Weekly Chemawa American., October 13, 1911, Page 6, Image 6

2
THE
CHEMA \VA
of the Cascade Range commence.
H ere it encounters a great low surface
paved with enorm ous polished sheets of
basaltic rock. These plates came to he
known as The D alles, from the G allic
dalles, for the C anadian voyageurs of the
H u d so n ’s Bay C om pany’s service had a
hand in the christen in g of all th is vast
region, giving to it the peculiar m ixture
of F rench, patois, pure In d ian , siwash,
and anglicized In d ian , plus English p ro p ­
er and im proper, which has left the nom ­
en clatu re of today such a hybrid and in ­
teresting affair.
1 he Col n u b ia, a mile wide not far
above, finds hut a narrow rift in this
gigantic pavem ent for its passage. To
borrow the description of Theodore W in­
throp, taken from an account of his pion­
eer journeyings in the m iddle of the last
century, “ the rift g rad u ally draw s its
sides closer, and at a «pot now (188’)
called The Dalles, subdivides into three
mere slits in sh arp edged rock. At the
highest w ater th ere are other m inor
channels, hut generally this continental
flood is cribbed and com pressed w ithin
its three chasm s su ddenly opening in the
level floor, each chasm h ard ly wider
than a leap a h au n ted fiend m ight ta k e .”
And, indeed, the legend of
men asserts a diabolical origin
narrrow channels. The weird
ation of n a tu re ’s peculiar hand
as follows:
the red
for these
e x p lan ­
work is
W hen the world was in the m aking,
the m ighty elem ents warred each with
the other. T here were earth q u ak es,
deluges, prim eval storm , and furious
volcanic outbursts. And in those s tre n ­
uous and uncivilized days, m an was a
fiend.
The Pacific N orthw est was one of the
centers of volcanic action. The Cascades
AM ERICAN
were aglow with craters, from which
issued dreadful stream s of m olten lava,
hearing destruction to all they encoun­
tered.
W here are now the great and peaceful
plains of the U pper Colum bia, along the
U m atilla and in the lovely valley of the
G rande Ronde, was an enorm ous inland
sea, filling the in terio r of the continent
and on the west checked and ham m ered
in by a ram p art of hills, just east of the
desolate plains of The Dalles. Every
W inter there were fresh volcanic con
vulsions, and fresh sheets of lava hurled
forth to h a rle n upon th° far-reaching
layers of fire-hardened dalles.
As ages progressed the eruptions and
earth q u ak es dim inished in violence and
frequency
And then came a w inter
when there was none, and finally there
were periods of two and even three years
when the western world was free from the
giant convulsion«.
But, says the legend, the fiends con­
tinued to war a« previously, despite the
peacefu 1 ness th at seemed to he com ing
to the land in which they dw elt. Thev
were m ighty mon«ters, were these fiends,
the m ightiest o f th eir destructive weapons
were their tails. W ith these fearsome
affairs they could cleft assunder rocks
and even m ountains, wreak terrible
havoc am ong the rocks of th eir enemies.
Stoutest in heart and tail of all the
w arlike fiends of th a t region was one
particu larly wise fiend, the Devil. Be
ing of a thoughtful disposition the Devil
had noted the growing peacefulness of
n atu re, and perceiving it, had more and
more come to ad o p t the ways of place
himself, despite the u n p o p u la rity this
course aroused am ong his fighting neigh-
hois. In a crude way the Devil was a
reform er, and as such evoked the scorn
of brethren content to continue things in