Fork is one of the principal tributaries of the upper Columbia. From its entrance into the lake to the Nivoutzamin, or Vermilion river, a distance of about seventy miles, I counted thirty-eight rapids. You meet with a succession of rapids
and falls to its very head. Before it joins the Columbia, for a distance of about thirty miles, its rapids and falls are insuperable. In its whole length Clark's river has few spots of good and arable soil, with ranges of dense and thick
forests. The upper portion of the river, and its upper tributaries, have a succession of large prairies of light soil filled with water-worn pebbles, indicating bottoms or beds of an
cient lakes. All these prairies are covered with a luxuriant and nutritious grass, and owing, probably, to the position of the high mountains by which they are surrounded, they are little or not covered with snows in the winter season. Such are Thompson's Prairie, Horse Prairie, Camas Prairie, Jaco [Jocko] Prairie, Flathead Lake Prairie, with several other minor grazing fields. Far and wide apart, spots of less or more acres of good arable land. are found; but too few, indeed, to make it for years to come a thickly-settled portion for the whites.
The country of the upper Clark's Fork, the St. Mary's or Bitter Root valley, the valley of Hell's Gate Fork, the upper valleys on the Beaver headwaters, the Kootenai country within the forty-ninth degree, and under the jurisdiction of the United States, appear to be laid out and designed by Providence to serve as reserves for the remnants of the various scattered tribes of Oregon and Washington Territory, at least for some years to come. This region, I should think, might contain all the Indians, and afford them the means of subsistence. The rivers could supply them with fish, the prairies with domestic cattle; deer and elk are still abundant, the buffalo grounds are not far off; wild edible roots and fruits are plenty; while in each section a sufficient portion of arable land might be found and reclaimed for their sustenance. Should all the remnants of Indians be gathered in this upper region, one single military post