rance-agent
introduced us as friends to a real-estate man, who promptly bade us go
up the Columbia River for a day while he made inquiries about fishing.
There was no overwhelming formality. The old man was addressed as
"California," I answered indifferently to "England" or "Johnny Bull,"
and the real-estate man was "Portland." This was a lofty and spacious
form of address.

So California and I took a steamboat, and upon a sumptuous blue and gold
morning steered up the Willamette River, on which Portland stands, into
the great Columbia--the river that brings the salmon that goes into the
tin that is emptied into the dish when the extra guest arrives in India.
California introduced me to the boat and the scenery, showed me the
"texas," the difference between a "tow-head" and a "sawyer," and the
precise nature of a "slue." All I remember is a delightful feeling that
Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Mississippi Pilot were quite true, and
that I could almost recognise the very reaches down which Huck and Jim
had drifted. We were on the border line between Oregon State and
Washington Territory, but that didn't matter. The Columbia was the
Mississippi so far as I was concerned. We ran along the sides of wooded
islands whose banks were caving in with perpetual smashes, and we
skipped from one side to another of the mile-wide stream in search of a
channel, exactly like a Mississippi steamer, and when we wanted to pick
up or set down a passenger we chose a soft and safe place on the shore
and ran our very snub nose against it. California spoke to each new
passenger as he came aboard and told me the man's birthplace. A
long-haired tender of kine crashed out of the underwood, waved his hat,
and was taken aboard forthwith. "South Carolina," said California,
almost without looking at him. "When he talks you will hear a softer
dialect than mine." And it befell as he said: whereat I marvelled, and
California chuckled. Every island in the river carried fields of rich
wheat, orchards, and a white, wooden house; or else, if the pines grew
very thickly, a sawmill, the tremulous whine of whose saws flickered
across the water like the drone of a tired bee. From remarks he let fall
I gathered that California owned timber ships and dealt in lumber, had
ranches too, a partner, and everything handsome about him; in addition
to a chequered career of some thirty-five years. But he looked almost as
disreputable a loafer as I.

"Say, young felle