THROUGH WONDERLAND. 
37 
Yakima, Klickitat and Kittitas valleys, which are well adapted, not only to stock 
raising, but also to the cultivation of fruits and cereals. In this section wool 
growing is also engaged in with great success. This industry is one of consid¬ 
erable importance both in Washington and Oregon, the entire clip for 1885 
being no less than 13,000,000 pounds. 
There are few revelations more surprising to an Eastern tourist than that of 
the magnitude of some of the great Western rivers. The Snake river, for 
example, is known to him, if at all, merely as one of the various tributaries of 
the Columbia; and, when he finds himself crossing its mighty flood by a bridge 
1,672 feet in length, and learns that its force and volume are such that it drives 
itself like a solid wedge into the waters of the Columbia, he is apt to wonder 
that he knows so little about it. Future tourists will not regard this tributary 
stream with any the less interest for being told beforehand that it is longer than 
the Rhine, more than three times the length of the Hudson, and that, straight¬ 
ened out, it would reach from the Missouri valley to the Atlantic ocean. It is, 
moreover, a great commercial highway, being navigated by steamers of consid¬ 
erable tonnage for 150 miles. It flows for a long distance in a deep canon, the 
sides of which are so precipitous as to render the river almost inaccessible. 
Immense shutes have therefore been constructed for the transfer of the wheat 
that forms the staple product of the country from the warehouses on the high 
banks to the boats and barges anchored below. 
Another section of the famous wheat country of Southeastern Washington, 
identified with the unmusical name of Walla Walla, borne by the oldest and 
best town east of the Cascade Mountains, is reached by a branch line extending 
from Wallula Junction. With 100,000 acres of land cultivated to cereals, with 
800,000 apple trees, 100,000 pear, plum and peach trees, 25,000 grape-vines, 
large herds of cattle, and still larger flocks of sheep, the county of which 
Walla Walla is the judicial seat may be taken as fairly illustrating the varied 
capabilities of Eastern Washington. Scarcely less prosperous is the adjoining 
county of Columbia. These counties, however, being well settled, reference is 
made to them only as foreshadowing the future condition of those younger 
counties, adjacent to the Northern Pacific Railroad, which are now in course of 
settlement. In many of the latter the cultivation of the soil presents even 
fewer difficulties than in these older settled regions, in many parts of which 
there is scarcely an acre of level land to be found. 
Returning to Wallula Junction, and there resuming our westward journey, 
we at once enter a region of surpassing interest, none other than the famous 
land — 
“ Where rolls the Oregon.” 
Its navigable waters within 450 miles of those of the Missouri river, the 
great Columbia drains an area almost equal in extent to the united area of 
France and Germany. Excluding the portages at the Cascades and Dalles, 
with several less important rapids, the river is navigable to Kettle Falls, 725 
miles from its mouth. These falls, on the upper river, are not accessible by- 
