of' up passengers and three in the crew and ""ith 8.11 our bedrolls, 
grub, etc., to say nothing of ourselves there -"as not much floor 
s r*e left frr dancing. 1® iust spread ourselves on the deck, fore 
and aft and on the bench rhich ran round the cabin* ’’’here -as plenty 
of room for all of us. 
'Mere V^s little excitement till wr passed Asotin, a 
little -"heat town in Washington- On a gravel 1 ar near there I saw. 
a big s^an, t ■ first I have seen m many years- where •’"■ere lots 
of mergansers " r ho are the original -fiitester navigators, i any eagles 
who floate round a mile or two above us, an owl or two, long tailed 
magpies flitting from cliff to cliff, a few spauo-s whi^h I could 
not identify arm every nry and then a colony of cliff s™ allows, 
whose nests looking like funnels ~m. th the spouts b roken off and 
the end where it was pointed towards us "tie plastered in hundreds 
on the overhanging cliffs. 
Above Asotin the country became rougher, and it had net 
been smooth by any jeans that far. You : ust understand that all 
of eastern Washington and Oregon s one great lava flow, I an told 
t ,e greatest iri the ’"orld? and '".ere the streai s have cut thro igh 
it, one is rej nded of a gigantic layer cake, flow being imposed on 
flow, each receedmg a little from t le one beneath, m many places 
SO or more, each defended by turrets and 1.attlem nts of basalt• 
in m ny places the columns look .like gigantic fencepo^ ts stood 
on end and perpendicular, in several places I saw this formation 
and on top of it the next flow ad been contorted so that the col¬ 
umns radiated like the shafts of a fan at nearly 45 degrees from 
the vertlc -1 handle below, '’’he water rapidly became rougher and 
ve dashed through the u ill races where the little boat sto< d on its 
tail and pulled itself up hand over hand. When Ole, the mate, 
would say, "Pit still, never mind if you do get vet" and the roar 
of the exhaust would mount higher and --e would creep, creep p the 
