In July last Mr. Milnor Roberts, Mr. Thomas Canfield, and other gentlemen of the Pacific exploring party, were in Montana. Mr. Roberts makes our mouths water by his description of the fruits of that Territory. "Missoula," he says, "is a thriving young town near the western base of the Rocky Mountains, containing a grist-mill, saw-mill, two excellent stores, and from twenty-five to thirty dwellings, a number of them well built. I visited McWhirk's garden of five acres, where I found ripe tomatoes, watermelons, muskmelons, remarkably fine potatoes, beans, peas, and squashes; also young apple-trees and other fruit-trees, and a very fine collection of flowers; and all this had been brought about from the virgin soil in two years, and would this year (1869) yield the owner over two thousand dollars in gold, the only currency known in Montana" (Report, p. 23). This fruit and flower garden is about one hundred miles from the top of the divide between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Deer Lodge City, fifteen miles from the dividing ridge, is situated in the Deer Lodge Valley, and its attractions are thus set forth by Mr. Roberts:-- "The Deer Lodge Valley is very wide, in places ten to fifteen miles from the hills on one side to the hills on the other, nearly level, and everywhere clothed with rich grass, upon which we observed numerous herds of tame cattle and horses feeding. The Deer Lodge Creek flows through it, and adds immensely to its value as an agricultural region. Some farms are cultivated; but farming is yet in its infancy, and there are thousands of acres of arable land here and elsewhere in Montana awaiting settlement" (p. 25). West of Montana is Idaho, containing eighty-six thousand square miles,--large enough for two States of the size of Ohio. Nearly all of this Territory lies north of the 43d parallel. It is watered by the Columbia and its tributaries,--mountain streams fed by melting snows.