282 APPENDIX. 
hundred miles to the ocean, it forms part of the southern boun- 
dary of the Territory. The general width below Walla Walla 
is from a quarter to half a mile, and above Walla Walla nearly 
a quarter of a mile. West of the Cascade Mountains the 
current is gentle, the banks are high and covered with dense 
evergreen forests, and the scenery is grand. East of the 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 
have great difficulty in making headway against the current. 
There is now no regular navigation above Walla Walla, but 
steamers have run-up to Priest’s rapids, sixty miles 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 will run 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 boundary 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 
Qead or Pend d’Oreille River), the next branch of the Colum- 
bia in size, rises in the northeast part of Washington, and, 
after 2 course of about six hundred miles, all within the limits 
