and is more delightful than in any part of the State.—I had almost said of the United States,—and I speak whereof I know.
Some years ago. before the era of railroads, I chanced to travel leisurely through this Walla Walla country, and to go as far as Lewiston on the Idaho border. What a charming journey it was! The atmosphere was almost intoxicating with vitality. Overhead blue sky and sunshine All about waving grass and wild flowers. On every side larks pouring forth their liquid notes. Dodging about among the bunches of grass were prairiehens, grouse, and a long-necked bird, which I did not recognize, and which my driver said was a curlew.
" What is the use of so much neck?" I inquired.
" I don't know," was the Yankee response, "unless it is to eat out of a bottle."
Then I told him about the man who grew excessively fat eating mush and milk out of a jug with a knitting-needle.
Later, in the summer's close, I returned through the same region, and saw immigrants taking up these lands. There were small cabins of one or two rooms (for lumber is not so plentiful here as in the Puget Sound country) to shelter the families, and just across the road from the cabins were newly-broken fields, surrounded by sod-fences and ditches (no expense for fencing). The seed was put in on the newly-upturned earth, and left to do the best for itself that it could. Imagine the pleased surprise of these immigrants when they harvested twenty-five to forty bushels of wheat to the acre! It was not long before the cabins disappeared and comfortable farm-houses arose in the midst of golden grain-fields.
This plenty and prosperity were the joint result of soil and climate, and I need not analyze the one or the other. But as I have generalized rather than particularized when speaking of the productiveness of the soil of Washington, I will now introduce some statistics, obtained from the most reliable sources, concerning the Walla Walla Valley, which does not, like the Yakima Valley, require irrigation to produce crops.
The Census Bureau quotes Washington as yielding twentythree bushels of wheat to the acre, which is the largest average given for any State in the Union. The average of East Washington should be placed at thirty bushels of wheat per acre, but
