Ding! Dong! Puff! Puff! The steamer had come, and Nov. 28th, we at length embarked for down the Columbia. She was a little stern-wheel boat, scarcely longer than your finger, called _Nez Perce Chief_, Capt. Stump, master. Her fare to Fort Vancouver or Portland, including railroad-portages, was $18 in coin, which at rates then current was equivalent to $25 in greenbacks. Meals were extra, at a cost of $1,50 each, in currency, besides. The distance to Portland was about 200 miles; to the mouth of the Columbia, 100 or so more. We found Capt. Stump a very obliging Oregonian, and obtained much interesting information from him. His boat was part of a line belonging to the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, a gigantic corporation that controlled all the navigable waters of the Columbia, and with far-reaching enterprise was now seeking to connect them with the headwaters of the Missouri. He said, their boats could ascend to Umatilla all the year round, except in mid-winter, when the Columbia sometimes froze over for several weeks together, though not usually. With good water, they could go up to Wallula, at the mouth of the Walla-Walla, 25 miles farther, which they usually did six months in the year. With very high water, they could run up to Lewiston, at the junction of the Snake and Clearwater, about 175 miles more, three months in the year--making about 500 miles from the sea in all. Above Lewiston, there was a bad cañon in the Snake, with shoals and rapids for a hundred miles or so to Farewell Bend; but after that, he thought, a light-draught steamer might get up at least three hundred miles farther, or within about 200 miles of Salt Lake, as stated heretofore.