The Columbia River: Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery, Its CommerceLyman, William Denison
History
The Columbia River: Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery, Its Commerce
Lyman, William Denison
Columbia River; Columbia River -- Description and travel; Columbia River -- History
Time forbids that we pause for more than one added scene on the Stehekin,
and this is the Horseshoe Basin, thirty miles up the river. This is in the
upper canyon. Imagine yourself perched upon a granite pinnacle, looking
possibly a little anxiously for bear in the thick copses at its bases, for
this is said to be the greatest bear region in the country, but soon
lifting your eyes to the heights on either side. Six thousand feet deep is
that stupendous gorge. On the south side you see the "castled crags,"
glacier-crested, while on the north, Horseshoe Basin stands revealed. A
long line of dark-red minarets, at whose foot stretches two miles of
glistening and twisted ice, then below that a great terrace, vivid green
with spring foliage, and over it falling a perfect symposium of
waterfalls, if we may be allowed such an expression. Twenty-one falls and
cataracts all in one view. They vary in descent from two hundred to two
thousand feet. Joining at the foot of the terrace in one foaming torrent
the waters of the Basin plunge in one fall of two hundred feet, thence
pass under a snow tunnel and down a rocky chute swept clean by the flood
to augment the already raging waters of the Stehekin. The Horseshoe Basin,
though not grander, not so sublimely terrible, in fact, as some other
scenes in the canyon, has that indescribable look of perfectness which
belongs to the immortal works of nature and art. It has a symmetry of form
and colour beyond any other in the entire region. The dark-red minarets
which form the outer escarpment, ten thousand feet above sea-level, form a
marvellous contrast and yet harmony with the green and blue and white of
the glacier and the snow-field, and this in turn is margined with the
deep-green and olive hues of the lower terrace, while joining and unifying
all is the flashing and opalescent splendour of the cataracts.
[Illustration: Cascade Pass at Head of Stehekin River, Wash. Photo. by T.
W. Tolman, Spokane.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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