“Why don’t you stop off at Shoshone and go down and see the falls? They are only twenty-five miles from the station,” said one of the Union Pacific officials with whom I became acquainted at Denver. This was just at dark the next night after leaving Portland. I had forgotten what little I knew of those falls, excepting their name, and had no idea of going so near them on this trip, but I left the train at 3.30 the next morning, and about sunrise started out due south. “I suppose there are ranches along the road,” said I to the stage-driver at this end of the route. “No, not one; and you can’t get any water till you get there,” said he. So with a bottle of water, which did not last much more than half the distance, I rode along over the slightly undulating lava beds, which are mostly covered with a few feet of sand and with sage brush, but which occasionally come to the surface in broken masses of dark brown, perforated, metallic sounding rocks.

It certainly was not a very interesting ride of four or five hours, for jack rabbits in great numbers and an occasional gopher were the only living things I saw, and in looking across the same level, treeless country, far ahead, I had begun to wonder where the Snake River could possibly be, when suddenly I heard the roar of the falls, and came to the edge of a caÑon perhaps three hundred feet deep. The rocks of this caÑon, from top to bottom, are composed of this lava, and it is formed in layers from twenty to thirty feet thick, looking as if the lava had, at different times, overflowed the country to that depth, which it really had. But what was my astonishment when I found, on inquiry, that these layers in some places number as many as thirty, and that their depth in many places was several thousand feet. For instance, the Columbia River, which I had so recently seen, has cut its way through lava beds three and four thousand feet thick. And this is not all. These immensely thick beds of lava not only cover the entire surface of Idaho, but also of nearly the whole of Oregon and Washington Territory, and parts of California, Nevada, and Montana. When it is stated that the entire surface covered by this lava is not less than two hundred thousand square miles, forty times as large as Connecticut, one can only faintly comprehend the statement, and many may not believe it; but the fact remains. And to me the thought that I had been allowed to ride over a portion, a very small portion of this lava that ages ago burst out through some immense fissure or great vent in the earth’s surface, this thought alone paid me for the hours of thirst endured. The simple fact that I have seen this lava bed has left on my mind one of the strongest impressions of the whole trip; an impression, if not exactly taken on dry plate, yet that was left on a very dry pate. Still no one need to come out into this country to see the effect of some ancient eruption. The hills at Meriden, Conn., and East and West Rock at New Haven, as well as Mount Tom near Holyoke, Mass., hills that I have climbed and ridden over since the bicycle enlarged my means of traveling, these are all lava formations.

There is a fine view of the caÑon, looking up the river towards the east for a couple of miles as you go. Then a zigzag road down into the caÑon, and half a mile below are the falls. The ferry is just above the falls, and I had to wait some time there, before the ferryman, at the hotel just below the falls, on the opposite side of the river, saw me. The ride across in a leaky row-boat—there is a cable ferry-boat for the stage—with broken oars and oarlocks, only a little way above the cloud of mist, was not the safest one I have ever taken, but with my wheel lying flatwise over the edges of the boat, we crossed all right and I had soon climbed out upon a projecting point in the precipice below the hotel, and obtained a magnificent view of the falls, which are but little inferior to Niagara, far ahead of any other falls I have seen in the West.

Snake River flows down through the caÑon with scarcely a ripple, until at the falls it is broken up by half a dozen or more of rocky islands, and after plunging into pretty cascades for a short distance, it leaps over the cliff, which curves in a little, and falls two hundred and ten feet down into the caÑon, there not far from six hundred feet deep. Although the perpendicular fall was greater by fifty feet than at Niagara, the volume of water is less, but there is the dark caÑon above and below the falls that adds greatly to the impression one receives. Eagles were seen soaring around in the skies in almost every direction, and on a huge boulder just above the falls in the middle of the river, was a nest of young ones being fed by the parent bird.

After spending three or four hours there, I crossed the river again, and climbed up out of the caÑon and started back. I took a larger bottle filled with cool spring water—the location of that spring, as well as many others in this Western country, I shall never forget. I can, in imagination, see them now, almost every one of them. The water, of course, got warm, and before dark I had drained every drop of it. There was no riding after dark, and for miles I pushed the machine along in the sandy rut, thinking of little else than that tank of ice-water in the station I was trying to reach. I might mention, as an instance of how similar situations recall mental impressions, that in crossing the plains from Laramie, the song of “Tit Willow” was continually running through my mind, and for days I could do nothing to rid myself of what came to be very unpleasant, but after reaching California I scarcely hummed the tune once. I was not troubled with the song at all after leaving the sand and sage brush, but with the first return to the sage brush, the tune I had not hummed or thought of for weeks came back, pursuing me with all its unpleasant monotony—the smell of the sage revived it.

About an hour after dark I lost the wheel tracks, and but for the clear sky and north star, should have had some trouble in getting back to the station. As it was I laid the machine down and commenced feeling around in the sand with my hands for the ruts, and wandered about so long I even lost the machine. There are patches of ground, of an acre or more in extent, entirely free from sage brush, and it was in crossing one of these, where there is no bushy border to the sandy road to make its direction discernible in the dark, that I got into trouble. But I found the wheel tracks after a while, and soon after the wheel, and was very careful from that time to keep the wheel from turning out of the rut, for I had to feel the rut with the machine, as I could not see it. It was after ten o’clock when I reached the station, and no lights ever shone brighter in the distance than did those of Shoshone, and that ice-water, as I poured it down at intervals all night, till the train arrived at 3.30 next morning, served to quench my thirst in the manner I had anticipated for so many hours. Thirsty and tired as I was, I felt fully recompensed by the sight of Shoshone Falls, without visiting the upper falls, situated about two miles up the river. The machine has acquired the distinction of being the first one to visit this place of interest.

At the terminus of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company’s line at Huntington, I went into the baggage car to get the machine. “$3 to pay on that,” said the baggage-master. As I had traveled over 1400 miles on the Union and Central Pacific railroads without being charged a penny for the machine, this charge for one day seemed to be rather exorbitant, and I said so. “Well,” said the baggage-master very confidently, “I can’t help that. It is $1.50 on the other division, and the same on this.” I told him to give me a receipt, if I must pay it, for I should try to get it back from headquarters. That he did not like to do, for whatever I paid him he intended to “knock the company down for it,” and the receipt would come home to roost, so he compromised by throwing off one-half, which I paid. On the other side of the depot, the Union Pacific’s Oregon Short line came in, and that was the first and last charge made for carrying the machine till I reached Baltimore, where the Penn. Railroad Company’s price is one-half cent a mile.

After waiting all day at Pocatello, where I put in five or six hours of good sleep on the platform, on the shady side of the depot, with the knapsack for a pillow, I reached Beaver CaÑon, on the Utah Northern Railroad, at three A.M., and before daylight slept an hour or two more on the floor of the waiting-room, near a stove that was really comfortable, for the nights were quite cold up there. I had lost so much sleep the past week, I could lie down and take a comfortable nap anywhere I could get a chance. The two nights on the boat, it may be remembered, were not accompanied with many hours of sound repose. The first night out of Portland, I talked with friends on the train who were to return home by the Northern Pacific, till late, and then I wrote till after one o’clock. After that there was not much rest sitting bolt upright, for every seat in the car was taken. The next night it required more force of will to stop off at Shoshone than anything I had done during the trip, for these reasons: I was going towards home, after four months and a half of constant traveling away from it. That thought alone made me very happy, and I could not bear to be delayed even for a day; and besides, I had laid down with four seats all to myself even before dark that night, with the intention of having a good long night’s rest. But I did not want to miss any great sight so near as that to my route, and so I took short naps all night till three in the morning, for I did not want to be carried by the station. The next night I took the train at the same hour that I left it the previous night; and thus I had had only one good night’s sleep in over a week, when I started out due east early in the morning, Aug. 22d, for the Yellowstone.

Distance on the wheel, 3,251 miles.