development of the interior will cause them simply to seek new lines upon which to transport this same freight after the railroad shall have deposited it at the city of Walla Walla, which nature has constituted a commercial center, and from which will be distributed to every point of the compass the merchandise which their wants demand.
Reaching the Columbia at Wallula one is pleased with the commercial character which this point is fast assuming. Freight strewn along the levee for half a mile—stores erected, commission houses plying their vocations, and everything giving an earnest of a prosperous future. This site has doubtless many advantages as a commercial point; but so long as men shall desire pleasant homes,—where the eye is as desirous of drinking in draughts of pleasure and beauty as the pocket is of accumulating wealth,—where mills, farms, gardens, and pleasant enclosures can be had,—where the products of the fields are garnered with a short transportation to a ready market—just so long will Walla Walla and not Wallula be the chief emporium and point of business for the interior, and for supplying the more immediate demands of the Walla Walla Valley. That Wallula will always be a point where commission houses, a few stores, and one or more hotels will always be supported, no one can doubt; but looking toward a large and growing city with all the pleasant appurtenances that make life happy, I can not but conceive that its growth must become circumscribed within the above limits.
We took passage on the pleasant steamer Tenino, and in eight hours were landed at Celilo, a point some two miles below the Des Chutes Landing, where the Oregon Steam Navigation Company have already formed the nucleus of a thriving village. The freshet of the past season has strewn the banks of the Columbia with cord wood in
