When we reached Cowlitz Landing, we found the river quite different in character from what we had known it before. It had risen many feet above its ordinary level, and was still rising, and had become a wide, fierce, and rushing stream, bearing on its surface great trees and fragments of wrecked buildings, swiftly sailing down to the Columbia. How serenely we descended the river last year, floating along at sunset, admiring the lovely valley and the hills, reaching over the side of the canoe, and soaking our biscuits in the glacier-water, without once thinking of the vicissitudes to which we were liable from its mountain origin!
The little steamer that recently had begun to compete with the Indian canoes in the traffic of the river, and the carrying of passengers, did not dare to attempt to ascend it. Navigation was not to be thought of by ordinary boats, or by white men, and was possible only by canoes in the most trusty hands. No land-conveyance could be had at this point. We were told that we might take the stream, by those familiar with it, if we could find good Indians willing to go with us. One called "Shorty" was brought forward to negotiate with us. He has the same dwarfed appearance I have noticed in the old women, and that strange, Egyptian-looking face and air. It would be impossible for any one to tell, by his appearance, whether he personally were old or young; but the ancientness of the type is deeply impressed upon him. If half-civilized Indians had been offered, or those that had had much intercourse with the whites, I should have hesitated more to trust them; but he was such a pure Indian, it seemed as if he were as safe as any wild creature. Whether he would extend any help, in emergencies, to his clumsy civilized passengers, was a more doubtful question. However, as the alternative was to wait indefinitely, and the character of the stopping-places, as a rule, drives one to desperate measures, we confided ourselves to his hands, and embarked with him and his assistant, a fine athletic young Indian.
We fixed our eyes intently upon him, as if studying our fates. He was perfectly imperturbable, and steered only, the other poling the canoe along the edge of the stream, and grasping the overhanging trees to pull it along, using the paddle only when these means were not available. His work required unceasing vigilance and activity, and was so hard that it would have exhausted any ordinary man in a few hours; but he kept on from early morning till dark. Always in the most difficult places, or if his energy seemed to flag in the least, Shorty would call out to him, in the most animated manner, mentioning a canoe, a hammock, and a _hyas closhe_ (very nice) _klootchman_; at which the young man would laugh with delight, and start anew. I considered it was probably his stock in life, the prospect of an establishment, which was presented to rouse and cheer him on. Shorty had been recommended to us as one of the best hands on the river. I began to see that it was for his power of inspiring others, as well as for his extreme vigilance in keeping out of the eddies, and avoiding the drift in crossing the river, to be caught in which would have been destruction. We crossed several times, to secure advantages which his quick eye perceived. I noticed that whenever he pointed out any particular branch on the shore to be seized, how certain the other was to strike it at once. With white men, how much blundering and missing there would have been!