Just as a Bede Bible and a “quart of seed wheat” saved the British to Christianity; so “the Book” and another “quart of seed wheat” carried in by the Reverend Spalding, saved Oregon to the United States, notwithstanding the Russian Bear, the British Lion and the bull of Alexander the VI. in which he delivered over all North America to Spain.  
“Good old times those were when kings thrust their hands into the New World, as children do theirs into a grab bag at a fair, and drew out a river four thousand miles long, or an ocean, or a of wild land ten or fifteen times the size of England.”
 
The king of Spain sold Louisiana to France for money to buy his daughter a wedding present and for one brief while France had hopes of planting her lilies in the Walla Walla Valley. France, however, had met her Waterloo in America, on the Plains of Abraham.
 
 
Then came England denying the validity of the old Franco-Spanish title under which we claimed the Oregon country, but the same policy that lost to Great Britain her thirteen colonies, lost to her this princely .
 
American and English settlements contrasted strangely. The one came with his traps and , the other with his and quart of seed wheat. The one came for the fortune which he might carry out of the country, the other to make a home for himself and his children. So, the English trapper with his snares and the Indian with his pogamoggan retreated before the advance of American civilization.
 
In 1836 Mrs. Whitman, wife of Dr. Whitman, wrote from Fort Vancouver that the Hudson Bay Co. had that year four thousand bushels of wheat, four thousand bushels of peas and fifteen hundred bushels of oats and , besides many root vegetables, also , cattle, and sheep.
 
The of the valley is Walla Walla. It is a well-built town having a population of several thousand. Many of the stores and business blocks are of brick. Its streets are wide. In the suburbs is a military post, also a college[230] established by the Congregational church in honor of Dr. Marcus Whitman, the well known who was massacred at his mission near Walla Walla in 1847. So died the brave, Whitman.
 
In 1813 England, basing her claims on Drake’s discoveries, captured Astoria and for years kept her hands on the Oregon country, to be at last by one brave American.
 
The story of Marcus Whitman’s life should be enshrined in the heart of every school-boy in America.
 
From the busy thriving city of Spokane, the center of the agriculture empire of the Pacific Coast, to Missoula along the headwaters of the Columbia is a most interesting journey. High above, the grim rear their shaggy heads. Magnificent pines lift their heads skyward. The Columbia, “rock-ribbed and ,” sweeps on, now , now whirling and , tossing its waters up in spray, now breaking into white cascades, beautiful as Schauffhausen on the noble Rhine. The rocks along the shore are hidden by festoons of grape and wild honeysuckle vines, while the bright berry adds a touch of color.
 
 
Here is a bit of western fiction, a study in evolution that would interest a Haeckel. These berries falling into the water float away into brown pools and shady nooks and there change into the red fish known as salmon.
 
The gentleman who told me this wonderful tale of magic assured me that it was true, and that the Fish Commission had made a report of it. Like the tale of the banshee, however, he had never seen it but he knew people who had.
 
Scientific errors should be corrected, so I will give you the facts about the salmon . It was that god Loke, who to escape the of Thor hid himself in a cave, but when he heard the thundering voice of that noble god,
 
“He changed himself into a salmon trout
And leaped in a fright in the Glommen.”
Slippery as a salmon is a common in Norseland.
 
The most beautiful spot in this region is L............