Through the Olympics With the Mountaineers 157 



cabin. The river banks were lined with a dense forest of 

 Sitka spruce, reheved with patches of alders or cottonwoods, 

 or vine maples turning to copper and bronze in prophecy of 

 autumn. The journey brought in succession idyllic, dreamy 

 stretches of smoothly flowing river where wild ducks were 

 startled into flight before our bows; wide bends overarched 

 with green among whose shadowy vistas shone the flash of a 

 paddle; quickly flowing riflles where our canoes scraped bot- 

 tom; tangled log jams with swirling eddies boiling amongst 

 them, and stormy rapids where the river ran white and im- 

 mediate destruction among the rocks seemed certain. It was 

 a day of constant change, of incessant interest, of excitement 

 alternating with deep peace, unlike any other day that our 

 mountain experience had brought us. We, who had so often 

 felt the strangely intimate appeal of running waters ; who had 

 lingered beside slow, eddying green courses or above cascades 

 flying irised banners in the sunlight ; who on warm afternoons 

 had bathed in rippling pools that shone with copper and gold 

 under the slant sun ; who had even known the rarer delight of 

 following many a little river to its source, now, borne along 

 by the river, seemed ourselves a part of its ceaseless flow, 

 travellers together, outbound into unknown seas. 



For some miles above its mouth the river ran sluggish and 

 deep. The sky grew overcast and the brilliant, sunlit river was 

 toned to soft green, brown and gray. At last Tahola Village 

 came in sight, a cluster of crudely painted houses facing un- 

 paved, sandy streets. Though we could see a white streak of 

 breakers at the river's mouth and hear the roar of surf, from 

 our landing place the ocean was hidden by low dunes of sand 

 and gravel. Heaped upon them were great piles of gray drift- 

 wood, whole trees, even four or five feet in diameter, flung up 

 by storms and bleached to a lovely silver. Among these was 

 our last camp. Our driftwood fire was built in the lee of a 

 ghostly giant whose roots and massive trunk not only gave 

 welcome shelter from the ocean winds, but formed a wonder- 

 ful rostrum for the last campfire ceremonial. 



Our Olympic wanderings seem to end, not with the beach 

 walk to Moclips next day, nor the railway journey home, but 

 here at Tahola, down on the farthest point of land where river 



