Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 21, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 February 1882 — Wonders of Oregon. [ARTICLE]

Wonders of Oregon.

Yakima Record. From Adam Duncan, who spends the greater part of his time over on the Columbia, near Priest Kaplds, we learn some interesting facts (a regard to natural wonders in that unsettled region. One of these wonders is described as a sort of lake or basin some four miles long and quite near the Bapids. When the Columbia is at its highest this lake in the ground, leaving nothing in its stead save a great flu tuber of large wells, some of them being nearly twenty feet in width. The number of these wells is estimated to be about 150. Passing about among them they are found to contain waters of different qualities and colors, some of them being clear, cold and agreeable in taste and filled with beautiful speckled trout, while others are bitter and black like those Stygian pools renowned in ancient fable,over which the souls of the damned were supposed to pass on their journey to the regions of torment. As the Columbia Biver begins to run low in its channel these wells gradually rise until they overflow and forma lake. Of the scientist, who is supposed to have a theory for all things, let us inquire: “Why Is all this?” By what sort of subterranean, syphonic, double-back-action arrangement are these things brought about? Why should the water in the wells arise as tbe water in the channel of the river recedes, and why should wells sj close to each other contain waters of such a different character? Another natural wonder presents itself for solution up iu tbe neighborhood of Moses’ Ceolie. In the hottest part of the summer there is a place u there where huge icicles form and bang like in midwinter from the tall rocks. By digging in among the stones or broken shale large bodies of ice are found which seem to form there in midsummer. The water flowing from among these broken stones is as cold as ice itself, but where it comes from and why these icicles form in midsummer, while none are to be seen in the winter time, are more conundrums. The rocky bluff slopes gradually down from the north in such away as to receive the sun’s rays m their fullest force, and just back of the bluff is a level country covered with bunch grass.