Page:All Over Oregon and Washington.djvu/135

Rh Territory, contains 28,000 square miles. It is divided from south-west to north-east by the Clarke's Fork of the Columbia, the large and numerous branches of which furnish extensive tracts of line agricultural valley-land. Colville Valley has been settled since the early times of the Hudson's Bay Company in Oregon, and was known, even then, to be a good wheat-growing country. In the Spokane Valley was a mission settlement as early as 1838, and would now have been a flourishing American settlement but for the hostility of the Indians, who, out of jealousy, forbade the cultivation of their grounds by the whites, until after the ratification of the treaties of late years. Until within the past year or two, the country was passed over only by miners going to, and returning from, the mines of Idaho and Montana. Now, there is a steady, though small, immigration of settlers into this county, especially in the south-eastern portion, bordering on Idaho, which is found to be a delightful country—good either for agriculture or grazing—consisting of large prairies of excellent land, interspersed with groves of timber, with abundance of pure water.

It would appear from these notes, that the best lands of Eastern Washington are not immediately along the Columbia, at any part of its whole course, but rather upon the upper portion of its tributaries, and upon tributaries of its tributaries, as the Walla, the Yakima, the Spokane, the Okinikane, and numerous other smaller streams, with their branches. The great plain of the Columbia occupies a central position with regard to these, and is a country in some parts worthless, and in others, fit only for grazing.