Page:How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon.djvu/103

Rh in a tent since the 19th of October, toiling excessively 89 hard to accomplish this much for our comfortable residence during the remainder of the winter.

"It is, indeed, a lovely situation. We are on a beautiful level peninsula formed by the branches of the Walla Walla River, upon the base of which our house stands, on the southeast corner, near the shore of the main river. To run a fence across to the opposite river on the north from our house—this, with the river, would enclose three hundred acres of good land for cultivation, all directly under the eye.

"The rivers are barely skirted with timber. This is all the woodland we can see. Beyond them, as far as the eye can reach, plains and mountains appear. On the east, a few rods from the house, is a range of small hills covered with bunch grass, very excellent food for animals and upon which they subsist during winter, even digging it from under the snow."

This section is now reported as among the most fertile and beautiful places in Washington. Looking away in a southeasterly direction, the scenic beauty is grandly impressive. The Indians named the place Wai-i-lat-pui (the place of rye grass). For twenty miles there is a level reach of fertile soil through which flows like a silver thread the Walla Walla River, while in the distance loom up toward the clouds as a back-