[Illustration: Looking up the Columbia, near Bonneville. The main channel of the river is on right of the shoal in foreground.] [Illustration: Salmon trying to jump the Falls of the Willamette at Oregon City.] One of the most interesting attempts to account for the existence of the Red Man in the Northwest is the Okanogan legend that tells of an island far out at sea inhabited by a race of giant whites, whose chief was a tall and powerful woman, Scomalt. When her giants warred among themselves, Scomalt grew angry and drove all the fighters to the end of the island. Then she broke off the end of the island, and pushing with her foot sent it floating away over the sea. The new island drifted far. All the people on it died save one man and one woman. They caught a whale, and its blubber saved them from starving. At last they escaped from the island by making a canoe. In this they paddled many days. Then they came to the mainland, but it was small. It had not yet grown much. Here they landed. But while they had been in the canoe, the sun had turned them from white to red. All the Okanogans were their children. Hence they all are red. Many years from now the whole of the mainland will be cut loose from its foundations, and become an island. It will float about on the sea. That will be the end of the world. [Illustration: COPYRIGHT, KISER PHOTO CO. In the Columbia Canyon at Cascade, with train on the "North Bank" road.] [Illustration: COPYRIGHT, G. M. WEISTER The Cascades of the Columbia. The narrow, rock-filled channel has a fall of thirty-seven feet in four miles. Here the river meets the tides from the ocean, 160 miles away. On the opposite bank, at right, is seen Table Mountain, 4,100 feet, the north abutment of the legendary "Bridge of the Gods."] [Illustration: COPYRIGHT, G. M. WEISTER Fishwheel below the Cascades, with Table Mountain on north side of river.] To the aboriginal Americans in the Northwest the great river, "Wauna" in their vocabulary, was inevitably a subject of deep interest. It not only furnished them a highway, but it supplied them with food. Their most fascinating myths are woven about its history. One of these told of the mighty struggle between Speelyei and Wishpoosh, the greedy king beaver, which resulted in breaking down the walls of the great lakes of the interior and creating a passage for their waters through the mountains. Thus the Indians accounted for the Columbia and its canyon. [Illustration: COPYRIGHT, KISER PHOTO CO. Sunrise on the Columbia; view at 4 a. m. from top of Table Mountain.] [Illustration: COPYRIGHT, KISER PHOTO CO. Nightfall on the Columbia. "O love, they die in yon rich sky, They faint on hill or field or river: Our echoes roll from soul to soul, And grow forever and forever."--Tennyson.]