Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 43, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 June 1890 — A MOVING MOUNTAIN. [ARTICLE]

A MOVING MOUNTAIN.

It Travels Slowly Down the Columbia River as If Intent on Stopping It* The AatorianA traveling mountain is found at the Cascades of the Columbia. It is a triple-peaked mass of dark brown basalt, six of eight miles in length where it fronts the river, and rises to a height of almost two thousand feet above the water. That it is in motion is the last thought which would be likely to suggest itself to the mind of any one passing it; yet it is is a well-established fact that this entire mountain is moving slowly but steadily down the river, as if it had a deliberate purpose some time in the future to dam the Columbia and form a great lake from the Cascades to the Dalles. The Indian traditions indicate immense movements of the mountains hereabouts long before white men came to Oregon, and the early settlers, immigrants, many of them from New England, gave the name of “traveling mountain,” or “sliding mountain.” In its forward and downward movement the forests along the base of the ridge have become submerged in the river. Large tree stubs can be seen standing in the water on this shore. The railway engineers and the brake* men find that the line of tfiejrailroadjat the foot of the mountain is being continually forced out of place. At certain points the road-bed and rails have been pushed eight or ten feet out of line in course of a few years, -Geologists attribute this strange phenomonon to the fact that the basalt, which constitutes the bulk of the mountain, rests on a substratum of conglomerate, or of soft sand-stone, which the deep swift current of the mighty river is constantly wearing away, or that this softer subrock is of itself yielding, at great depths, to the enormous weight of the harder material above. How singular it is that the wind always blows strongest when the man with the long-tailed coat is passing a row of flour barrels?