the Cas- 

 cades to rise above its former level. 



The five miles of rapids we now call the 

 Cascades have a total fall of thirty-seven feet. 

 If thirty feet of this were, by any cause, now 

 transferred fifty miles above to the other fall 

 at the Tumwater, the result would certainly 

 be a barrier to all further progress upward of 

 the salmon of the Columbia. That something 

 has occurred here to raise the Columbia above 

 the Cascades within a century or so is almost 

 certain, for submerged groves of trees occur 

 along both sides of the river above for a dis- 

 tance of twelve or fifteen miles. These sub- 

 merged forests are not petrified, as sometimes 

 stated, but trees in slow process of decay in 

 positions to which landslides could not have 

 brought them, and in a depth of water in 

 which they could not grow. They are now in 

 the lowest stages of water standing in a depth 

 of fifteen to twenty feet. It is therefore almost 

 certain that when these groves of trees were 

 living, the Columbia river between the Upper 



