We had motored half
a day through that curious, semi-arid country, which, when irrigated,
proves the greatest of all soils in the world for fruit-raising. The
August sun had baked the soil into yellow dust which covered
everything. Arid hillsides without a leaf of green but dotted thickly
with gray sagebrush, eroded valleys, rocks and gullies--all shone a
dusty yellow in the heat. The dust penetrated everything. Wherever water
could be utilized were orchards, little trees planted in geometrical
rows and only waiting the touch of irrigation to make their owners
wealthy beyond dreams.
The lower end of Lake Chelan was surrounded by these bleak hillsides,
desert without the great spaces of the desert. Yet unquestionably, in a
few years from now, these bleak hillsides will be orchard land. Only the
lower part, however, is bleak--only an end, indeed. There is nothing
more beautiful and impressive than the upper part of that strangely deep
and quiet lake lying at the foot of its enormous cliffs.
By devious stages we reached the head of Lake Chelan, and there for four
days the outfitting went on.
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