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CHAPTER X
When the Fire-Canoes Took the Place of the Log-Canoes
Variety of Craft that have Navigated the Columbia—The Beaver, Carolina, Columbia, and Lot Whitcomb—Beginning of Steamboating above the Cascades—Steamboats above The Dalles—Rival Companies on the River—The Oregon Steam Navigation Company—Great Business Developments of the Decade of the Sixties—Specimen Shipments in 1862—The Steamboat Ride from Portland to Lewiston—Some of the Steamboat Men of the Period—Story of W. H. Gray and his Sailboat on the Snake River—Descending The Dalles—Captain Coe's Account of the First Steamboat Ride on the Upper Columbia and the Snake—Navigation above Colville and on the Lakes—The Locks and Prospects of Future Navigation—Remarkable Trips on the River—Some Steamboats of the Present.
WE have learned that our River has been navigated by boats of almost every description. At one time it was the hollowed cedar-log canoes of the aborgines. Again, the bateaux of the trappers were the chief craft to cut the blue lakes and the white rapids. At yet other times it was the flat-boats of the immigrants. Sailing ships of every sort—frigates, galleons, caravels, men-of-war, full-rigged ships, barks, brigs, schooners, and sloops—crowded early to the silver gate of the River.
In due process of time the “Fire-canoes,” as the natives called steamers, let loose their trails of smoke amid the tops of the “continuous woods.” The
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