hardly time to examine, as you are scarcely half a minute passing by them. Represent to yourself chasms between two rocky mountains of a stupendous height, the river pent in between them in a bed of thirty or forty feet, precipitating itself down its rocky channel with irresistible fury, roaring against its jagged sides, and whitening with foam all around it. In a short space it winds in four different directions, resembling ve°y much forked lightning. It requires very great skill, activity and presence of mind to extricate yourself from this difficult pass .2
The Spokan lands are sandy, gravelly and badly calculated for agriculture. The section over which I traveled consisted of immense plains of light, dry and sandy soil, and thin forests of gum pines. We saw nothing in this noiseless solitude but a buck, running quickly from us and disappear ing almost immediately. From time to time the melancholy and piercing cry of the wood snipe increased the gloomy thoughts which this sad spot occasioned. Here, on a gay and smiling little plain, two ministers have settled themselves, with their wives, who had consented to share their husbands' soi-distant apostolical labors. During the four years they have spent here, they have baptized several of their own children. They cultivate a small farm, large enough, however, for their own maintenance and the support of their animals and fowls. It appears they are fearful that should they cultivate more they might have too frequent visits from the savages. They even try to prevent their encampment in their immediate neighborhood, and therefore they see and converse but seldom with the heathens, whom they have come so far to seek. A band of Spokans received me with every demonstration of friendship, and were enchanted to hear that the right kind of Black-robes intended soon to form an establishment in the vicinity. I baptized one of their little children who was dying.
2 The Northern Pacific road now runs along the brink of this chasm, and affords a startling view of the river from a great height-