212 
TOPOGRAPHICAL REPORT ON WESTERN DIVISION. 
crosses two of its small branches in the descent from the divide. Follow this stream from the 
ford to the Columbia, and then turn up the banks of that river. The range we have just crossed 
runs along the river below the point at which we struck it, and bluff up to the water. Above 
this point the range keeps back from the river on the left of the trail, and strikes the Wenatsa- 
pam two miles above its mouth. Between the range and the river there is a low sandy plateau, 
covered with sage and immense masses of gneiss rock and granite boulders. There is also some 
sandstone at the point where the trail turns up the Columbia. This sandstone is soft, and has 
been worked, by the action of the water and the atmosphere, into curious and fantastic shapes. 
Two pillars of this rock stand side by side, out upon the plateau, between the range and the 
river, and are peculiar from their forms, isolated position, and the curious water-worn holes 
through their tops. The Indians, as usual, have some tradition about them concerning some¬ 
body’s clouchman, but it simply resolves itself into the old story of Lot’s wife and the pillar of 
salt. I wonder, after all, if the old patriarchs, in their nomadic days, were anything better than 
the Indians of the piesent time, and if the story of Lot and his inquisitive wife did not come 
down before the time of Cadmus, much after the fashion of the humble tradition of these poor 
savages about two lone sand pillars on a desert. The country on the opposite side of the Co¬ 
lumbia presents a very desolate and barren look. It is a high, broken plateau, covered with fields 
of broken lava for miles in extent, which give the country the black, barren appearance of hav¬ 
ing been burnt over by fire. There is a higher bluff on this same side of the river opposite the 
mouth of the Wenatsapam, which runs oft - to the northeast in a rough, barren chain. A chain 
on the right bank of the river commences in a similar bluff, a mile and a half from the river, 
and nearly the same distance above the Wenatsapam, and, running along the Columbia, closes 
in on this river about five or six miles above. The country between this range and the river 
is a low plateau, sandy and barren, covered with wild sage. The Wenatsapam has no valley, 
and runs among the hills towards the main mountains on the west. This river is about seventy- 
five feet wide and three feet deep; ford good. A little cotton-wood grows upon its immediate 
banks. The trail follows up the right bank of the Columbia, from Wenatsapam, for sixty miles, 
to Fort Okinakane, crossing the En-te-at-kwu, Che-lum, Methow, and Okinakane rivers, all 
branches of the Columbia. The country along the trail throughout this distance is similar in 
character. The river has no valley; the bluffs or river ranges on both banks coming down 
close to it, so that the trail is constantly crossing high plateaux, or passing over sharp bluffs 
running down to the water’s edge. Some of these bluffs are rough and stony, and very danger¬ 
ous to pass, with immense granite precipices severed hundred feet high overhanging the trail. 
The most difficult of these passages are found along the river for a distance of six or seven 
miles after crossing the En-te-at-kwu river. There are low plateaux, narrow and wedge- 
shaped, generally found at the junction of all the larger streams, lying between these streams— 
the river range and the Columbia. At such places the range lies back a short distance from 
the river, but soon closing on it again. There is little or no timber along the Columbia—a few 
straggling pines, or patches of them, only occurring at intervals here and there. The left or 
opposite bank of the river is in every way similar. It is possible that timber grows upon the high 
table-land on top of the ridge on the right bank of the river, but it cannot be seen from below, 
except occasionally through gorges. The Columbia is generally from 300 to 500 yards wide, 
apparently very deep, and the current is usually very rapid, and in some places rough. The 
rise in the wet seasons is about twenty feet, judging from the high-water mark on the banks 
and on the trees. These small runs or spring branches empty into the Columbia about six 
miles above Wenatsapam, and the En-te-at-kwu comes in about six miles above them. One of 
the low plateaux spoken of is found at the mouth of this river after crossing it. It is entirely 
made up of gravel and water-worn shingle, and covered with granite boulders; it is barren, and 
on its upper end is a patch of scrubby pines. The En-te-at-kwu is very rapid, bottom rough and 
filled with water-worn stones. It is thirty-five feet wide and two feet deep. The spurs coming 
