By HAROLD BOLCE

SCULPTORS have not yet chiselled the glory of the founders of Spokane, for most of the pioneers of that city, heedless of remote epitaphs, still hurry over its now "populous pavements," multiplying their wealth. Boys born in the first year of the city's incorporation have not yet reached the age of suffrage. Less than thirty years ago the settlement began with three citizens and a sawmill. It has developed into a brick and granite city of nearly fifty thousand.

A century ago a few brave men blazed perilous trails through the wilderness of the far Northwest but their picturesque adventures gave no hint of the city of wealth, industry, and architectural beauty that was to rise on both banks of the Spokane cataract. Though Jefferson's renowned secretary, Meriwether Lewis, and his comrade Clark, brother of George Rogers Clark, heralded the day when the Oregon and its affluents should hear sounds more significant than their own dashings, their pilgrimage had become as dim as a tradition to the men of the present generation who first floated Cœur d'Alene tamarack and cedar down the swift Spokane to their sawmill at the falls.

On the Spokane River not far from its confluence with the Columbia the Northwest Fur Company built a post more than ninety years ago, and thence reckless voyageurs found their way through the solitudes, pausing to trade at the villages of the Spokanes, the Flatheads, the Umatillas, the Walla Wallas, the Nez Percés, and others, taking red women cheerfully in marriage and as cheerfully deserting them when occasion called. In this remote frontier, beyond the utmost reach of ethics or law, in a region with a cloud upon its national title, the pioneers fulfilled their semi-savage destiny. Nelson Durham, a writer of Spokane, has patriotically designated the Spokane Plains as the site of the annual horse-racing and saturnalia of these skin-clad trappers and traders, but they left no landmarks and the noise of their revelry had long since died away when the first Anglo-Saxon, lured by the roar of the falls, came to harness those tumultuous waters to his wheel.

[ THE COUNTY COURT HOUSE, SPOKANE.]

There is a tradition that the Spokane Indians shunned this now famed succession of wild cascades, for in the foaming maelstrom at the foot of the falls dwelt a malign goddess, her long hair streaming in the cataract, her shimmering figure half revealed in the enveloping mists of spray. While the waters danced about her she sang merrily and the sound of her singing was like the warbling of a thousand birds. With her outstretched arms she lured Indian fishermen and devoured them. Her flowing hair was a trammel that enmeshed her victims. None had ever returned. Shaman after shaman, under his totem pole, had unavailingly invoked his tomañowash incantations to destroy her power. Then Speelyai or Coyote, the great Indian god, transforming himself into a feather, floated over the falls and was speedily engulfed by the evil goddess. Assuming the form of a strong warrior he began his campaign. Around him were the wrecks of skin and bark canoes, the forms of unnumbered members of his tribes, and a bedraggled eagle which proved to be Whaiama, god of the upper air. With a stone axe Speelyai hewed his way through the monster's side and Whaiama bore the resurrected company to the high banks of the Spokane River. Now Speelyai pronounced a curse upon his groaning enemy. Her career as a destroyer was at an end. Henceforth she might entice some helpless wanderers from distant tribes, but the chosen ones she should destroy no more. And the god prophesied in conclusion that a better race would come some day, a strange people, whom she could not conquer, and who would bind and enslave her forever.

These falls, whose total volume equals the power of forty thousand horses, turn the wheels of factories the value of whose exports to China, Japan, and other lands is expressed in millions. The waterpower speeds electric street-cars over ninety miles of track, and conducts electricity through two hundred and fifty miles of arc mains. All the elevators and printing-presses of the city are operated by power from the falls, and to this all-supplying current are attached many sewing-machines, typewriters, phonographs, graphophones, churns, electric fans, music boxes, door-bells, burglar alarms, clocks, and hundreds of other contrivances calling for constant or occasional motive power. Spokane is credited with being the most modern and best-equipped city in the world, and this is due, first, to the falls whose power brings many utilities, considered luxuries in other communities, within reach of the lowliest consumer; and secondly, to the singular fact that the city is newer than the telephone, the electric light, and other latter-day inventions and discoveries. There were no ancient institutions and prejudices to supplant. To children reared in Spokane, other cities seem archaic, their streets sloven, and their homes grotesquely behind the times. A girl from Spokane visiting in New York is known to have written home about the bizarre appearance of "electric cars drawn by horses."

London gropes by night through dismal glimmerings of gas and it would require millions of reluctant pounds sterling to substitute more modern light. In the new city of Spokane it was the most natural procedure to install the latest conveniences of modern life. When the little settlement was but a cluster of ambitious cabins every abode had its telephone and its electric lights. The Spokane workman does not stumble up the steps of a dim tenement. Lumber is cheap and in variety, and even Spokane granite is within his means. He dwells in a good home. A click of a button at the door floods the dwelling with light. Sputtering wicks have no place in his economy. He can afford, too, to order his groceries by telephone or use the same medium to discuss politics with a friend in a distant part of the city. All members of polite society in Spokane have telephones. A lady planning an impromptu tea or lawn party gets out her calling list, reaches for the telephone, and issues her amiable summons. A great amount of local business is transacted over the wires in the city. The power of the falls likewise enables the telephones of Spokane to talk and trade with a thousand towns, the distant city of San Francisco coming within the Spokane circuit.

Thus, in the employment of waterpower to serve the city in manifold ways, the Indians say, has been fulfilled the prophecy of Speelyai that a race would come which should yoke the goddess of the cataract in perpetual servitude.

[ THE LAST CHIEF TO INTIMIDATE THE INHABITANTS OF SPOKANE.]