APPENDIX. 479 



hundred miles totlie ocean, it forms part of theso-atliern Ijoun- 

 dary of the Territory. The general width below Walla Walla 

 is from a quarter to h:df a mile, and above Walla Walla nearly 

 a quarter of a mile. West of tlie Cascade Mountains toe 

 current is gentle, the banks ai-e high and covered witli dense 

 evergreen forests, and the scenery is grand. East of tiie Cas- 

 cade Mountains the current is swift, the banks are bare and 

 rocky, and the scenery is desolate. Ocean steamers can as- 

 cend at low water to the " Cascades," a town built at a point 

 where there is a fall in the river, one hundred and thirty-two 

 miles from the ocean. At the Dalles, fifty miles east from 

 the Cascades, there is another fall, and another interruption of 

 navigation. From the Dalles to Walla Walla, one hundred 

 miles, the river is in some places so swift that steamboats 

 hnve great difficulty in making headway against the current. 

 There is now no regular navigation above Walla Walla, but 

 steiimers have run up to Priest's rapids, sixty jniles farther; 

 and a steamer was in 1860 used above those rapids. The river 

 is navigable, with occasional interruptions by rapids, to Colville, 

 between latitude 48° and 49^ ; but the stream is so swift in many 

 places, its bends so great, fuel so scarce and dear, the adjacent 

 country so sterile, and the population so scanty, that probably 

 many years will elapse before steamers wilLrun regularly and 

 frequently up and down. Snake (or Lewis's) River rises in 

 the southeast corner of the Territory, and, after a course of 

 about eight hundred miles, all of it within the limits of Wash- 

 ington, save for one hundred and fifty miles, where it serves 

 as a bcmndary on the Oregon side, falls into the Columbia 

 near Walla Walla. During the last five hundred miles of its 

 length' it gains very little in size, running through a dry and 

 desolate country. In many places it is deep enough for navi- 

 gation, and steamers have ascended it to Lewiston, one hun- 

 dred miles from its mouth. Clark's river (called also the Flat 

 Head or Pend d'Oreille River), the next branch of the Colum- 

 bia in size, rises in the northeast part of Washington, and, 

 after a course of about six hundi-ed miles, all within the limits 



