_Friday, June 22d._—We left John Day's River about seven o'clock, and after riding twelve miles, met Major Haller, (Commander of the expedition,) and Captain Russell, 4th Infantry, with their escort, with whom we stopped for a short time. Soon afterwards we met another detachment of troops, with two or three wagons, each drawn by six mules. About noon we struck the Columbia River, whose solitary banks were quite enlivened by the long trains of wagons containing the provisions of the detachment. We counted twenty-four, half of which were on one side of the river and half on the other. The different detachments and wagons will all meet at the camping ground on the Umatilla where we left Lieutenant Gracie. There will be about one hundred and fifty mounted men besides the packers and wagoners. After resting for a couple of hours on the Columbia, we set out for the Dalles, where we arrived at five o'clock. Here we found Lieutenant Dryer, who is to set out to-morrow morning and join the command as Quarter Master. And thus ended my expedition into the wilderness. It has shown me the rough side of army life, and yet the time has passed pleasantly from the very novelty and freshness of everything. And now, amid all the refinements of civilization, I cannot but look back with something like regret to the freedom of our little camp on the quiet plains, where no sound was heard to break our slumber, but the steady tread of our sentinel or the rippling of the Umatilla. _FINIS_ Transcriber's Notes. Some punctuation, accentuation, spacing, hyphenation and spelling have been corrected, but where the original spelling variations appear more than once they have been retained. Italicized words and phrases are presented by surrounding the text with underscores. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Indian Council in the Valley of the Walla-Walla. 1855, by Lawrence Kip