grandeur, all of which features conspire to make this a charming smnrner-resort. Most of this is evident and true. But one ■wearies of the immensity and even of the scenic attractions of the great Northwest: you travel so far to find something that, although undeniably fine, differs from the view in some other place only by so-and-so.
And yet right here w T e have at hand one of the winders of the earth,—the Grand Coulee. It used to be called the "Grand Coulee of the Columbia," from an impression that the waters of the great river had some time run through it. Closer observation has done away with that theory of its formation, and it is now seen to be a rent in the earth, over one hundred miles in length, and from three to eight miles in breadth, with walls in many places over one thousand feet in height. These walls are basalt, thrown out at four several periods, as the rocks give evidence. All the curious features of the place are easily explained if w T e bear this fact in mind. But this rent in the lava was made after the last of these outflows had cooled and hardened, because the opposite sides match. There are no traces of the action of water, no gravel, no water rolled boulders, no indications of detritus at its lower end, which is at Island Bapids of the Columbia, as its upper end is just west of .Coulee City.
Among the many curious forms of the rocks is one called the Steamboat, from its resemblance to a river boat. It is in the Coulee, about eighteen miles from Coulee City, and the stern-post of the steamer is fourteen hundred feet above the bottom of the chasm. Only on the eastern side can one climb to the deck, but once there a fine view of this enormous crevasse is obtained. About half-w T ay up a five-hundred-foot slide of loose angular rock, on the ascent to the Steamboat, are two deposits of ice, which melting a little on the surface furnish icewater to the thirsty, and are called "ice-springs." It is thought the snows of winter furnish the water and a draught of cold air the freezing, this having been carried on until a solid body of ice has formed among the rocks, which melts a little by day and freezes again by night, so that the supply remains from season to season. It is not clear to me, however, how it is that not enough heat gets into the interstices of the rocks to liquefy the
