At six next morning we arrive at Spokane Falls, a well built town with a population of fifteen hundred. The soil is light and gravelly, with groves of pine. We reach Rathdrum, thirty miles distant, described in the guide book as an agricultural centre in the best portion of the valley. The train remains here twenty minutes. We learn that no rain has fallen since early in May, and that the crops are almost a failure. All the soil we have looked upon for three hundred miles is sandy and gravelly, and without rain good crops can scarcely be looked for. At nine we reach Sand Point, four hundred and forty-five miles from Portland. From Ainsworth we have been running in a north-easterly direction and we are now fifty miles south of the Boundary Line. The mouth of the Kicking-Horse River is two hundred miles from us, nearly due north. I looked on Sand Point with some interest, for if we had been driven at the Ille-celle-waet to abandon our journey through the Eagle Pass, it was at this spot we would have reached the Northern Pacific Railway on our descent by the Columbia past Fort Colville. We have passed the northern part of Idaho and are entering Montana. At Heron, thirty-eight miles from Sand Point, a few drops fall from the cloudy sky, we are told the only rain since spring! We are following Clark’s Fork Valley towards the Rocky Mountains. We come upon open prairie with good soil and bunch grass pasture, with patches of good sized forest trees. The valley varies in width from one to five miles, and is not wanting in natural beauty. It resembles somewhat Bow River, above Calgary; but at Bow River the mountains are higher and bolder in outline than on the Northern Pacific, and at this spot the heights are wooded to the summit and are unmarked by bold, rocky, lofty peaks. We have rain during the afternoon. If it be acceptable to the arid soil it is equally welcome to the traveller as an accessory to comfort. Hitherto the dust has followed us like a cloud, but the rain dispels it. It is getting dark. My intention had been to stay up to observe, as best I could, the mountain “divide,” but as it was hopeless to look for moonlight I turned in before twelve.