WONDERLAND.                             49
name, which phonetic spelling has rendered in at least three different ways: Kaniksu, Kanasku and Kunusku. The district is a famous one for game. Beaver and mink skins, to the value of over $2,000, were brought down from it to the railroad last fall and spring, while two gentlemen who paid a brief visit to the lake in May, 1887, killed thirteen caribou in one day. In the following September it was visited by a large party of gentlemen from New York and Brooklyn, whose adventures formed the subject of a long and interesting article, entitled " Esoc Quet," in Forest and Stream, of October 20, which sportsmen will do well to peruse. Among the game killed by this party were twenty-three black-tailed deer, besides white-tailed deer, caribou, hares, beaver, grouse of three varieties, and ducks.
From the lower end of Lake Pend d'Oreille, the Clark's Fork River, which forms its outlet, runs away northwestward to meet the Columbia. The railroad, which has likewise been running northwestward since leaving Livingston, now takes a southwestward sweep, which carries it, first of all, through a dense forest, containing but few settlements, and little that is of special interest, except the beautiful Lake Cocolala, a long but narrow sheet of water on the north side of the track. The first place of importance is Rathdrum, one of the best points on the line both for game and fish, having three lakes-Hayden Lake, Spirit Lake and Fish Lake-within ten miles, as well as a dense forest to the east, south and northwest. Priest Lake, fifty miles north, was visited during I887 by various eastern and other sportsmen, who, in addition to an abundance of fish, were rewarded also with grouse, pheasants, black and white-tailed deer, caribou and bear.
Nine miles west of Rathdrum, the line leaves the Panhandle, of Idaho and enters Washington Territory, to which that northern projection of the former 'Ierritory will probably, at no distant day, be annexed. Near this point, the forest, which has closely hemmed in the line on both sides, recedes, leaving a fine open space. In a half-hearted sort of way, however,.it again approaches the track, but almost immediately there is spread out before the traveler the great Spokane plain. Two miles west of Trent, the Spokane River, the outlet of Lake Cceur d'Alene, comes in from the south, and after making a broad sweep on the right side of the track once more approaches the railroad, which it finally leaves for that sinuous rocky channel which has given to the flourishing little city on its banks the well-known name it bears.
SPOKANE FALLS,
whatever it may have been in ante-railroad days, has always been a bright and promising little city since the great transcontinental highway over which we are traveling first reached it. But it has been promising in the magnificence and diversity of the capabilities of the country naturally tributary to it, rather than in actual enterprise or the evidences of rapid growth, until quite recently, when it has received an impetus that has made it the most rapidly growing town between Lake Superior and Puget Sound. Travelers by rail, seeing nothing of