CHAPTER IX.
WALLA WALLA VALLEY.
If one does find the great billows of gravelly sand rather disagreeable to travel over, the first half-dozen miles out of Wallula, there is compensation in beholding the singular profusion of bright-tinted flowers that grow broadcast over the whole expanse—an example of the way in which the beautiful may flourish where the useful can not get a foothold.
A ride of three or four hours brings us to the crossing of the Touchet (pronounced Too-shay), the principal branch of the Walla Walla River. The course of the Walla Walla is nearly due west, and we are traveling in a parallel course toward the east. The Touchet has its rise in the same mountain of the Blue Range where the Walla Walla heads, but from the opposite, or north side of the butte, which is called Round Mountain. Its course is north-west, west, and south-west, to its junction with the Walla Walla, describing a semicircle, of which the Walla Walla is the base. In the same manner all the important tributaries of this river rise in Round Mountain, describe a lesser semicircle inside of the Touchet, and fall into the Walla Walla at about equal distances from each other: an arrangement by which this valley is exceedingly well watered; these creeks having other smaller ones tributary to them, and all flowing so near the surface of the ground as to be easily turned aside for purposes
