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. CHAPTER XV. DOWN THE COLUMBIA.