Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 29).djvu/45

 *sands, plains mixed with pine trees and rocks. The body of snow upon the plains was interspersed with bare spots under the standing pines. For these, our poor animals would plunge whenever they came near, after wallowing in the snow and mud until the last nerve seemed almost exhausted, naturally expecting a resting-place for their struggling limbs; but they were no less disappointed and discouraged, doubtless, than I was astonished, to see the noble animals go down by the side of a rock or pine tree, till their bodies struck the surface."

{233} The same gentleman, in speaking of this valley, and the country generally, lying north of the Columbia, and claimed by the United States and Great Britain, says, "It is probably not worth half the money and time that will be spent in talking about it."

The country, from the Spokan to Kettle Falls, is broken into hills and mountains thinly covered with wood, and picturesque in appearance, among which there is supposed to be no arable land. A little below Kettle Falls,[41] in latitude 48°, 37['] is a trading post of the Hudson's Bay Company, called Fort Colville. Mr. Spaulding thus describes it:—"Fort Colville is two hundred miles west of north from this, (his station on the Clear Water), three days below Flatland River, one day above Spokan, one hundred miles above Oakanagan, and three hundred miles above Fort Wallawalla. It stands on a small plain of two thousand or three thousand acres, said to be the only arable land on the Columbia, above Vancouver. There are one or two barns, a blacksmith shop, a good flour mill, several houses for labourers, and good buildings for the gentlemen in charge."

"Mr. McDonald[42] raises this year (1837) {234} about