STEEP TRAILS 



ery prairies and plains. These great rivers and 

 the Columbia are intimately related. AH draw 

 their upper waters from the same high foun- 

 tains on the broad, rugged uplift of the Rocky 

 Mountains, their branches iaterlacing like the 

 branches of trees. They sing their first songs 

 together on the heights; then, collecting their 

 tributaries, they set out on their grand jour- 

 ney to the Atlantic, Pacific, or Arctic Ocean. 



The Colmnbia, viewed as one from the sea 

 to the mountains, is like a rugged, broad- 

 topped, picturesque old oak about six him- 

 dred miles long and nearly a thousand miles 

 wide measured across the spread of its upper 

 branches, the main limbs gnarled and swollen 

 with lakes and lakelike expansions, while in- 

 numerable smaller lakes shine like fruit among 

 the smaller branches. The main trunk extends 

 back through the Coast and Cascade Moun- 

 tains in a general easterly direction for three 

 hundred miles, when it divides abruptly into 

 two grand branches which bend off to the 

 northeastward and southeastward. 



The south branch, the longer of the two, 

 called the Snake, or Lewis, River, extends into 

 the Rocky Mountains as far as the Yellow- 

 stone National Park, where its head tribu- 

 taries interlace with those of the Colorado, 

 Missouri, and Yellowstone. The north branch, 



328 



