One of Doctor Baker's biographers has said of him, "He was the self-reliant architect of his own fortune." Perhaps no man in the Northwest has left his name more completely entwined into the history of his chosen country and city than has Dorsey S. Baker, who cast his lot with Walla Walla forty years ago, whose fortunes were the fortunes of the town and whose successes were the successes of the place he called his "home." He died at Walla Walla July 5, 1888. An imposing granite monument, in the City Cemetery, emblematic of his rugged virtues and strength of character, marks his last resting place. MILES C. MOORE. _Walla Walla, Wash., August 7, 1903._ FROM WALLA WALLA TO SAN FRANCISCO. By CAPT. JOHN MULLAN, U. S. A. From the Washington _Statesman_ (Walla Walla) of November 29 and December 6, 1862. For those who have not made the journey direct from Walla Walla, through the agricultural heart of Oregon, and across the mountains through the mining region of northern California, there is much of interest and pleasure; and though the trip should be fraught with much personal discomfort, there is much to repay the traveler in the collection of statistics, and in seeing a region where the wilderness of yesterday has to-day given place to homes, where material prosperity, at least, arrest the attention of the traveler at every mile of the journey. The mode of conveyance from Walla Walla to Wallula is by stages that run daily between these points, and where the journey is of six hours and a cost of $5 brings you to the banks of the Columbia, whence you take steamers for the Des Chutes Landing. The improvements along the banks of the Walla Walla, in the shape of new and additional enclosures for farming purposes, during the last two years, have been many, and mark with unerring certainty the future of the Walla Walla country, as the distributing center for a radius of three hundred miles of country, now fast developing in all the elements of material, social, and political prosperity. It has more than once occurred to me that the Walla Walla River, by a system of locks, could be advantageously used as a line of connection between Wallula and Walla Walla, and one needs but see the long line of wagons and pack trains, heavily freighted for the interior, to become convinced that either this or some more rapid and economical means is positively demanded, in order to connect the heart of the valley with the Columbia River. Economy at the present would argue in favor of converting the river into a canal, but the prospective wants of the country are much more in favor of a railroad connection. For a distance of eighteen miles below Walla Walla the nature of the face of the country is eminently suited in its present condition for laying a railroad track; and thence to Wallula the character of work being either excavation in sand, clay, or soft rock, will enable a road to be built at economical figures. The Touchet and the crossings of the