icent uproar and interrupts navigation. About thirty
miles below the Lower Dalles the river expands into Upper Arrow Lake, a
beautiful sheet of water forty miles long and five miles wide, straight
as an arrow and with the beautiful forests of the Selkirk range rising
from its east shore, and those of the Gold range from the west. At the
foot of the lake are the Narrows, a few miles in length, and after these
rapids are passed, the river enters Lower Arrow Lake, which is like the
Upper Arrow, but is even longer and not so straight.

A short distance below the Lower Arrow the Columbia receives the
Kootenay River, the largest affluent thus far on its course and said to
be navigable for small steamers for a hundred and fifty miles. It is
an exceedingly crooked stream, heading beyond the upper Columbia lakes,
and, in its mazy course, flowing to all points of the compass, it seems
lost and baffled in the tangle of mountain spurs and ridges it drains.
Measured around its loops and bends, it is probably more than five
hundred miles in length. It is also rich in lakes, the largest, Kootenay
Lake, being upwards of seventy miles in length with an average width of
five miles. A short distance below the confluence of the Kootenay, near
the boundary line between Washington and British Columbia, another large
stream comes in from the east, Clarke's Fork, or the Flathead River. Its
upper sources are near those of the Missouri and South Saskatchewan,
and in its course it flows through two large and beautiful lakes, the
Flathead and the Pend d'Oreille. All the lakes we have noticed thus far
would make charming places of summer resort; but Pend d'Oreille,
besides being surpassingly beautiful, has the advantage of being
easily accessible, since it is on the main line of the Northern Pacific
Railroad in the Territory of Idaho. In the purity of its waters it
reminds one of Tahoe, while its many picturesque islands crowned with
evergreens, and its winding shores forming an endless variety of bays
and promontories lavishly crowded with spiry spruce and cedar, recall
some of the best of the island scenery of Alaska.

About thirty-five miles below the mouth of Clark's Fork the Columbia is
joined by the Ne-whoi-al-pit-ku River from the northwest. Here too are
the great Chaudiere, or Kettle, Falls on the main river, with a total
descent of about fifty feet. Fifty miles farther down, the Spokane
River, a clear, dashing stream, comes in from the eas