160 NARRATIVE OF 1853. 
opening on the river, which makes a route close to its banks impossible. Small lakes occur 
among these hills, and timber is abundant as far as the Spokane river, a distance of twenty- 
five miles further. The soil is good, being composed of sand and alluvium. The western bank 
of the Columbia there has a barren appearance, and the hills rise from it to the height of a 
thousand feet, receding from the river, where it takes a great bend to the west, and is nearly 
destitute of timber. | y 
The Spokane is fordable two miles above its mouth, and at its mouth is two hundred feet 
wide, with a rocky bottom. Its banks are very high, of precipitous basaltic rock, leaving a 
narrow valley between of good soil. Twenty miles up, where crossed by Captain McClellan, 
it is little more than a brook at low water, seventy-five feet wide and three deep. 
From Lieutenant Arnold’s observations along the Columbia to the Grand Coulée, and from 
the appearances east of Fort Okinakane, it seems that the character of the tract between the 
: Columbia and the Okinakane gradually approaches that of the Great Plain towards the south, 
though more uneven and probably much better supplied with grass. The woods extend but 
little south of where Captain McClellan crossed it, except on the Columbia, where they extend 
to the Spokane, on its banks, and occur at scattered intervals below. 
The Great Plain was crossed by Lieutenant Arnold sixty miles west of the route of the main 
expedition. He followed down the Columbia where it turns to the west, below the mouth of 
the Spokane, by a very rocky and dangerous trail for fifty miles, as far as the mouth of the 
Grand Coulée. The northern banks of the river appeared impassable. "Timber continues 
along the slopes and cliffs, gradually diminishing, and almost entirely disappearing at last. 
The river runs far below the general level of the Great Plain. The Grand Coulée (see sketch) 
is about ten miles wide where it opens on the river at its northern end, which is a hundred 
feet above the water, and gradually widens towards the south; its walls, eight hundred feet 
high, are formed of solid basaltic rock, but diminish in height southward as the bottom rose 
towards the summit of the plain, until, in twenty miles distance, they ended. Numerous 
lateral ravines and cafions were seen running in various directions, some of them containing 
lakes without outlet, and streams ten feet wide and two feet deep. 
The Cascade mountains were visible at the middle of the route, though from that of Captain 
McClellan they could not be seen. Trees disappeared entirely south of the Columbia. The 
trail again approaches to within twelve miles of the Columbia, about forty-five miles north of 
the mouth of the Yakima, and crosses a track of drifting sand-hills four miles wide, and which 
extend westward as far as the eye can distinguish, the gorge through which the Columbia 
flows being visible the whole distance. From ten miles above the Yakima to the mouth of 
Snake river the country is level, low, and sandy, and the banks of the latter river, for a mile 
up the stream, are not more than from ten to thirty feet high. The direct distance across the 
plain, from north to south, is from ninety to a hundred and twenty miles on all the routes 
traversed. The wooded hills, being the spurs of the Bitter Root mountains, border it on the 
ia runs round its western portion, making the width of 
two miles in width, bounded by high ri 
mouth of the Walla-Walla and the Yakima. 
