f Gallatin is reached, at
the junction of the Missouri Forks and at the head of navigation on that
stream. The valley of the Yellow Stone is very fertile, abounding in
pine, cedar, cotton-wood, and elm. The river has a deeper channel than
the Missouri, and is navigable through the summer months. At the
junction of the Big Horn, its largest tributary, two hundred and twenty
miles from the mouth of the Yellow Stone, in midsummer there are ten
feet of water. The Big Horn is reported navigable for one hundred and
fifty miles. From Gallatin, following up the Jefferson Fork and Wisdom
River, one hundred and forty miles, we reach the Big Hole Pass of the
Rocky Mountains, where the line enters the valley of the St. Mary's, or
Bitter Root Fork, which flows into the Columbia. The distance from Big
Hole Pass to Puget Sound will be about five hundred and twenty miles,
making the entire distance from St. Paul to Puget Sound about sixteen
hundred miles, or one hundred and forty-three miles shorter than that
surveyed by Governor Stevens. The distance from the navigable waters of
the Missouri to the navigable waters of the Columbia is less than three
hundred miles.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LINE.

"Rivers are the natural highways of nations," says Humboldt. This route,
then, is one of Nature's highways. The line is very direct. The country
is mostly a rolling prairie, where a road may be constructed as easily
as through the State of Iowa. It may be built with great rapidity.
Parties working west from St. Paul and east from the Missouri would meet
on the plains of Dacotah. Other parties working west from the Missouri
and east from the Yellow Stone would meet on the "heavy-timbered river."
Iron, locomotives, material of all kinds, provisions for laborers, can
be delivered at any point along the Yellow Stone to within a hundred
miles of the town of Gallatin, and they can be taken up the Missouri to
that point by portage around the Great Falls. Thus the entire line east
of the Rocky Mountains may be under construction at once, with iron and
locomotives delivered by water transportation, with timber near at hand.

The character of the country is sufficient to maintain a dense
population. It has always been the home of the buffalo, the favorite
hunting-ground of the Indians. The grasses of the Yellow Stone Valley
are tender and succulent. The climate is milder than that of Illinois.
Warm springs gush up on the head-waters of the Yellow Sto