everywhere, a thousand different modulations of sound arise, while the deep sub-bass of the great fall just beneath me blends them all into one grand sweep of music, that fairly lifts the soul from the body.

If one has stood inside the case, among the pipes of a forty-eight stop organ, while the Old Hundredth was played with full hydraulic power, he can get a small idea of this stupendous musical mechanism, whose pipes are fifty-foot channels of rock, and whose hydraulic power is that of two hundred and fourteen thousand horses. I turn away, thinking how weak are the greatest works of men, when compared with the least works of the Almighty. I leave the spot with a feeling of worship.

I find Strongbow still tied to the post, but Five minutes later, and the yacht uneasy.

would probably have sailed away without its commander.

It is 4 P. M., and we are off for Deep Creek Falls, thirteen miles due west. As we go, I am thinking that I leave behind me a most promising place. A glance shows it. The position as a railroad center-the magnificent water power-the start already made of between three and four thousand inhabitants-the churches, and public and private schools-the nerve, and enthusiasm, and expectations of the people, all indicate a prosperous future.1

1 Since my visit, just a twelvemonth ago, measures have been taken to utilize the vast water power: mills have been projected and built, electric lights have been introduced, and the adjacent country has rapidly filled with immigrants. The place is now enjoying a 'healthy boom" -a strong and in no wise fictitious growth. When I was in Eastern Washington, everything was flat. I was offered property, especially railroad lands, at a fraction above one-half the prices asked eighteen months before. The Villard failure, and the possibility that the railroad grant might be forfeited, and the false excitement over the Coeur d'Alêne mines, as well as the natural reaction after the first boom-all tended to a great depression. There were some long faces through debt, and some despairing hearts over poor crops on the new soil, and some weary hands from labor to which they were unaccustomed. But, all in all, the people were holding on well, and bearing the depression with brave hearts.

I found that the professional men-doctors, lawyers, ministers, teachers--were of the first class, and bound to make themselves and the country a success.

It was my belief, after a month industriously spent in Eastern

Strongbow thinks the Falls a good place to stay, for suddenly he whirls and attempts to rush back. I turn him. He whirls again. For fifteen minutes there is lively work with the beast. He bucks thirty-one times a minute.

An old Indian comes along from town and kindly lends a hand, leading the cayuse, who is docile as soon as his red skinned brother touches him. On a long down-hill I at last get a start, and once on the run I resolve the beast shall not stop till he has had at least ten miles. Away we go! Over the Hangman Creek again-under the scattered pines-past the shanties of the woodmen and the teepees of the Indians through rocky ledges of volcanic rock-by forests, the favorable nature of the climate, the good Washington, that the character of its soil, water, and motives of settlement, and the enterprise of the set

tlers, will make that region the most safe and stable, and

perhaps the most prosperous in wealth, of all portions

of the Pacific slope.

The soil of this whole region is thought by geologists to be a deposit from the ancient volcanoes to the north and west-it has just the right chemical elements for producing the finest grain and vegetables. The water

is abundant, and pure and soft. The timber lacks in hard woods, but is abundant, and can be easily transported. The climate has a winter season less severe than in the Eastern States, but long enough to compel families to live each year for some time together under

the same roof, and so make a strong domestic bond, the foundation of industry and moral character.

Not the least hopeful of the elements that promise prosperity, is the fact that the very first permanent settlement of this country was from motives of religion and patriotism. The names of Whitman, Spaulding, Eels, and others suggest this. The influence of these first settlers-the influence, rather, of their religious and patriotic ideas can be traced today in the character of the people, as in New England the influence of the Puritans and Pilgrims is everywhere.

Moreover, men go to this country to make homes, and not to speculate and move away; to make a living by their work and not by their wits; to train their children to moral, as well as commercial, ideas. The early settlement of this plateau is more favorable to a stable, unfluctuating growth than that of any par o the west world. There is at this moment as good a moral a social atmosphere as in any other district of the West, and this district is only five or six years old. Give it fifty years like Northern Oregon, or thirty, like central California, and it will outrival all.

"Righteousness exalteth a people "—there is no question as to that-and there are more fibres of it in the early growth of Eastern Washington than were found in any other western community. The signs are all excellent there for the good time a-coming.

bunch grass openings, with the sound of the herder's halloo, the woodman's ax, the lowing of cattle, in my ears, I gallop on.

Now we strike the edge of the prairie, and to the south and west the eye meets no limit of grassy plain till the horizon cuts off the view miles away. Five miles ahead is a sharp tongue of timber, and as I ride for it the rain begins to fall. Soon the rain turns to hail. Strongbow tries to face it—with his tail; but after another struggle I right him, and he bowls sullenly on into the teeth of the storm. The road is "slick" (remark of a Missourian met later), and as he runs, the hoofs of Strongbow fly out at every tangent, but he regains them with lightning swiftness. Without stumble or fall he brings me into the timber. The hail is roaring and seething among the pines like angry waters. A moment more and we surge across the Deep Creek, and hail the tavern in the center of the village. The ground is white with hail. It is the month of May.

This is not an inn nor a hotel, but just a tavern. I am received into a room with an old-fashioned school-house stove in the center. In the stove is a good fire, and I am concerned for little else till I have felt the heat. As I thaw I look about. Two or three chairs flank the stove; a table fronts the window; upon it lie copies of Spokane and Cheney papers. The floor is carpeted with tobacco stains, and chunks of wood for the fre. This is the commercial room of the

tavern.

I am soon invited to supper in the next room. Here things grow rapidly better. A huge fireplace glows with crackling logs. The windows are filled with pots of flowers, and have a bit of neat lace on their white curtains. The table is spread with a white cloth; a large rocker or two stand beside the rug that fronts the fire. Ah, this is woman's realm-I have left man's domain. width of a threshold is the same in a frontier tavern as in a city mansion. It is a short step, but a long way, from the rough, careless surroundings of the average man to the neat and refined habitation of the average

woman.

The

He

I sit at table with a Californian. speaks of the wool-grass of this region. He declares that its roots are tougher than new wool, and that where it is well rooted, it costs seven or eight dollars an acre to break the sod; that it requires six horses, and that the plow-share must be taken to the smith to be sharpened every five hours. This is one of the drawbacks of the country, but this grass does not prevail to any great extent.

Often in the old towns of our older States I have been compelled to accept worse accommodations than I have here in this little wilderness village of the newest Northwest. I woke in the morning to find that the rain had preëmpted the day. The cayuse, when saddled, crushed one of the stirrups, and I was expecting to have a sort of "one-legged " ride the rest of the way, when I found that there was a saddlery just around the corner, with half a wagon load of stirrups. While the saddle was repairing, I did the town.

The falls turn a fine, large flouring mill, with latest and best machinery. There are two stores, livery, drug shop, sawmill, smithy, saddlery, school. The original line of the Northern Pacific Railroad strikes through this place, and when built will make the place important.

Ten rods from the tavern we are on the great bunch-grass plain. Strongbow is headed for Crescent, thirteen miles northwest. We are now fairly launched upon the prairie, and my yacht takes the wind, and flies gayly The whole land is a series of short undulations, and now going up, and now down each moment, I recall the Virgilian line— "undique et undique pontus," as the true description of this wavy sea of grass.

on.

Ahead begin to loom the mountains beyond the Columbia, and two scarred buttes mark the position of Fort Spokane, at the junction of the Spokane and Columbia Rivers. That fort guards an Indian reservation. We leave Greenwood on the right. The survey stakes are the only wood I see. A little further on we bounce over a ridge, and come down upon a school house, with thirty pupils. playing ball and marbles around it. Two houses only are in sight. Where do the thir

ty urchins come from? Do they grow out of the ground, like Porte Crayon's "Le Roi Carote"?

I inquire for Crescent, for I have now found that it is possible to ride through a town in so new a country without discovering it.

"That's Crescent," and a lad points to a loghouse perched on the prairie a mile away. I am at it, and am asked in. In a corner is a pine box with a dozen pigeon holes-the post office. Mail comes when it comes. Such a post office is a mere capillary in the extremity of Uncle Sam's great circulatory system.

I accept an invitation to dinner. Here is genuine hospitality. The young man who "runs the ranch" (it is a claim by homestead or preemption) spreads the little pine table, not with fine linen and silver, but with delicious bread and coffee of his own making, and fresh eggs of his own frying, and with his younger brother and sister we sit down to a feast. I learn that this is a great wheat country-great for producing, but not for marketing. "For when wheat is grown and threshed, and then hauled twenty-five miles, and sold at forty-four cents a bushel, it leaves a margin on the wrong side," remarked my entertainer.

we ride, that I am fifty miles further north than the northern point of the State of Maine, and yet the eighty-seven stalks of wheat from one kernel!

Now we are headed out to sea again. The fringe of woods in my view during the morning fades away behind, and the Sargsso (grassy sea) is directly before. The billows cf bunch-grass sweep the knees of Strongbow, as we sweep across the clean expanse. The bunch-grass is a most nutritious fodder. Men along the route tell me that if they had to make choice between equal weights of shelled oats and of this grass, they would choose the latter, ton for ton, for stock. Certainly, horses and cattle live on it the year through, and are hardy and fat. What a rich range is this, and how little stock we see to graze it!

We mount a high butte, and at five o'clock spy Mondovi, and Courtright's ranch a mile or two to the right of it. "Everybody knows Courtright's," I have been told. "It is a good place to stop." I survey the town, and survey the ranch, and the latter looks the larger and more inviting of the two. Strongbow has flagged a little, but comes in well after he has fairly sighted the stopping place. At six o'clock I am in very cozy quarters for the night, under the roof of old Califor

“Why?”

"Because the snow lies longer on the north slopes, and the soil does not dry out before the crop is matured."

I am shown currant cuttings, and gooseberries rooted, and strawberries putting out heavy leaves, and am told that all these will do well if well tended. "And can you guess what that is ?" asks my host, pointing to a mound on the top of a knoll.

I guess a pile of hay. It is a parsnip top, five feet high, and as much in diameter. "And out of that slope I pulled a stool of wheat last year, with eighty-seven stalks, and all the heads well filled," says the bold boy. I bow (but not with the burden of belief), and mounting my steed, am off for Mondovi, some miles southwest. I remember, as

I talk with my host of the present condition and the future of this region. He declares it is hopeful, its prosperity a mere matter of time. He sums up by saying: "I can honestly say it is a good country for a poor man."

While at supper I relate the eighty-sevenstalk talk. Up speaks a brave young Horatius opposite: "We had from one kernel last year one hundred and thirteen stalks of wheat."

He was a young man, but he insisted, and after supper showed me in the wood-shed some of the stalks, five feet high, and well eared.

I asked about vegetables-if they grew well here.

"We had for a month on our front-gate post last fall a seven-pound potato, which we

raised on this ranch.

grow wonderfully well here."

I enquired as to stock-raising.

"A man turned out in summer a band of fifty cows, and drove them in the next spring with fifty-one fine calves."

At

The morning dawns clear as crystal. seven I am off for Capps and Medical Lake, due south. With kind remembrance of the hospitality at the Courtright ranch, I set Strongbow in motion. The sun has dried the roads already; they are like felt-firm, silent, elastic.

The air of this plateau, two thousand feet above sea level, is pure, cool, and dry. I have found several persons already who have come hither from California for their health, and have found it.

Horse and rider drink the air with pleasure. It gives buoyancy to the spirits, and vigor to the body. We measure mile after mile with exultation, and I shout with delight at the freedom of the prairies. It is more fitting here than in a prayer meeting. Up slope-down slope-up and down, like the rocking of a ship in ocean swells, ever onward we sail. Now we skim a level expanse of a mile-now clear a rill at a jump-here pass a cabin, there a band of cattle, here overtake a farmer on his way to the distant market.

A peculiarity of these rolls and slopes is that you cannot see a house until you are almost at the door, and meeting a horseman you are out of sight of each other in thirty seconds. It is far different upon the plains of Nebraska and Kansas. There you see small objects long distances. There the face of the plain seems concave, here it seems

convex.

At ten o'clock we dash into the pines that surround Medical Lake. This is a handsome sheet of water, a mile long, and a quarter wide. Bath-houses and hotels are built,

Launch a painted boat here, and in a few hours the paint is all eaten away by the chemicals. Soap of fine quality is made directly from the waters, yet they are limpid and clear. The town is very prettily situated on the south bank of the Lake, and will certainly be an attractive resort for health and pleasure.

At 12.30 we are at Cheney. Again we find the Northern. Pacific Railway. Cheney is in the edge of the forest, and lies on a hillside facing south. Its streets are dry, though it rained yesterday. I cannot see what the people will do for water when the town takes fire-that big town to which all look forward. Here I find other Californians, who receive me hospitably, and exhibit the attractions of the place. An academy crowns the top of the slope-four churches dot the slope midway-a fine hotel and grain elevator stand at the foot, and between them runs the railway. This is the county seat, but it will some day go to Spokane Falls. The town will grow as the country back of it develops, but need not aspire to rivalry with the Falls, as that is not "in the nature of things."

I find here a man who the season before raised three hundred pounds of the finest potatoes from one pound of seed. In the railroad land office I cautiously relate the one-hundred-and-twelve-stalk story. "Well,” says the agent, "Do you see that stool of wheat on the wall there? You will find one hundred and fifty stalks in that, all from one kernel-Count 'em."