Though Spokane is famous, its precise locality is not generally known. When it became ambitious and first held expositions, it ordered lithographic posters from Chicago. They came representing steamboats plying placidly in a river whose falls are as deadly as Niagara's. Spokane is twenty-four hours' ride from the cities of Puget Sound. It is three days' journey from San Francisco, and to go from Spokane to Helena or Butte is like travelling from Chicago to Denver. Its future must be great. It has no rival. Eight railroads, three of them transcontinental, assert its supremacy. Southward stretches the most prolific grain empire in the world. Almost boundless forests of valuable timber cover surrounding mountains to the north and east, whose mineral wealth is beyond compute. [Illustration MIDDLE FALLS, SPOKANE.] A typical Westerner, in an interesting autobiography, states that the ass that discovered the mines of the Coeur d'Alene, and thus caused a stampede of civilization to Spokane, was buried with the ceremonial honors due a potentate. It takes conspicuous place in distinguished company. On the heights of Peor an altar was reared to canonize the ass that saw the Light the prophet Balaam all but passed. An ass by its braying wrought the salvation of Vesta, and the animal's coronation was an event in the festival of that goddess. For ages the Procession of the Ass was a solemn rite in religious observances. In Spokane, a favorite canvas pictures the Coeur d'Alene immortal gazing enraptured across a mountain chasm at shining ledges of galena. When explaining the various causes of the matchless development of Spokane and its tributary region, the resident, in merry mood, does not forget to pilot the visitor to this quaint memorial. Afterward there was litigation over the mineral wealth now valued at $4,000,000 located by this animal, the outcome of which was the following decision handed down by Judge Norman Buck of the District Court of Idaho: "From the evidence of the witnesses, this Court is of the opinion that the Bunker Hill mine was discovered by the jackass, Phil O'Rourke, and N.S. Kellogg; and as the jackass is the property of the plaintiffs, Cooper & Peck, they are entitled to a half interest in the Bunker Hill, and a quarter interest in the Sullivan claims." [Illustration MIDDLE FALLS, ECHO FLOUR MILLS, AND OLD POWER HOUSE.] Spokane has a rare climate of cloudless days. The Indians say that once it shared the fogs and copious rains of the seacoast, but that their tutelary god, ascending to the heavens, slew the Thunderer, and that thenceforth they dwelt under radiant skies, and were called Spokanes, or Sons of the Sun.