THE RIVERS OF OREGON 



some of the springs being large enough to ap- 

 pear as the outlets of subterranean rivers. They 

 gush out from the faces of the sheer black walls 

 and descend foaming with brave roar and 

 beauty to swell the flood below. 



From where the river skirts the base of the 

 Blue Mountains its surroundings are less for- 

 bidding. Much of the country is fertile, but 

 its canon is everjrwhere deep and almost in- 

 accessible. Steamers make their way up as 

 far as Lewiston, a hundred and fifty miles, and 

 receive cargoes of wheat at different points 

 through chutes that extend down from the 

 tops of the bluffs. But though the Hudson's 

 Bay Company navigated the north fork to its 

 sources, they depended altogether on pack- 

 animals for the transportation of supplies and 

 furs between the Columbia and Fort Hall on 

 the head of the south fork, which shows how 

 desperately unmanageable a river it must be. 



A few miles above the mouth of the Snake 

 the Yakima, which drains a considerable por- 

 tion of the Cascade Range, enters from the 

 northwest. It is about a hundred and fifty 

 miles long, but carries comparatively little 

 water, a great part of what it sets out with 

 from the base of the mountains being con- 

 sumed in irrigated fields and meadows in pass- 

 ing through the settlements along its com-se, 



337 



