The valley of the Snake, most sinuous of rivers, as its name well indicates, proved scarcely better, than where we had crossed it several hundred miles farther up, a fortnight or so before. But the Snake itself had now swelled into a broad and majestic river. We travelled down its banks for ten or twelve miles, and found its rocky and precipitous bluffs came quite down to the river generally; and where this was not the case, there were often only great banks of sand, whirled into such sheltered places by the winds of ages. Indifferent timber appeared here and there, but not much to speak of. The road wound along close to the bluffs, and was often quarried out of them, without room for more than one team to pass at a time. We passed one such place by moonlight, with the bluff high above and the river deep below, but fortunately got through safely. We reasoned, that the usual trains would have gone into camp by sundown, and took the chances for any accidental travellers like ourselves. It was a beautiful night, with the moon out in all her glory, walking a cloudless sky and filling the cañon of the Snake with a flood of light; but we were not sorry when we heard the lowing of the cattle, and the wee-hawing of the mules, belonging to the trains in camp beyond. It was eight P. M., (Nov. 20th), when we reached Farewell Bend, and here crossed the Snake again on a stout ferry-boat propelled by the current. Farewell Bend--a hamlet of half a dozen houses--is so called, because here the Snake makes a sudden turn north, and goes off in a wide circuit through the mountains of Idaho and Oregon, instead of keeping straight on to the Columbia, as it seems it should have done. Here, too, is where the great Emigrant Trail, from the Missouri to the Columbia, finally leaves the Snake, and hence also perhaps the name to this bend. The Snake, or Lewis' Fork of the Columbia, as it is sometimes called, altogether is a right noble stream--by far the largest in all that region--and it seemed would yet be made available for navigation, though now badly beset with reefs and rapids. A steamboat had already been built at Farewell Bend, to run up to the neighborhood of Boisè and beyond; but that was her first season, and the results were yet to be seen. It was said, that by starting early in the season, she could reach a point within about two hundred miles of Salt Lake, and thus communicate with a vast region there, then comparatively isolated. A fine vein of good bituminous coal had just been opened in the overhanging bluff at Farewell Bend, and here was fuel cheap for all the country up the Snake. Below Farewell Bend there were rapids that would have to be circumvented by slack-water navigation or railroad portages, the same as on the Columbia. But with this done, the Snake had long stretches of navigable waters, that needed only population and business to make them teem with commerce. The same Company, that made the Columbia navigable, also