Mount Rainier, a Record of Exploration. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ vegetation, since they had passed this place, had so much advanced that they had difficulty in recognising it again. The wet prairies were overgrown with rank grass, from one to two feet in height. After a short rest at the foot of the mountain, they began its ascent, and reached the crest of the ridge in about three hours. On every side they found a low growth of shrubs, which they had not suspected when it was covered with snow, and causing the summit to differ essentially from the broad ridge they had crossed between the Yakima and Pischous rivers. They encamped for the night on the edge of a wet prairie, which afforded pasturage for their horses.

      The next day they passed through several similar prairies, and descended the western slope of the mountain, where they found more patches of snow than on the east side. This was just the reverse of what they had found on their previous passage; the season, too, was evidently much less advanced. This circumstance was supposed to be owing to the denser forest on the west, as well as the absence of elevated plains.

      They encamped the same night at the little prairie before spoken of, at the foot of the western slope. Before reaching it, they met a party of men and women carrying a sick chief over the mountain, who was evidently dying. It was affecting to see him stretching forth his hand to them as they passed, as if desiring to be friends with all before he died. He died the same night.

      The two next days it rained almost constantly, but they found the road much less difficult to travel than before, and the streams were fordable, which enabled them to make more rapid progress.

      On the 13th, they passed the Smalocho, and on the 15th reached Nisqually, all well; having performed a journey of about one thousand miles without any material accident, except those that have been related as having occurred to the instruments. They traversed a route which white men had never before taken, thus enabling us to become acquainted with a portion of the country about which all had before been conjecture. They had also made a large addition to our collection of plants.

      

Theodore Winthrop. From the Rowse crayon portrait.

IV. TACOMA AND THE INDIAN LEGEND OF HAMITCHOU

       By THEODORE WINTHROP

       Table of Contents

      Theodore Winthrop was a descendant of the famous Governor John Winthrop, of Massachusetts. He was born at New Haven, Connecticut, on September 22, 1828, and lost his life early in the Civil War near Great Bethel, Virginia, on June 10, 1861. His death was deeply mourned as of one who had given great promise of success in the field of literature.

      His book, The Canoe and the Saddle, has appeared in many editions. It tells of his visit to Puget Sound and across the Cascade Mountains in 1853. In that volume he declares that the Indians called the mountain, Tacoma. So far as is known to the editor, that is the first place that that name for the mountain appeared in print.

      In addition to this interesting fact, the book is a charming piece of literature, and will endure as one of the classics on the Pacific Northwest. The portions here reproduced relate to the mountain. They are taken from an early edition of the book published by the John W. Lovell Company of New York. The edition carries no date, but the copyright notice is by Ticknor and Fields, 1862. The parts used are from pages 43–45, and 123–176.

      The author's niece, Elizabeth Winthrop Johnson, of Pasadena, California, kindly furnished a photograph of Rowse's portrait of her famous uncle.

      The large and beautiful glacier sweeping from the northeast summit past the western slope of Steamboat Prow now bears the name of Winthrop Glacier.

      We had rounded a point, and opened Puyallop Bay, a breadth of sheltered calmness, when I, lifting sleepy eyelids for a dreamy stare about, was suddenly aware of a vast white shadow in the water. What cloud, piled massive on the horizon, could cast an image so sharp in outline, so full of vigorous detail of surface? No cloud, as my stare, no longer dreamy, presently discovered—no cloud, but a cloud compeller. It was a giant mountain dome of snow, swelling and seeming to fill the aërial spheres as its image displaced the blue deeps of tranquil water. The smoky haze of an Oregon August hid all the length of its lesser ridges, and left this mighty summit based upon uplifting dimness. Only its splendid snows were visible, high in the unearthly regions of clear blue noonday sky. The shore line drew a cincture of pines across the broad base, where it faded unreal into the mist. The same dark girth separated the peak from its reflection, over which my canoe was now pressing, and sending wavering swells to shatter the beautiful vision before it.

      Kingly and alone stood this majesty, without any visible comrade or consort, though far to the north and the south its brethren and sisters dominated their realms, each in isolated sovereignty, rising above the pine-darkened sierra of the Cascade Mountains—above the stern chasm where the Columbia, Achilles of rivers, sweeps, short-lived and jubilant, to the sea—above the lovely vales of the Willamette and Umpqua. Of all the peaks from California to Frazer's River, this one before me was royalest. Mount Regnier Christians have dubbed it, in stupid nomenclature perpetuating the name of somebody or nobody. More melodiously the siwashes call it Tacoma—a generic term also applied to all snow peaks. Whatever keen crests and crags there may be in its rock anatomy of basalt, snow covers softly with its bends and sweeping curves. Tacoma, under its ermine, is a crushed volcanic dome, or an ancient volcano fallen in, and perhaps as yet not wholly lifeless. The domes of snow are stateliest. There may be more of feminine beauty in the cones, and more of masculine force and hardihood in the rough pyramids, but the great domes are calmer and more divine, and, even if they have failed to attain absolute dignified grace of finish, and are riven and broken down, they still demand our sympathy for giant power, if only partially victor. Each form—the dome, the cone, and the pyramid—has its type among the great snow peaks of the Cascades.

      [Chapter VII, beginning at page 123 of the original publication, is entitled "Tacoma."]

      Up and down go the fortunes of men, now benignant, now malignant. Ante meridiem of our lives, we are rising characters. Our full noon comes, and we are borne with plaudits on the shoulders of a grateful populace. Post meridiem, we are ostracized, if not more rudely mobbed. At twilight, we are perhaps recalled, and set on the throne of Nestor.

      Such slow changes in esteem are for men of some import and of settled character. Loolowcan suffered under a more rapidly fluctuating public opinion. At the camp of the road-makers, he had passed through a period of neglect—almost of ignominy. My hosts had prejudices against redskins; they treated the son of Owhhigh with no consideration; and he became depressed and slinking in manner under the influence of their ostracism. No sooner had we disappeared from the range of Boston eyes than Loolowcan resumed his leadership and his control. I was very secondary now, and followed him humbly enough up the heights we had reached. Here were all the old difficulties increased, because they were no longer met on a level. We were to climb the main ridge—the mountain of La Tête—abandoning the valley, assaulting the summits. And here, as Owhhigh had prophesied in his harangue at Nisqually, the horse's mane must be firmly grasped by the climber. Poor, panting, weary nags! may it be true, the promise of Loolowcan, that not far away is abundant fodder! But where can aught, save firs with ostrich digestion, grow on these rough, forest-clad shoulders?

      So I clambered on till near noon.

      I had been following thus for many hours the blind path, harsh, darksome, and utterly lonely, urging on with no outlook, encountering no landmark—at last, as I stormed a ragged crest, gaining a height that overtopped the firs, and, halting there СКАЧАТЬ