t. It is about one
hundred and twenty miles long, and takes its rise in the beautiful Lake
Coeur d'Alene, in Idaho, which receives the drainage of nearly a hundred
miles of the western slopes of the Bitter Root Mountains, through the
St. Joseph and Coeur d'Alene Rivers. The lake is about twenty miles
long, set in the midst of charming scenery, and, like Pend d'Oreille, is
easy of access and is already attracting attention as a summer place for
enjoyment, rest, and health.

The famous Spokane Falls are in Washington, about thirty miles below the
lake, where the river is outspread and divided and makes a grand descent
from a level basaltic plateau, giving rise to one of the most beautiful
as well as one of the greatest and most available of water-powers in
the State. The city of the same name is built on the plateau along both
sides of the series of cascades and falls, which, rushing and sounding
through the midst, give singular beauty and animation. The young city is
also rushing and booming. It is founded on a rock, leveled and prepared
for it, and its streets require no grading or paving. As a power to
whirl the machinery of a great city and at the same time to train the
people to a love of the sublime and beautiful as displayed in
living water, the Spokane Falls are unrivaled, at least as far as my
observation has reached. Nowhere else have I seen such lessons given
by a river in the streets of a city, such a glad, exulting, abounding
outgush, crisp and clear from the mountains, dividing, falling,
displaying its wealth, calling aloud in the midst of the busy throng,
and making glorious offerings for every use of utility or adornment.

From the mouth of the Spokane the Columbia, now out of the woods, flows
to the westward with a broad, stately current for a hundred and twenty
miles to receive the Okinagan, a large, generous tributary a hundred and
sixty miles long, coming from the north and drawing some of its waters
from the Cascade Range. More than half its course is through a chain of
lakes, the largest of which at the head of the river is over sixty miles
in length. From its confluence with the Okinagan the river pursues a
southerly course for a hundred and fifty miles, most of the way through
a dreary, treeless, parched plain to meet the great south fork. The
Lewis, or Snake, River is nearly a thousand miles long and drains nearly
the whole of Idaho, a territory rich in scenery, gold mines, flowery,
grassy valley