Browse by Archive
Oregon Digital
|
deck" you saw the river flowing right along through the loosely stacked cordwood beneath. Roos was exultant over the way that mighty mass of rough wood charging down a rock-walled canyon was going to photograph, and Ike was proud as a peacock over...
2004-08-11
|
|
Image captions: TRUCKING THE SKIFF THROUGH KETTLE FALLS
TWILIGHT IN THE GORGE AT KETTLE FALLS --page break-- the sort of stuff the blade is going into, and — as on the verge of an eddy — with the water to port running in one direction,...
2004-08-11
|
|
Image captions: THE "INTAKE" AT THE LITTLE DALLES (above)
WHERE WE STARTED TO LINE THE LITTLE DALLES (below) --page break-- the right hand of the two shallow channels without difficulty. In brilliant sunshine we pulled down a broad...
2004-08-11
|
|
Image captions: A "CLOSE-UP" OF IKE BUILDING HIS RAFT
MY FIFTY POUND SALMON --page break-- broke-loose logs. Thus Jess, and thus—or in similar vein—about a dozen others who came down to see us off from the ferry landing. They all told...
2004-08-11
|
|
a skiff. A raft is the only safe way to make the passage and—here Ike spreads out his hands with the manner of a butler announcing that "dinner is served!"--the raft is at the "farmer's" disposal. That suits the "farmer" to a "T ;" so the skiff...
2004-08-16
|
|
name) was sparing with his tongue because he was unsparing with his brain. His mind was always ready to act—and to react. There were to arise several situations well calculated to test the mettle of him, and he was always "there." I have never...
2004-08-16
|
|
in using his power at the right time and in the right way. A hundred-ton tugboat would have been helpless in stopping the raft once it started to go in the wrong direction. The trick was to start it right and not let it go wrong, Ike...
2004-08-16
|
|
pletely as he slipped into the "V," keeping a bare steerage-way over the current. Twenty miles an hour was quite fast enough to be going in the event she did swerve from the channel and hit a rock ; there was no point in adding to the potential...
2004-08-16
|
|
along at three miles an hour; five seconds later, having slid over the "intake," it was doing more than twenty. The actual slope of that first short pitch must have been all of one-in-ten, so that I found myself bracing against the incline of the...
2004-08-16
|
|
learned was called Middle Rapid locally. There was a short stretch of good rough white water. Offhand, it looked to me rather sloppier than anything we had put the skiff into so far; but, as it appeared there would be no difficulty in steering a...
2004-08-16
|
|
of an hour we seemed to be steering for those shimmering pennons as for a harbor beacon; then a sudden up-thrust of black wall cut them off like a sliding door. By the time we were headed west again the dark pall of fallen night had smothered all...
2004-08-16
|
|
ate the affections of the Dutchman's collie. "It's all in gettin' a jump on a pup's feelin's at the fust offsta't," he philosophied bitterly; "an' naow I'll be losin' mah jump." Rather keen on the psychology of alienation, that observation of old...
2004-08-16
|
|
atively slow current and only occasional stretches of white water. I took the occasion to launch the skiff and paddle about for an hour, trying to get some line on the speed at which the raft was towing. In smooth water I found I had the legs of...
2004-08-16
|
|
would be if a jog were put into it by an earthquake—a rapid shaped like a flash of lightning, and with just as much kick in it.
After much climbing and scrambling over rocks, Roos found a place about half way down the left side of the jagged...
2004-08-16
|
|
"Ye're right," he assented, after ejecting the inevitable squirt of tobacco and parking the residuary quid out of the way of his tongue as a squirrel stows a nut; "ye're right ; five minutes fer eloosidashun an' r'h'rsal." As usual, Ike...
2004-08-16
|
|
channel. It looked too hard a pull to make the main one to the left ; and the latter would have the worst whirlpools, too. I noted how confoundedly in the way of the river that sharp-nosed island was; and not only of the river, but of anything...
2004-08-16
|
|
it worse now was that the possible points of impact were scattered all the way along for two or three hundred yards, while the launch was giving very little help.
A man ought to be able to lean onto a sweep all day long without getting more than...
2004-08-16
|
|
"deck" of the raft, and finally, when we had recovered a bit of breath, of Ike and me toiling at the sweep. To save time, we had lunch on the raft, taking Earl's portion up to him in the skiff.
Ike, announcing that he would need a crew of four or...
2004-08-16
|
|
was rather too bulky to allow a shirt to be drawn over it, Ike went around for a couple of hours just as he was, for all the world like "the noblest Roman of them all"—from neck to the waist, that is. The long, drooping, tobacco-stained...
2004-08-16
|
|
estimates of time had to be multiplied by at least two to approximate accuracy, I realized at once that our rafting voyage was at an end. We already had some very good raft pictures, and as a few hundred yards of the run through Box Canyon would...
2004-08-16
|
|
determine the nature and depth of bedrock, which seems to be the only question left unsettled which affects the feasibility of the project. The Northwestern states are all in a league for securing the reclamation of this vast area, and there is no...
2004-08-16
|
|
even in the launch. Earl seemed rather of the same mind, too, for he kept edging out to the right every time one of the big combers lurched over at him. With the engine running like a top, he kept her in comparatively good water all the way...
2004-08-16
|
|
"Has old Pierre seen it? The water looks terribly cold as we think of his failing eyesight. Then an order, a shout, backing on one side and pulling on the other, and a quick stroke of the steering oar, and the rock appears on our right hand....
2004-08-16
|
|
water, and so made a fairly comfortable passage of it.
With the "intake" above Kalichen Falls full in view a half mile distant, Earl went back to his engine as we shot out at the foot of "White Cap" and gave it a few little "jiggering"...
2004-08-16
|
|
of wake, she heeled all of forty-five degrees to starboard at the turn, seeing which, the river forthwith began piling over her port or up-stream side and making an astonishingly single-minded attempt to push her on the rest of the way under....
2004-08-16
|
