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About The Oregon daily journal. (Portland, Or.) 1902-1972 | View Entire Issue (July 11, 1912)
.Tim OREGON DAILY JOURNAL', PORTLAND, TIIURCDAY L7,::ilUG, JULY II, OLUMBIA 'RIVER MA WATERWAY OF SCENIC. GRANDEUR (JNSURM Natural Beauty of Great Stream That Flows Near Portland's Door Is of World Fame HE MAIN DIFFICULTY in presenting the beauties of the Columbia is of selection, since the whole course of the splendid river from TroutHale to Celilo is si moving picture on" en enormous scale. Through the ages the river has worn its way from the 3000-foot plateau of Eastern Oregon to the ocean, cutting through the Cascade mountains in a gulf growing deeper as the centuries passed. Hence it comes that many a waterfall marks its course as the smaller streams dash down hundreds ,pf feet to join the great river. Two of the mot graceful are shown on this page, Bridal Veil and Multnomah Falls, both on the south side of the river and within easy reach of Portland. r They are favorite resorts for. the picnickers, who choose them in thousands every summer for their outings. The fir woods overhang the precipices, and ferns peep from every crevice in the rocks, Another illustration, that of Oneonta Gorge, shows a longer vista into, the mountain side. On the northern or Washington side the ground is not as rough, and roads have been hewn out at more or less distance from the great river. Here is many a camping place, where the white tents are set under the trees. No more various beauties are found than when hour by hour the sunlight catches different aspects of water and wood, while the moving life of the river with steamboat, scow, barge and rowboat, gives ever a fresh foreground to the picture. J The Columbia has industries of its own. Not only is it the great and now open highway over which hundreds of thousands of bushels of gram are carried to market from the Inland Empire, but it is one of the great salmon rivers of the world. Here and there along both banks are dotted the salmon canneries. They are the headquarters for small fleets of boats that work their nets, and also for the fish wheels anchored in the main highway of the schools of fish seeking their spawning grounds above. To see; one of these wheels at work during a good run, pouring out its catch, gives the onlooker a never-to-be-forgotten insight into the enormous supplies with which Mother Nature provides us from ocean and estuary and river. J The old pictures of Celilo Falls were never without the figure of the naked Indian, poised spear in hand, watching from the overhanging rock, at the right of the picture, the teeming, seething pool below. To stand and take in the rush and roar of the waters meant dizziness for the common man. The Indian . stood for hours, varying his statue-like pose only by the accurate dash of his spear into the great fish he marked in the circling wash of the river on the rocks below him. J There were two great obstructions interfering with the continuous shipment or the grain of the Inland Empire to the mills and ships in the Portland harbor, the lower at The Dalles, where the river boiled and rushed over the fragments of the legendary Bridge of the Gods. The government-built canal here follows the southern bank from still water above to the calm reaches below. The Celilo canal, still in construction, will serve the same purpose at the falls pictured on this page. Millions of dollars of the nation's money have been and are being well spent to open the river to the boats and prevent any possible monopoly for the railroads that follow each bank of the Columbia.