All The Lakes We Have Noticed Thus Far Would Make Charming Places Of
Summer Resort; But Pend D'Oreille, Besides Being Surpassingly
Beautiful, Has The Advantage Of Being Easily Accessible, Since It Is
On The Main Line Of The Northern Pacific Railroad In The Territory Of
Idaho.
In the purity of its waters it reminds one of Tahoe, while its
many picturesque islands crowned with evergreens, and its winding
shores forming an endless variety of bays and promontories lavishly
crowded with spiry spruce and cedar, recall some of the best of the
island scenery of Alaska.
About thirty-five miles below the mouth of Clark's Fork the Columbia
is joined by the Ne-whoi-al-pit-ku River from the northwest. Here too
are the great Chaudiere, or Kettle, Falls on the main river, with a
total descent of about fifty feet. Fifty miles farther down, the
Spokane River, a clear, dashing stream, comes in from the east. 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.
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