ice in the course of a summer, when the sun's reflection from the walls of this crevice is intense. In the bottom of the Coulee are numerous lakes and ponds, which gleam like silver on their emerald background.
Toward its southwestern end the Grand Coulee is divided into smaller fissures, but nowhere except here at Coulee City is there a crossing which could be used by a railroad; and this one fact secures for this place a certain future.
That strip of country through which the Northern Pacific main line is built has no towns of any consequence, present or prospective, unless Pasco, by its position with relation to the Columbia River and railroads, should come to be of significance, as before intimated. It is the county-seat of Franklin County, as Ritzville is of the adjoining county of Adams. Ritzville is named after Philip Ritz, formerly of Walla Walla, a noted fruitgrower, and an enterprising citizen of East Washington in anterailroad days. There is a land-office at Ritzville. Lincoln County lies north of Adams, and is out of the sage-brush belt. It only partly belongs to the Big Bend country, and joins Spokane County on the east. Its county-seat is at Sprague, named after General J. W. Sprague, of Tacoma, for a long time an officer of the Northern Pacific. It has a population of two thousand, and is a point of shipment for wheat, cattle, wool, and other productions of the country. It is well built and enjoys a large trade.
Cheney, once the county-seat of Spokane County, and a seemingly prosperous place, has apparently lost its hold upon fortune, and has a look of collapse about it. It is prettily situated on a plain, with a growth of young pines on a gentle slope above it. From Cheney the Northern Pacific runs a line northwest to Medical Lake, and thence north, northwest, and west, through a farming country, to Davenport in Lincoln County, paralleling the Seattle, Lake Shore and Eastern, and making, probably, for the Big Bend country. Davenport is a new town of one thousand inhabitants, in a region which possesses grazing, agricultural, and mineral land. A good deal of fruit is raised and marketed from here; and there is a large area of good land unimproved.
The Palouse country is comprehended within the limits of
