OREGON INDIAN.
Next morning, our sick horse was better, but still not himself. We left "Wells' Spring," however, at 7 a. m. on a walk, but soon achieved a trot, and were getting on quite satisfactorily again, when our ambulance struck a stone and smash went one of the rear springs. Two of its leaves showed old breaks, and it was a mystery how it ever stood the rough and tumble drive across the Mountains. Again our Le Grande rope came into play, and breaking a box to pieces we happened to have along, we soon succeeded in splicing up the spring, so as to make it hold. An hour's drive more, however, over a descending road, took us into Umatilla without further accident, and we hauled up at the Metropolitan, at 11 a. m. having come eighteen miles. We were just too late for the tri-weekly boat, down the Columbia to Portland, which we had been aiming at for a week—she having left an hour or so before. If it had not been for our break-down in the Mountains, or for our sick horse, we would have made Umatilla either early in the morning, or late the night before, and thus saved two days. As it was, there was no use lamenting it—we had done our best—and besides a little time for rest and writing was not unwelcome.
After emerging from the Blue Mountains at "Crawford's," our route thence to the Columbia was chiefly down the valley of the Umatilla. This was not over a mile or two in width usually, with high outlying plateaus, that showed only sand, sage-brush and grease-wood, with here and there a rocky butte. Population was very scarce, though we passed a few fine ranches along the Umatilla, that looked to be doing well, and off on the plateaus we saw several large flocks of sheep—thousands in number—grazing under their shepherds. Just beyond "Crawford's," the Umatilla and Walla-Walla Indians have a Reservation twenty miles square, of the best lands in the valley, and the government has agents there, teaching them to farm, raise stock, etc. Their farming did not seem to amount to much, but their horses, cattle, and sheep, by the thousand, all looked well. Both of these tribes together now numbered only about a thousand souls, and were said to be steadily decreasing. We saw scores of them on the road, scurrying along on their little ponies—all of them peaceable and friendly. They were larger and stouter, than our Ute friends on the Rio Grande; but did not seem endowed with half their fierceness and grit. The whole district, from Crawford's to the Columbia, lacked regular rains in summer, and hence farming to be successful required irrigation, as much as in Utah. For this, the Umatilla itself might be made to suffice, a thousand fold more than it did. Draining a wide region of country, it rushed with a rapid descent to the Columbia, and hereafter should be utilized not only to irrigate largely, but also to drive numerous mills and factories, that ought then to throng its banks. Long before reaching the Columbia, it is but little better than a broad raceway; and for miles, as we drove along, it seemed the beau-ideal of a natural water-power. Some day, in the not distant future, when all that region settles up, an Oregon Lowell will yet hum with spindles there, and its woolen-cloths and blankets become world-renowned.
It will be seen, we were seven days and a half in getting through from Boisè City, though expecting to make it in six. The stages advertised to make it in three, but the last one had been out five, with the passengers walking much of the way at that. A party of Irish miners we overtook on the road, footing it from Montana to the Columbia, indeed, raced with us for several days, following us sharply into Le Grande and beating us into "Meacham's;" but after that, we distanced them. At Umatilla, people said, we would have found a better road and made quicker time, if we had come by Uniontown, instead of crossing the Mountains; but our driver insisted "Meacham's" was the best road, and we had been guided of course by his superior wisdom.
This driver of ours, by the way, was something of a character. An Ohioan, so long ago as '49, he had joined the first rush to California, and soon succeeded in picking up $30,000, or so. Thence he went to Frazer River, on the first wave, and in a few months sunk pretty much all he had previously made. Then he mounted a mule, and with pick-axe and wash-pan "prospected" all over the Pacific Coast, landing at last in Idaho. Here he had again picked up a few thousands, and had just concluded a freight contract with a mining company at Owyhee, that he thought was going to "pay big." But it did not commence until spring, and meanwhile he was trying his hand at the lively business in Boisè. While on the coast he had lived in California, Nevada, British America, Washington, Oregon, and now Idaho; had camped out in the mining regions; shot grizzlies in the Sierra Nevadas; trapped beaver on the Columbia; wandered with the Indians for months together; and "roughed it" generally. He had but one eye—had lost the other, he said, in a battle with the Indians, one arrow hitting him there, and another passing through his body; yet he rode seventy miles afterwards on a mule, supported by his comrades—the pure air of that region and his Buckeye grit carrying him through. This was his story, without its embellishments. But he was a person of fine Western imagination; and somewhat, I fear, addicted to "romancing."
But, good-bye, driver—John Wilful, well-named! Good-bye, mustangs and donkeys! Good-bye, stage-coaches and ambulances! Two thousand four hundred miles of their drag and shake, of their rattle and bang, across the Plains and over the Mountains, had given us our fill of them. We had had runaways, we had had breakdowns, and about every stage experience, except a genuine upset, and how we happened to escape that will always remain a mystery. Our romance of stage-coaching, I must say, was long since gone. There before us now lay the lordly Columbia, with visions of steamboats and locomotives. And looking back on our long jaunt, with all its discomforts and dangers, it seemed for the moment as if nothing could induce us to take it again. Hereafter, we felt assured, we should appreciate the comfort and speed of eastern travel more, and pray for the hastening of all our Pacific Railroads. With a grand trunk line now overland, through Utah, it can not be long before a branch will be thrown thence to the Columbia, substantially by the route we travelled; and when that is done, the ride from Salt Lake to Umatilla will be soon accomplished. The region nowhere presents any serious obstacle to a railroad, except the Blue Mountains; and a Latrobe, or a Dodge, would soon flank or conquer these.