A MOVING MOUNTAIN.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2114, 21 October 1890, Page 3

A MOVING MOUNTAIN.

A travelling mountain is found at the Cascades of the Colnmbia. It is a triplepeaked mass of dark brown basalt, six or eight miles in length, where it fronts the river, and rises to a height ef almost 2,000 feet above the water.

That it is in motion is the last thought which would be likely to suggest itself, to the mind of anyone passing it ; yet il is a well established fact that the entire mountain is moving slowly, but steadily, down the river, as if it had a deliberate purpose some time m 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 abovedescribed mountainous ridge the name of the “ travelling mountain” or “sliding mountain.”

In its forward and downward move' ment the forests along the base of the ridge have become submerged in the river. Large tree-stubs can he seen standing out deep in the water on this shore. The railway engineers and the trackmen find that the line cf the railroad which skirts the foot of the mountain is being continually forced out of place. At certain points the roadbed and rails have been pushed eight or ten feet out of line in the course of a few yeprs. Ceologigts attribute this phenomenon to the fact that the basalt, which constitutes the bulk of the mountain, rests on a substratum of conglomerate, or of a soft sandstone, which the deep swift current of the mightly river is constantly weaHug away, or that this softer suhrook is of itslf yielding, at great depths, to the enormous weight of the harder material above.