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126 average one and a half tons of fine bunch-grass hay to the acre. The length of the valley is over one hundred and twenty-five miles, and contains millions of acres of land of a superior quality. This valley has now about seven hundred inhabitants, with new-comers daily arriving."

Doubtless, the same is true of many other portions of the Territory.

The Snake River below Lewiston is but a smaller copy of the Columbia above the Dalles—the same high, rounded bluffs, with frequent croppings of "eternal basalt," and the same high, rolling plains beyond. It has a current so rapid that the steamer, which has been thirty-six hours in coming up from Dalles, is able to return in fourteen. Leaving Lewiston at five o'clock in the morning, we pass no settlements, nor any streams of more consequence than the Alpowah and Tucanon on the south side, and the Pélouse on the north, until we arrive at the junction with the Columbia, at eleven o'clock, having traveled 149 miles in six hours. Eleven miles farther bring us to Wallula, where we left the steamer to take the overland route to Lewiston, through the Walla Walla Valley.

The notes which furnish the remainder of this chapter were imparted to us by several intelligent gentlemen of Walla Walla and Dalles, and we give them as furnishing the most reliable information concerning those remoter portions of the Columbia River Valley, which we had neither time nor opportunity to see with our own eyes.

Almost opposite the entrance of the Snake River into the Columbia, or, more properly, the junction of the north and south branches of the great river, the Yakima also joins itself to the Columbia. This is the