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.