wstone. The north branch, still called the
Columbia, extends through Washington far into British territory, its
highest tributaries reaching back through long parallel spurs of the
Rockies between and beyond the headwaters of the Fraser, Athabasca, and
Saskatchewan. Each of these main branches, dividing again and again,
spreads a network of channels over the vast complicated mass of the
great range throughout a section nearly a thousand miles in length,
searching every fountain, however small or great, and gathering a
glorious harvest of crystal water to be rolled through forest and plain
in one majestic flood to the sea, reinforced on the way by tributaries
that drain the Blue Mountains and more than two hundred miles of
the Cascade and Coast Ranges. Though less than half as long as the
Mississippi, it is said to carry as much water. The amount of its
discharge at different seasons, however, has never been exactly
measured, but in time of flood its current is sufficiently massive and
powerful to penetrate the sea to a distance of fifty or sixty miles from
shore, its waters being easily recognized by the difference in color
and by the drift of leaves, berries, pine cones, branches, and trunks of
trees that they carry.

That so large a river as the Columbia, making a telling current so far
from shore, should remain undiscovered while one exploring expedition
after another sailed past seems remarkable, even after due allowance is
made for the cloudy weather that prevails hereabouts and the broad fence
of breakers drawn across the bar. During the last few centuries, when
the maps of the world were in great part blank, the search for new
worlds was fashionable business, and when such large game was no longer
to be found, islands lying unclaimed in the great oceans, inhabited
by useful and profitable people to be converted or enslaved, became
attractive objects; also new ways to India, seas, straits, El Dorados,
fountains of youth, and rivers that flowed over golden sands.

Those early explorers and adventurers were mostly brave, enterprising,
and, after their fashion, pious men. In their clumsy sailing vessels
they dared to go where no chart or lighthouse showed the way, where the
set of the currents, the location of sunken outlying rocks and shoals,
were all unknown, facing fate and weather, undaunted however dark the
signs, heaving the lead and thrashing the men to their duty and trusting
to Providence. When a new shore