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 him- 

 dred and twenty miles to receive the Okiaa- 

 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 

 pm-sues 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 xmapproachable, al- 

 though the gloominess of its canon is relieved 

 in some manner by its many falls and springs, 



336 



