My journey next took me to Walla-Walla, largest and handsomest of all
the East Washington towns. Doubtless the name of Walla-Walla brings
no suggestion to the minds of most readers in the far-away East, save
of a rude frontier settlement. Yet the place luxuriates in verdure
and bloom, and many of its shady streets, bordered by pretty houses,
with their lawns, orchards and gardens, would be admired in a New
England village, while the business streets would do no discredit to
an Ohio town of half a century's growth. In the homes of well-to-do
citizens one finds the magazines and new books and newspapers from
New York, Boston and Philadelphia, and discovers that they manage to
keep abreast of the ideas of the time quite as well as intelligent
people on the Atlantic slope. The town has five thousand inhabitants,
but in its importance as a center of trade and social influences it
represents an Eastern town of many times its size. There is barely a
trace of the frontier in the manners of the people, and none at all in
their comfortable way of living; yet they are thousands of miles from
New York by the only route of steam travel. A fairer or more fertile
country than that which stretches south and east of Walla-Walla to the
base of the Blue Mountains one might travel more than five thousand
miles to find. In June it is all one immense rolling field of wheat
and barley dotted at long intervals--for the farms are large--with neat
houses, each in its orchard of apple and peach trees. The mountains
rise in gentle slopes to snow-flecked summits. Over the wide plain
move tall, tawny cloud-like columns of dust, in size and shape like
water-spouts at sea. From the foot-hills scores of these singular
formations may be seen on any warm day, though the air seems still.