Columbia, that formerly occupied not only
its present bed, but other channels, now abandoned, including the Grande
Coulee, between whose immense walls it poured a current ten miles broad
at the mouth; and that the water was at some time one or two thousand
feet above the present level of the river, as shown by the terraces
along its banks, and fragments of drift caught in fissures of the rock.
The Grande Coulee is like an immense roofless ruin, extending north and
south for fifty miles. Strange forms of rock are scattered over the
great bare plain. To the Indians, it is the home of evil spirits. They
say there are rumblings in the earth, and that the rocks are hot, and
smoke. Thunder and lightning, so rare elsewhere on the western coast,
are here more common. The evidences of volcanic action are everywhere
apparent,--in the huge masses and curious columns of basaltic and
trap-rock, the lava-beds through which the rivers have found their way,
and the powdery alkaline soil. The marks of glaciers are also as
distinct in the bowlders, and the scooping-out of the beds of lakes. The
gravelly prairies between the Columbia and Puget Sound, and the
Snoqualmie, Steilaguamish, and other flats, show that the Sound was
formerly of much more extensive proportions than at present.

The Columbia was first discovered on the 15th of August, 1775, by Bruno
Heceta, a Spanish explorer, who found an opening in the coast, from
which rushed so strong a current as to prevent his entering. He
concluded that it was the mouth of some great river, or possibly the
Straits of Fuca, which might have been erroneously marked on his chart.
As this was the anniversary of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, he
named the opening _Ensenada de Asuncion_ (Assumption Inlet); and it was
afterwards called, in the charts published in Mexico, _Ensenada de
Heceta_, and _Rio de San Roque_. He gave to the point on the north side
the name of Cape _San Roque_; and, to that on the south, Cape _Frondoso_
(Leafy Cape).

Meares, in 1788, gave the name of Cape Disappointment to the northern
point, owing to his not being able to make the entrance of the river,
and the mouth he called Deception Bay, and asserted that there was no
such river as the St. Roc, as laid down in the Spanish charts.

Vancouver also, when exploring the Pacific coast in 1792, passed by this
great stream, without suspecting that there was a river of any
importance there. He noticed the line of breakers