Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/420

316 of the Hudson's Bay Company, started in 1811. One might also well desire to visit the location of the old Spokane Bridge, where Colonel Wright crushed forever the pride and power of the Spokanes by killing eight hundred of their choicest horses.

On whatever side viewed, either past or present, or in the forecast of the future, Spokane is worthy of careful study. Its extensive railroad system and its network of electric lines reaching the many lakes, garden and fruit tracts, and rapidly developing suburbs, are concentrating the interests of a vast and wealthy region. But there are other cities to see and other boomers to hear and other bright futures to forecast, and so we turn our faces southward on the line of the O. R. & N. Railway, passing through vale after vale between the swelling prairies, with wheat, wheat, wheat, oats, oats, oats, hay, hay, hay, cattle, horses, hogs, apple trees, and sugar beets, elegant farmhouses on the knolls and spacious barns in the hollows,—the great Palouse farming country, one of the most productive in the world. Whitman County has produced eight million bushels of wheat in a season, besides vast quantities of other products.

A hundred and forty miles from Spokane the great wheat plateau is broken by the profound abyss of Snake River. Dark, turbid, sullen, not so beautiful as the northern branches flowing out of the lakes, this largest of all the tributaries of the River goes on its swift and treacherous course to the union with the Columbia. Snake River is famous for its orchards. Almota, Penewawa, Alpowa, Kelly's Bar, Clarkston, Asotin, are the most prominent among many points where the cherries, peaches, nectarines, apricots, berries, grapes,