STEEP TRAILS 



the midst of the busy throng, and making 

 glorious offerings for every use of utility or 

 adornment. 



From the mouth of the Spokane the Colum 

 bia, now out of the woods, flows to the west 

 ward with a broad, stately current for a hun 

 dred and twenty miles to receive the Okina- 

 gan, a large, generous tributary a hundred and 

 sixty miles long, coming from the north and 

 drawing some of its waters from the Cascade 

 Range. More than half its course is through a 

 chain of lakes, the largest of which at the head 

 of the river is over sixty miles in length. From 

 its confluence with the Okinagan the river 

 pursues a southerly course for a hundred and 

 fifty miles, most of the way through a dreary, 

 treeless, parched plain to meet the great south 

 fork. The Lewis, or Snake, River is nearly a 

 thousand miles long and drains nearly the 

 whole of Idaho, a territory rich in scenery, 

 gold mines, flowery, grassy valleys, and des 

 erts, while some of the highest tributaries 

 reach into Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada. 

 Throughout a great part of its course it is 

 countersunk in a black lava plain and shut 

 in by mural precipices a thousand feet high, 

 gloomy, forbidding, and unapproachable, al 

 though the gloominess of its canon is relieved 

 in some manner by its many falls and springs, 



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