seemingly about as wide as the Hudson River at Tarry- 

 town. But no sooner had we passed around the first 

 headland than we saw it stretching onward for many 

 miles, till it once more disappeared around a still loftier 

 wooded point. It may have been ten miles from the 

 foot of the lake that we put in at a small bay where a 

 new town was springing up, the result of a new irrigation 

 project. The hills had already become higher, their 

 sides more abrupt. They were crowding this new, shin- 

 ing little village down close to the water's edge, and the 

 orchards, as yet only squares of brown earth with 

 polka dots of frail green upon them where the young 

 trees were flourishing, were pushing bravely up the 

 slopes into the fir timber, clinging to every sheltering 

 shelf. There was something heroic about this orchard 

 town on the very outskirts of cultivation. These or- 

 chards were the first-line trenches in man's battle with 

 the soil. Just beyond the town the boundaries of the 

 Chelan National Forest began, the hills arose still more 

 abruptly, there was no foothold for the orchardist. He 

 had pressed forward as far as he could go, and the 

 Swiss peasant's herd bells tinkling on the meadows 

 under snow line, so celebrated in song and story, are no 

 more romantic than these last orchards clinging to the 

 mountainside above the green water of Lake Chelan. 



When our boat rounded the next headland, we saw 

 the lake still stretching northwestward, but no longer a 

 jewel in a pastoral setting. A few last orchards, the 



