The White Goat and his Country 
inchoate hotel. The rest may be seen upon 
blue-print maps, where you would suppose 
Bridgeport was a teeming metropolis. At 
Port Columbia, which we reached by a land- 
slide sort of road that slanted the stage over 
and put the twin Jew drummers in mortal 
fear, we slept in one of the two buildings 
which indicate that town. It is another im- 
portant center,—in blue print,—but invisible 
to the naked eye. In the morning, a rope 
ferry floated the new stage and us travelers 
across the river. The Okanagon flows south 
from lakes and waters above the British line, 
and joins the Columbia here. We entered 
its valley at once, crossed it soon by another 
rope ferry, and keeping northward, with the 
river to the east between us and the Colville 
Reservation, had one good meal at noon, and 
entering a smaller valley, reached Ruby that 
evening. Here the stage left me to continue 
its way to Conconally, six miles further on. 
With the friends who had come to meet me, I 
ascended out of Ruby the next day over the 
abrupt hill westward, and passing one night 
out in my blankets near a hospitable but 
limited cabin (its flowing-haired host fed us, 
31 
