Page:All Over Oregon and Washington.djvu/109

Rh are a partially civilized and peaceable people; yet whose presence as neighbors can not be particularly desirable. Their territory is unnecessarily large, amounting to a square mile to each individual.

All the way from the Cascade Mountains to Umatilla—a hundred miles, more or less—we have found the rivers all coming into the Columbia from the south side. Rising in the Blue Mountains, which traverse the eastern half of Oregon from north-east to southwest, they flow in nearly direct courses to the Columbia, showing thereby the greater elevation of the central portion of Eastern Oregon over the valley of the Columbia. At the junction of the Umatilla the Columbia makes a great bend, and flows nearly parallel with the Cascade Range instead of perpendicularly to it, receiving the rivers flowing east from the Cascades.

It is nearly sunset when the steamer quits Umatilla to finish the voyage we have entered upon, at Wallula—a distance of twenty-five miles farther up stream, in a direction a little east of north. We steam along in the rosy sunset and purple twilight, by which the hills are clothed in royal dyes. About eight in the evening we arrive at Wallula, too late to be aware of the waste of sand and gravel in which it is situated, and late enough to feel the need of rest; for albeit there is little enough of activity in steamer travel, there is plenty of fatigue, especially when one is sight-seeing, with the faculties of memory and attention continually on the alert.

Wallula is the port of Walla Walla Valley, and was long a post of the Hudson's Bay Company. As a site for a town, it has much to recommend it, in the way of beauty and convenient location; and, also, much to condemn it in the matter of high winds, sand,