town in the State, and you will find one or more Chinamen doing the
house-service. Walk through the streets, and you will meet a
blue-coated Asiatic with a big clothes-basket of clean linen on his
shoulders. Here and there in the streets hangs a sign: "Hop Kee," "Sam
Lin," "Lee Chung," "Ah Sin," "Washing," or "Chinese Laundry," and
"Labor provided," or "Intelligence-Office," and through the steamy
windows you catch a glimpse of white-shirted Chinamen, bending over
their ironing, and a mixed gabble of strange "Ahs" and "Yahs" strikes
the ear as you pass by.
[Sidenote: _CHINESE TRADING._]
I went up the Columbia River to the Dalles the other day. At the Dalles
was a camp for the night of about five hundred Chinamen, being
transferred by the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company from work
higher up the river to some of the heavy rock-cutting and tunneling
between the Dalles and the Lower Cascades. I stood and watched them at
their suppers. Divided into messes of twelve or fifteen each, they had
supplied themselves with beef in the town. Holes were dug in the
ground, sticks lighted in them, and large pans set on to boil, and,
with plenty of salt and pepper, a savory smell soon arose. Large pans
of rice were boiling by the side, and before long each man's portion
was ladled out into a real China basin, which he held in one hand close
to his mouth, while the chop-sticks moved at a terrible rate in the
fingers of the other hand. Such uncouth figures!--bronzed in tint,
short and heavy in form, clad in thick blanket-coats, with knee-boots;
turbans round most heads made of heavy scarlet woolen comforters, and a
few old hats among the crowd; and a constant gabble of voices, nearly
deafening in the aggregate. Their little tents were pitched on the
river-bank close at hand, and a huge pile of their unmistakable baggage
lay heaped, with their shovels and axes, on the deck of the great scow
hard by. The town was full of them, buying or bargaining in every
store. I marked a group of four who wanted a pair of strong scissors.
They were asked fifty cents in a store. They examined the scissors and
tried to cheapen them in vain, and then left. They tried four stores in
turn, but found no better article, and the same price; then returned to
their first love, and strove hard for a reduction in vain. Again they
went the round; again they came back: on the fourth visit the patience
of the Jewish gentleman behind the counter gave way, and he told them
to take it or leave it, they should not see the scissors again. Most
unwillingly, and after a vast amount of breathing on the blades to see
how quickly the vapor disappeared, the half-dollar came forth and the
scissors changed owners. They are the closest buyers in the world. The
next morning by seven o'clock the tents were struck, the Chinamen on
board the steamer, and in the afternoon we passed them hard at work,
spread in a long line on the face of a terrible rock, which looked as
if five thousand Chinamen might work at it in vain for a year to make a
fit passage for the train.
But without them how would these great works get done? Later on I
intend describing some of the undertakings in progress in the State.
Delay in them--still worse, the stoppage of them--would be a calamity
indeed. After all, the Chinamen work for about eighty or ninety cents a
day, and out of this sum the contractor has to find them food. The
food, save the rice, is purchased in the State; the material of the
clothes they wear is manufactured and sold in the United States; the
tools they work with also. So that it is only the profit on their
labor's price which goes to China; and some of that goes to pay their
passage in the ships which transport them to and fro. And their labor
remains--its results felt by every passenger and freighter on the
railroads, and every Oregonian directly or indirectly interested in
increasing the population of the State.
Naturally, it is easy to have too much Chinaman. I should grieve to see
them multiply so as to dominate the State. Excellent servants, but bad
masters.
And by all means let us have treaties with China to enable the influx
of these Mongolians to be regulated. Already we have laws forbidding
the employment of Chinamen on government or municipal public works. And
I do not see that there is any economy in the working or superiority in
the labors on such undertakings.
For household service on this coast they are simply indispensable. They
receive high wages: for a good Chinese cook you must pay from fifteen
to twenty-five dollars a month. A laundryman and house-servant can be
had for somewhat less. But our experience and observation lead us to
the knowledge that two Chinese servants will do well the work of four
English servants. Another thing is that, having learned to cook any
special dish, you may be sure of having it always thereafter equally
good.
If they are a bother sometimes by not comprehending orders, they make
up for it by quaint ways. An English neighbor of ours has one Chee, a
boy of sixteen, as house-servant, and a very good cook and general
servant she has made of him. Chee and his mistress are on the best of
terms usually; sometimes they fall out.
[Sidenote: "_HEAP DEBBLE-Y IN THERE!_"]
The mistress was staying with us for a few days once, while her husband
was out hunting in the hills, and she preferred sleeping in her own
house. This Chee strongly disapproved, as it involved his going up to
make the bed and clean the house, instead of having high-jinks in the
China house down in the town. When his mistress went into the house,
Chee pointed into her bedroom, and in a mysterious voice warned her
thus: "Heap debble-y in there. Some time I make bed, I see four, fi'
debble-y go under bed. Some time come catch you in night!"
Another time, his master and mistress being out, Chee amused himself
with their photograph-album. They found many of the pictures shifted,
and one charming young lady missing. Chee stoutly denied it all, and
swore he never saw the picture. So his "boss," Hop Kee, was appealed
to. In the afternoon of the same day Hop Kee appeared with a second
Chinaman. This man produced the missing photograph for identification,
and then Hop Kee disappeared into Chee's kitchen and administered a
hearty beating to the culprit. When Hop Kee reappeared, panting, his
companion explained and apologized thus: "Chee heap bad boy; but he no
steal um; he heap love um picture; he sew um up his bed."
Another time Chee was pottering about in the garden when his mistress
called him. He would not answer, so she called him again, and this was
the conversation:
"Chee, come here." "Heap tired in foot; can' walk." "Chee, come here
directly." Chee comes and gets his orders. "Wha' for you can' talk me
there?" "Chee, you must not answer me like that; you speak as if I were
a dog." "Well, you allee same likee one dog!" "Chee, how dare you? I
tell Hop Kee what you say." "I no care." But Hop Kee comes that
afternoon and hears the sad accusation, and this is his advice: "Mrs.
----, you heap takee some poker; you beat him. I heap much obliged.
Chee no good; you whip um."
Chee asks for his wages, and even for some in advance. "What for you
want money, Chee?" "I want fi'teen dollar." "What for, Chee?" "I want
buy one big watch." "How big, Chee?" "Heap big watch; he weigh ha'
pound." And I believe it does weigh half a pound.
One of our Chinamen, Chung, was a sad breaker of crockery. We bore it
patiently in spite of the loss, for stone-ware is terribly dear here.
But one day there was an awful smash, and we ran out to see Chung
wringing his hands over a tray on the ground, with broken cups and
plates all about. We said nothing; but the next day he went of his own
accord, and at his own cost replaced the greater part.
[Sidenote: _CHINESE NEW YEAR._]
All the house-servants expect a holiday for a day or two at the Chinese
new year, which occurs about the 20th of January. It is a mark of good
breeding and condition with them to give presents at that time to every
one in the house. A little cabinet of lacquer-work to the lady of the
house, a fan in sandal wood or ivory, one or two flowered silk
handkerchiefs, a pot of sweetmeats, and two or three boxes of the
inevitable Chinese crackers for the children, make up the list.
Each of the China houses in the town collects all the Chinamen that
make it their headquarters, and prepares a magnificent supper. They
spare no expense on this occasion; all the chickens in the neighborhood
are slaughtered, and the sweet Chinese wine flows freely. Even a
drunken Chinaman may be met in the street, staggering from one China
house to another, and he will very likely be mobbed by all the
"hoodlums" in the town, pelting and hustling him.
"Hoodlums"--a fine word this to describe the vagabond, rough
hobble-de-hoys that swarm in these Western towns; lads too big for
school, too lazy to work, an incumbrance to their families, a nuisance
to all their neighbors. I am told that the word originated in San
Francisco twenty years ago. There were there gangs of these rough lads
who hung about the wharves, ready for riot or plunder as occasion
offered. Against them the police of the city waged a constant war.
These Arabs had various haunts among the hovels and sheds, the piles of
lumber and rubbish, that deface the water-side of every growing and
unfinished city. When the police appeared, "Huddle-um!" was the
watchword that sent every skulker to cover. But the Irish element
pronounced the watchword with a rounder sound, and so "Hoodlum!" caught
the ear of the passer-by, and soon was adopted as the label of the
tribe.
The police of our town is represented by the city marshal and his
deputy, who act under the authority of the mayor and the city council.
The "calaboose" is the lock-up for offenders; and work on the streets
in irons is also a punishment which may be awarded by the recorder for
offenses against the city laws and regulations. Drunkenness and
opium-smoking are in this black list. Passers-by were edified, a few
days ago, by the spectacle of one white man, for drunkenness, and two
Chinamen, for opium-smoking, shoveling away at the mud, and ornamented
with iron ball and shackles. It is strange to find that opium-smoking
in these dens is not altogether confined to the Chinese, but some
degraded white men are occasionally captured by the marshal in a raid
on a China house. Such are not only punished, but scouted, and still
they repeat the offense, proving the hold the practice gains when once
yielded to.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Life in the town--Sociables--Religious sects--Sabbath-schools--
Christmas, festivities--Education, how far compulsory--Colleges--
Student-life and education--Common schools--Teachers' institutes
--Newspapers--Patent outsides--"The Oregonian"--Other journals--
Charities--Paupers--Secret societies.
Life in these country towns possesses some features strange to a
new-comer. Every family, almost without exception, is allied with some
church organization. The association of such families in religious
matters gives the connecting bond they need. Not contented with
worshiping together on Sundays, they often meet in church sociables and
in school entertainments and concerts, for which purposes the
church-building is very commonly used.
To get up a "sociable" is a pleasant task for the matrons of the
church. Having settled on the day, they meet and agree for how many it
is likely they must provide. Then each lady undertakes her share,
finding so much tea, coffee, and sugar, and so many sandwiches and
cakes. It is a delicate compliment for outsiders also to contribute a
cake to the common fund. Then, the evening having come, the company
begin to meet, generally about seven o'clock, and are received by the
ladies of the congregation. Every one is made welcome. The object of
the "sociable," so far as money-getting is concerned, is met either by
a small charge for refreshments as supplied, or by a charge for
admission, making the visitor free of the room.
When the tea or supper is finished, there is a fine flow of talk, as
all tongues are loosened. Then follows music, either as solos by such
as venture to make so public an appearance, or in duets, glees, or
choruses provided by the church choir. Interspersed with the music are
recitations, readings, or short lectures. The recitations are as
commonly given by young ladies as by the other sex; and the most awful
and tragic pieces are decidedly the favorites. A good deal of gesture
and action is approved.
Generally, a few words from the minister of the church close the
entertainment, and the audience separate about ten o'clock, all the
better for the "sociable."
The comparatively trifling differences which serve to keep one sect
separate from another, result in a number of small congregations and
weak "interests"--and also, I think, react injuriously on the education
and condition of the various ministers. And I do not see any progress
toward obliterating differences and combining scattered forces against
the common foes of indifference, irreligion, and vice; rather, I notice
in the meetings or conventions attended by representatives or delegates
from the various congregations of a special sect, and held annually in
some central place, a disposition to insist on differences, and enforce
the teaching of each special set of distinctive doctrines on the young.
Outside of the Episcopal Church, which, of course, possesses and uses
its own liturgy, the services of the other Christian sects are almost
exactly similar; I except also the Roman Catholics, who are present in
the State of Oregon in considerable numbers, and whose organization of
archbishop, bishops, priests, and sisters is as perfect as usual. But I
have reference to Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists, North
and South, Baptists, Evangelicals--the order of their services is about
the same, and unless by chance you were present on some occasion for
enforcing the special doctrines of the sect, you could not determine to
which belonged the particular church in which you might be worshiping.
The institution of the Sabbath-school is not similar to that pursued in
England, at any rate. The church is opened at a special hour for
Sabbath-school, and the children attend in numbers; the minister of the
church holds a service for the special benefit of the young, but adults
are also present. There is not the division into classes, and the
enlisting of the efforts of teachers for those classes, which we have
seen elsewhere.
[Sidenote: _CHRISTMAS FESTIVITIES._]
Christmas is chiefly marked by the Christmas-trees which are so
commonly provided; the religious significance of the day is hardly
enforced at all. But the great Christmas-trees arranged by a
congregation, lighted up in the church or school-room, and hung with
presents contributed by each family for its own individual members, and
only brought to the common tree that the joy of donor and receiver
might be alike shared in by friends, are a pretty and a happy sight.
And this is by no means confined to the towns. The various precincts of
the county have each their headquarters at the common school-house, and
in many of these Christmas-trees are provided; and, if the gifts are
less in money cost than those hung round the city Christmas-trees, they
are none the less worth if got by so many hours of country work, and
brought over many a weary mile of muddy road, and treasured in the old
trunk among the Sunday garments till the happy day came round, and the
Christmas frost hung the fir-trees with their sparkling load, and
glazed the old black logs and gray snake-fences with their glittering
covering of ice.
A common notion prevails that education here is compulsory. It is
compulsory in the sense that facilities by way of school-houses and
trained teachers, and superintendence by committees and clerks, are
provided by the State, and paid for by the counties from the county
tax. It is not compulsory in the sense that so many hours of school
attendance can be enforced against parents or children by the public
authority. Much is done; a strong and general interest is shown;
expense is not spared, even where expenditure is severely felt; but
still many children both in town and country escape the educational
net. There is a State Superintendent of Education; there are county
superintendents; there are many schools and teachers; and there are
universities and colleges, with good staffs of professors, and a very
high and wide course of studies in all. But very much remains to be
done.
There is far too much effort at variety rather than thoroughness in
study. However hard both professors and students may labor, it can not
be possible in a four-years' course to fill a lad, who has previously
had but a common-school education, with a satisfactory knowledge of
Latin, high mathematics, Euclid, history, English grammar and
composition, chemistry, organic and inorganic, geography, geology,
mechanics, electricity, polarization of light, and various other
studies usually required for the master of arts honors examination in a
British university. But this is attempted here.
And, moreover, this extensive course is carried on in the State
Agricultural College as well as in the universities of the State. It
can hardly be said that the name of "agricultural" is earned, since
there is nothing in the studies here engaged in to distinguish this
from any other high-class college in the State.
[Sidenote: _TEACHERS' INSTITUTES._]
The course followed in the common school is open to much the same
criticism--too much of the ornamental, too little of the thorough and
solid, being instilled. This is hardly to be wondered at when it is
considered that the teachers in the common schools are taken
principally from the students of the colleges or universities, whose
learning is of the class above described. There is a great need of a
normal school, where teachers can be specially trained for that work;
as it is now, a young fellow is ready to "teach school" for a year or
two for want of, or on his way to, his intended niche in life.
The scale of payments at the schools is moderate enough, but a large
item of expense is in the school-books: they are dear, their use is
compulsory, they have to be purchased by the scholars, and they are
frequently changed by the Board of Education.
One great means by which it is sought at once to instruct, amuse, and
infuse the school-teachers with common ideas and sympathies is by
"teachers' institutes." In each county a time is fixed by the State
Superintendent of Education, and for two or three days all, or as many
as can be got together of the teachers in the county, are gathered in
some central town, and for two or three days have constant meetings.
This occurs annually.
The most experienced teachers give illustrations of their favorite
methods of instruction in the various subjects, and free discussion on
these matters follows.
The days are devoted to this practical work, and in the evenings some
more general entertainment is provided in the shape of music, lectures,
or readings, and these are thrown open to the public. At one of these
the lecturer, who was one of the professors at the Monmouth College,
descanted on the high general standard of educational attainments in
this Willamette Valley. He pointed out, in proof, that whereas through
the United States the population supported one newspaper to each eight
hundred, in this valley the proportion was one to three hundred or
thereabout.
[Sidenote: _NEWSPAPERS._]
I found on inquiry that the figures were about correct. And the fact
is, that it is only in the newspapers that the country people find
nearly all their literature, and that barely a farmer can be found who
does not regularly take three or more papers, and this makes the
continued lives of these papers possible. A town of a thousand or
twelve hundred inhabitants will support two or even three papers. How
is it done? Examine one of these papers and you will find the outside
pages better printed than the inside, and filled with a special sort of
romantic stories, and short bits of general information; extracts from
magazines and from Eastern or English newspapers. The inside pages have
the true local color. Here you will see the leader, devoted to the
topics of the time and place; descanting on the railroad news of the
day; expressing the editor's opinions on the rates of freight or
passage, or on the advantages his town offers for establishing new
industries; or criticising the recent appointment of postmaster. Then
the correspondence from various outlying towns or villages, written
very often by the schoolmaster, and abounding in literary allusions and
quotations. And then comes the amazing feature of the paper--a column
or two are devoted to "locals." This is the style: "Beautiful weather.
New York sirup at Thompson's. The spring plowing is nearly done. Use
the celebrated XL flour, the best in the market. Mrs. ---- has been in
----, attending to the woman-suffrage question, the past week. Our
thanks are due to two fair ladies for bouquets of spring flowers, the
first of the season. Our young friend Pete M---- called on us
yesterday; good boy Pete. Judge Henry was at Salem the past week. Miss
Addie Bines is visiting friends in town. Did you see that bonnet at the
Presbyterian church on Sunday? The accidental pistol-shot the sheriff
got is pretty bad. The rates of board at the Cosmopolitan Hotel are
five dollars a week; three meals for a dollar. The Odd-Fellows will
give a ball on the 25th. Our vociferous friend Sam N---- is starting
for Puget Sound." And so on.
I observe and I hear that these locals are by far the best-read portion
of the paper. A variety of items of scraps from the neighborhood, and
advertisements, the longest of which relate to patent medicines of all
sorts, fill up these two inner pages of the paper. The secret of cheap
production lies in obtaining the paper, with the two outside pages
ready printed, from an office in Portland, which supplies in this way
twenty or thirty of these little newspapers. Thus the cost to the
editor is reduced to the getting-up of the two inner pages, and, as
will be seen, not a very high level of brain-power is needed.
"The Oregonian" is the only journal in the State giving the latest
telegrams. Naturally it is published in Portland, and devoted mainly to
the interests of that city. It is connected with the Associated Press,
and possesses the practical monopoly of the supply of news, properly so
called. Professing to be Republican in politics, it assumes the liberty
of advocating doctrines and supporting candidates for office in direct
violation of the acknowledged principles of the party and the wishes of
the party managers. With a parade of fairness, and willingness to admit
to its columns views and communications opposing the ideas it may be
advocating at the time, it takes care to color matters in such form as
to pervert or weaken all opposing or criticising matter. It is bitterly
hostile to every movement in the Willamette Valley tending toward
independence of Portland's money power and influence. While professing
to desire the development of the State, it reads that to mean solely
the aggrandizement of Portland. It enjoys a happy facility of
conversion, and will unblushingly advocate to-day the adoption of
measures it denounced last week. Unreliable in everything except its
telegraphic news, and oftentimes seeking to color them by suggestive
head-notes and capital announcements, it is a calamity to the State
that its chief journal should be at once the most unpopular at home and
the most misleading abroad.
Of course, "The Oregonian" is not the only journal professing to be of
and for the State at large. Several are published at Portland claiming
the character of general State interest. Such are the "Willamette
Farmer," a journal chiefly devoted to the farming interest, and with
which "The Oregonian" is very frequently at war; "The New Northwest,"
edited by Mrs. Duniway, a lady enthusiast in favor of woman's rights
and woman's suffrage, but making up with a good deal of ability a paper
containing much of general interest; the "Pacific Christian Advocate,"
a religious paper; and also a number of other papers, Democratic and
Republican, of no special note.
Salem, Albany, and Harrisburg possess newspapers above the average of
ability and circulation.
I thought there was a good deal of wisdom in the letter of a
correspondent of mine in one of the Eastern States, who concluded a
letter of general inquiry as to the State of Oregon with a request that
I would send him a bundle of local newspapers, "by which," said he, "I
can judge better of the present conditions of life in Oregon than by
the answers of any one special correspondent."
There are very few poor people in Oregon--so poor, that is, as to need
charitable help. Such are taken charge of by the county court, and from
the county funds such an allowance is made in the case of families as
shall keep them from absolute want. In the case of single persons they
are given into the care of such families as are willing to receive them
in return for a moderate sum, say three or four dollars a week.
[Sidenote: _SECRET SOCIETIES._]
The various societies and orders, namely, the Freemasons, the
Foresters, the Odd-Fellows, the Order of United Workmen, the Good
Templars, and others, have a large number of adherents in Oregon. I
believe the Freemasons number upward of seven thousand brethren; the
present Grand Master is the Secretary of State, and a very efficient
head he makes. The Freemasons and other orders take charge of the needy
brethren with their proverbial charity, and thus relieve to a great
extent the public funds.
CHAPTER XIX.
Industries other than farming--Iron-ores--Coal--Coos Bay mines--
Seattle mines--Other deposits--Lead and copper--Limestone--Marbles
--Gold, where found and worked--Silver, where found and worked--Gold
in sea-sand--Timber--Its area and distribution--Spars--Lumber--Size
of trees--Hard woods--Cost of production and sale of lumber--Tanneries
--Woolen-mills--Flax-works--Invitation to Irish--Salmon--Statistics
of the trade--Methods--Varieties of salmon--When and where caught--
Salmon-poisoning of dogs--Indians fishing--Traps--Salmon-smoking.
It must not be inferred, from the prominence given in these pages to
the farming and stock-raising interests of Oregon, that openings can
not be found in many directions for new and rising industries.
Oregon is as rich in minerals as in lands for wheat-growing and
cattle-raising. In the north of the State, about six miles from
Portland, at a place called Oswego, on the Willamette, very rich
deposits of brown hematite iron-ore have been discovered, and have for
a few years been worked. The pig-iron produced at these smelting-works
is now used in a foundry close at hand, to which a rolling-mill is just
added. The iron is of the very best Scotch-iron quality, and commands
equivalent prices at home and also in San Francisco.
At many other points large deposits of iron-ore are waiting for
development. It is reported from Columbia, Tillamook, Marion,
Clackamas, Linn, Polk, Jackson, and Coos Counties. In the Cascade
Mountains it has been found in many directions, but as yet has not been
properly prospected.
Coal abounds. The Coos Bay mines have been opened and worked for some
years, and they keep quite a fleet of schooners plying between the
mines and San Francisco. Other beds have been found on the Umpqua; and
coal is reported from many points in the Coast Range. So far as my own
knowledge goes, these mountain discoveries are of no very great value,
from the want of continuity and uniformity of level, though it is but
little more than the outcrop which has been tested in most places. A
different report is given of a recent discovery in Polk County, in this
valley, where a thick vein of stone-coal in the basin has been found.
The coal I have seen in the hills is anthracite, nearly allied to
lignite. The favorable feature is the outcrop at so many points in a
northeast and southwest line of what seems to be the same vein.
Recently there has been a very energetic effort made to develop the
coal-mines located in the Seattle district of Washington Territory. The
presiding genius is Mr. Henry Villard, now so widely known in
connection with the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company. The present
output of these mines is about one hundred thousand tons per annum; but
under the new arrangements it is expected that this will be raised to
seven hundred and fifty thousand tons, so as to supply not only the San
Francisco market, but also to deliver the coal at a moderate price at
the various points, both on the Columbia and Willamette Rivers, reached
by the steamboats of the above-mentioned company. Three large
steam-colliers are to be used for the ocean transport of the coal.
Although this enterprise belongs to Washington Territory, I have
thought it deserving of mention here, as being likely to have an
important bearing on the development of Oregon.
[Sidenote: _MINERALS._]
Lead and copper have been discovered in abundance in Jackson,
Josephine, and Douglas Counties, on Cow Creek, a tributary of the
Umpqua River, and also on the Santiam among the Cascades.
Limestone, sandstone--both brown and gray--and marble quarries have
been opened at various points in the State.
Gold is found in paying quantities at many points in Southern Oregon,
and also in the gold-bearing black sand of the sea-beach, all along the
southern and central portions of the State. The finely comminuted
condition in which the gold occurs in the black sand has been a serious
obstacle in the way of its profitable working; but the combined
chemical and mechanical processes recently adopted bid fair to prove
thoroughly successful. The Governor of the State estimated the product
of Oregon in gold and silver in the year 1876 at not less than two
million dollars.
The gold-mines of Baker County, and the gold and silver mines in Grant
County in Eastern Oregon, have also recently been more fully developed,
and with great success.
With the inflow of foreign capital, now begun in earnest, those best
qualified to judge predict for Oregon a very high place among the gold
and silver producing States of the Union.
The mineral district in Grant and Baker Counties will be shortly
rendered accessible and profitable by the expected completion, both of
the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company's line and of that of the
Oregon Pacific, having eastward connections at Boise City in Idaho,
some fifty miles eastward of the eastern boundary of Oregon.
The timber of Oregon is of world-wide fame. It will take many years to
exhaust the districts even now accessible to river, railroad, or
harbor; and the opening up of the various portions of the State to be
traversed by the railroads either now or shortly to be put in hand will
bring to market the timber from hundreds of square miles of woodland
yet untouched.
The following general statement is chiefly extracted from the "Report
of the Government Commissioner of Agriculture" for the year 1875:
Baker County has a timber area of five hundred square miles,
principally pine and fir. Benton County has a belt of timber-land of
one eighth of a mile wide by forty-five miles in length, lying along
the Willamette River, and another belt in the Coast Mountains of
twenty-five by thirty miles.
This timber is principally pine and fir; there are also large
quantities of splendid spruce; alder and white-oak, laurel and maple
are also found. Alder grows from twenty-four to thirty inches in
diameter, and is worth for cabinet-making purposes from thirty to forty
dollars a thousand feet at the factory. There is a belt principally of
spruce timber, a mile wide and how many miles long I can not say,
heading northward from Depot Slough, a stream running into Yaquina Bay,
many of the trees being eight and nine feet in diameter, and two
hundred and fifty feet high.
I have seen a hundred and thirty pines cut for ships' spars on one
homestead near Yaquina Bay, not one of which snapped in the felling,
and which ran from eighty to one hundred and twenty feet in the clear,
without a branch, and about as straight and level as a ruler. And this
lot were cut from but a very few acres of the wood, and where it was
easy to convey them to the tidal stream which floated them to the
harbor. It was a pretty sight to watch the team of five or six yokes of
oxen hauling the long, white spars from the wooded knoll on which they
grew--the red and white colors of the oxen and the voices of the
teamsters and lumbermen lending life and cheerfulness to the somber
forest.
[Sidenote: _TIMBER._]
Clackamas is one of the best timbered counties in the Willamette
Valley, fully one half of its area being in heavy timber. Pine, fir,
spruce, white cedar, white oak, maple, and ash are found. About two
thirds of the area of Curry County is covered with forests of yellow,
red, and white fir, sugar-pine, white cedar, spruce, white and other
oaks, and madrono. The timber-lands of Douglas are principally covered
with the different varieties of evergreens and oaks. There are
thousands of acres which would yield from three to six hundred cords to
the acre not yet taken up. Not over one third of the area of Lane
County is woodland. This embraces the different varieties common to the
Pacific coast.
The timber-land of Linn, occupying half its area, is comprised in three
belts of dense forest, half of which is red fir. Within the last
twenty-four years thousands of acres of woodland have grown up from
seed, and are now covered with trees from forty to eighty feet high,
with a diameter of from ten inches to two feet. There have been made
from one acre of fir-timber six thousand rails ten feet long by at
least four inches thick.
Multnomah has a large area of timber-land, mostly yellow and red fir.
Three fourths of the area of Tillamook is in timber, and half of this
is fir and hemlock. The forests of Umatilla are confined to the
mountains, where they are very dense, and to the belts along the
streams. Wasco has immense forests in the mountains, many of them as
yet inaccessible. The general result is, that Oregon has in all
15,407,528 acres of woodlands out of a total area of 60,975,360 acres.
The timber on the average is worth now about four dollars per thousand
cubic feet at the saw-mill in the log, and costs when sawed into inch
lumber about eight dollars the thousand feet of such lumber. The price
of the lumber to the consumer varies from nine to fourteen dollars per
thousand feet, according to the demand. Much of the fir and spruce
timber will cut into six or seven logs of sixteen feet in length, the
tree being six feet in diameter two feet from the ground.
From one cut out of a fallen fir on my own land we split one hundred
and thirty-two rails of fully four inches diameter, and from several
trees over six hundred rails each have been split.
A good deal of unauthorized timber-cutting goes on upon the Government
land not yet taken up. When the logger is honest, he buys the right to
cut from the owner of the land, paying "stumpage" of about fifty cents
a tree. I have known many acres to provide over fifty of these big
trees, thus returning a good price for the timber, and leaving rich and
partly cleared land for pasturing purposes in the hands of the owner.
One of the industries that needs to be established in many parts of the
State is tanning. Hides are plentiful, and of excellent quality; bark,
both of oak and of hemlock, is easily procurable, and the water-power
is abundant almost everywhere. At present the leather used is chiefly
imported from California; it has been hastily tanned, and is of poor
quality. The drawback to this business is that it absorbs capital
before it begins to yield profit; but, the machine once having begun to
revolve, the returns are steady, the risks few, the results permanent,
and the profits very considerable.
[Sidenote: _WOOLEN-MILLS._]
The woolen manufacture in Oregon has already taken good hold. Oregon
goods are well known in California, and in Philadelphia and New York
also. They received well-deserved praise at the Centennial Exhibition
of 1876. There are three woolen-factories in the State: one at Oregon
City, one at Brownsville, and one at Ashland, in the south of the
State. Their blankets and tweeds are admirable for thickness, solidity,
and softness of texture. The Oregon City mills employ a good many
Chinamen; they work well and economically. There is every probability
of a fourth factory being at once established in or near Albany; and
the more the better, considering the ample water-power, and the
abundance and excellence of fleeces.
Taking into account the quality of the flax grown in the State and the
indefinite power of expansion of the product, seeing that the very edge
of the flax-land has hardly yet been touched, while many thousand acres
are specially fit for the crop, and considering, also, that linen in
its various forms is unnaturally dear on the Pacific coast, it seems a
pity that one or more linen-factories should not be established. The
present disturbed state of Ireland has, we know, prepared many of its
inhabitants for emigration, and among them are many trained in the
growth, the preparation, and the manufacture of flax. Any persons
familiar with this industry could not do better than transfer
themselves, their capital, their machinery, and their staff of workers,
to this free land; here they will find a hearty welcome, a fine
climate, the very best of raw material, a market at their doors,
unlimited opening for expansion of their business, and a habitation
free alike from turbulence, riot, and oppression.
No book attempting to deal, in however general terms, with the
industrial development of Oregon, can pass the business in canned
salmon without notice.
The growth of the business has been marvelous. The following table
shows the canning of the Columbia River salmon during the ten years
ending with 1880:
Year. Cases. Year. Cases.
1871 35,000 1876 429,000
1872 44,000 1877 393,000
1873 103,000 1878 412,924
1874 244,000 1879 440,000
1875 291,000 1880 540,000
Each case contains four dozen tins of one pound each, or two dozen of
two pounds.
The total output of the Pacific coast for 1880 is estimated at 680,000
cases.
[Sidenote: _SALMON._]
Besides the Columbia River, which is the main source of supply, other
Oregon rivers are laid under tribute. The Rogue River, the Alsea,
Umpqua, Coquille, Nehalem, Siletz, and Yaquina Rivers are all
salmon-yielding streams. The system followed is generally known. The
proprietor erects his cannery on the edge of the river, generally on
piles driven into the mud. The cannery consists of a large warehouse
for laying out the fresh salmon as soon as caught. Next comes a
building fitted with large knives for cutting up the salmon into the
proper length for canning, and boilers in which the cans or tins are
boiled. Then come the packing and storing houses. That the undertaking
need be on a large scale may be judged from the fact that they may have
to deal with three or four thousand salmon at a time, as the produce of
one night's take, and these salmon averaging twenty-five pounds in
weight.
The canneries make their own tins, one man, by the aid of ingenious
machinery, putting together fifteen hundred tins in a day.
The boats and nets belong to the cannery. The fishermen are paid by the
fish they bring in: one third belongs to the cannery in right of boat
and nets; the other two thirds are bought from the fishermen at fifty
cents a fish.
The importance to Oregon of the trade is shown by the proceeds for the
year ending August 1, 1879, from the 412,924 cases exported being
$1,863,069.
The tin for the salmon, and also for the canned beef which is prepared
in several of the canneries, is all imported. The imports for 1879
amounted to 54,520 boxes, costing from $8 to $9 a box.
The number of salmon ascending some of these streams to spawn is almost
incredible.
Both the Siletz and the Yaquina Rivers yield two kinds: one a heavy,
thick-shouldered, red-tinged, hooknosed fellow, which is never eaten by
white men when it has passed up out of tidal waters; the other a slim,
graceful, bright-scaled fish, known as the silver salmon. Of this last
there are two runs in the year: one in April and May, the other in
October and November.
The heavy, red salmon runs in the fall of the year, from August to
November, and the heads of all the streams, even to the little brooks
among the mountains, are filled with ugly, dark, yellow-and-white
spotted fish pushing their way upward, until I have seen five huge fish
in a tiny pool too shallow to cover their back-fins. Some get back to
the ocean with the autumn floods; the majority are left dying, or dead,
on the gravel or along the edges of the streams. Here they are deadly
poison to dogs, and to wolves also. It is almost impossible to keep
dogs of mature age in the coast district; sooner or later they are
almost sure to get "salmoned," and to die.
The only way is to allow the puppies free run at the salmon: two out of
three will die; the survivor, having passed the ordeal, will be
salmon-proof and live to his full age.
The symptoms of salmon-poisoning are refusal of food, staring coat,
running at the eyes, dry and feverish nose, absolute stoppage of
digestion, followed by death in about three days after the first
appearance of poisoning.
All sorts of remedies have been unsuccessfully tried. A young dog may
battle through, if dosed with Epsom salts as soon as his state is
observed; for an old dog, I can find nothing of avail. Castor-oil,
large doses of mustard, shot in quantities forced down the throat,
calomel, aloes, blackberry-tea--all of these I have heard of, but have
not the slightest faith in any one.
Therefore, any new-comers into the coast country bringing valuable dogs
with them will have to keep them tied up, or else may expect to lose
them, as I have unfortunately experienced.
[Sidenote: _INDIAN SALMON-TRAPS._]
The repugnance of the white man to the dark and spotted salmon is not
shared by the Indians. They had a salmon-camp on Big Elk, the chief
tributary of the Yaquina, last year, which I went to see. The river
runs between steep hills, covered with the usual brush, and with a
narrow trail cut through along the edge of the water. The tide runs up
for about four miles above the junction with the Yaquina, and there, in
a wide pool into which the little river fell over a ridge of rocks,
hardly to be called a fall, the Indians had their dam and traps. Just
below the fall they had planted a row of willow and hazel stakes in the
bed of the stream close together and tied with withes. In the center
was an opening--a little lane of stakes leading into a pocket some six
feet wide. The Indian women sat out on the rock by the side of the
pocket with dip-nets and ladled out the salmon, which had been beguiled
by their instinct of pushing always up the stream into entering the
fatal inclosure.
The Indian _tyhees_ or shelters were on the bank close by--miserable
hovels made of boughs, and some old boards they had carried up--and
hung round with torn and dirty blankets to keep in the smoke. Poles
were set across and across, and from these hung the sides and bellies
of the salmon, while a little fire of damp wood and grass was kept
constantly replenished in the middle of the floor, by a
wretched-looking crone who squatted close by.
[Illustration: Newport Pier, 1879.]
When we got there, a younger woman was opening and splitting the salmon
just caught, pressing the eggs into a great osier basket, where they
looked exactly like a pile of red currants. She gave us a handful of
eggs for trout-bait; as every one knows, the most deadly and poaching
lure for that fish. And we found the benefit of them that same evening
at Elk City, four miles below, where the salmon-trout crowd almost in
shoals to be caught.
CHAPTER XX.
Eastern Oregon--Going "east of the mountains"--Its attractions--
Encroaching sheep--First experiments in agriculture and planting
--General description of Eastern Oregon--Boundaries--Alkaline
plains--Their productions--The valleys--Powder River Valley--
Description--The Snake River and its tributaries--The Malheur
Valley--Harney Lake Valley--Its size--Productions--Wild grasses
--Hay-making--The winters in Eastern Oregon--Wagon-roads--Prineville
--Silver Creek--Grindstone Creek Valley--Crooked River--Settlers'
descriptions and experiences--Ascent of the Cascades going west--
Eastern Oregon towns--Baker City--Prineville--Warnings to settlers
--Growing wheat for the railroads to carry.
While Western Oregon and the Willamette Valley in particular have been
settled up, the valleys, plains, and hill-sides of Eastern Oregon are
only just now beginning to attract population.
But the reports of that country have spread far and wide through the
valley, and half the young men are burning to try their fortunes "east
of the mountains." When a youngster has been brought up in a wide
valley, the eastern sky-line of which has been marked out, from his
very infancy, by a line of rugged hills, over which the snow-peaks
tower; when he has been used to see the mountains stand out clear and
majestic, rosy in the glow of the setting sun, and then putting on
their winter garments of purity, and shining cold in the clear
moonlight of the winter nights; when he has watched them disappear as
the mists of the autumn rains filled the valley, to be hidden for weeks
from his gaze, and then suddenly revealed as the drying and vigorous
west wind dispelled the veil which the warm south wind had only served
to thicken--I can sympathize with the longing felt, even if
unexpressed, to climb this barrier and find if there be in verity a
Canaan beyond.
And then, until lately at all events, to the young and bold there was a
strong attraction in the life on horseback, in the gallop after the
straggling cattle over those rolling plains; in the bachelor life of
freedom, where home was just where night found him, and where his
comrades had made their fire and picketed their horses; and, though
last not least, where the wealthy stockmen had started from the exact
point where he stood, their capital good health, readiness to rough it,
and a determination to get on.
But a few years ago this was what life east of the mountains meant.
Then men found that sheep paid better than cattle; and the
sheep-herder, with his band of merinos, took possession of the rocky
hill-sides, on which the thick bunch-grass was already beginning to
fail to hold its first vigor and abundance, and his peaceful but not
unresisted invasion pushed the cattle-men farther into the wilderness.
The loathing and contempt of the stockmen for these encroaching sheep!
Some of them actually encouraged, and refused to permit the slaughter
of, the prairie-wolves, which did not molest the cattle, but waged war
on the flocks. But the tide would not be turned back, and mile after
mile the sheep pushed on.
The bunch-grass which the cattle lived on, and which only overstocking
injured, gave way before the sheep; for these eat out the hearts of the
young grass, and their range grew wider as the feed became more sparse.
And then the farmer followed the sheep-herder, and the eaten pastures
were turned up by the plow. True, the soil was alkaline in many places,
and rocky and stony to an extent strange to the eyes of the valley
farmer, who hardly ever sees a stone. But there were streams on many a
hill-side which only needed a little work to be turned on to and to
irrigate the soil below; and many a valley was explored, whose level
land gave promise of numberless farms.
Even if the land were bare and desolate-looking to a degree, and the
farmhouse stood naked and unattractive, yet it was found that apples
and pears would grow, and even that peaches would ripen well in a
hotter and drier summer climate than is found elsewhere in Oregon.
And when the results of the first experiments were disclosed, and it
was found that wheat yielded thirty, forty, and even fifty bushels to
the acre on these very lands, the tide turned.
[Sidenote: _EASTERN OREGON._]
Men who had decried Eastern Oregon as a desert, fit only to pasture a
few cattle and scattering bands of sheep, suddenly changed their tone,
and nothing was heard from them but advice to leave the worn-out lands
of the Willamette Valley, and go to this, which was the coming country.
And advantage was at once taken of this state of things to prepare the
public mind for, and then to take up vast sums of money to provide,
railroad and increased steamboat accommodation to bring the products of
these eastern plains within reach of Portland and the seaboard.
What is this country like? The Columbia bounds the north, the Snake
River the east of Oregon--the one running east and west, the other
north and south. Nearly midway between the Cascade Mountains and the
Snake River, the Blue Mountains run, roughly speaking, north and south.
This range is much less elevated than the Cascades, but very wide, and
rises gradually from far-reaching foot-hills about the center of the
State.
Between the Blue Mountains and the Cascades lies a great stretch of
open, rolling country--bare, rocky hills, not a tree and hardly a bush
to be seen; until lately covered with bunch-grass and some sage-brush.
This is some of the country to which the change of purpose applies
which I have just described.
The prevailing color of the country is a reddish-brown, except when in
spring a tinge of living green spreads with the growing grass.
Near the Cascade Mountains are wide tracts covered with fine volcanic
lava-dust. Where there is moisture to be found, this soil supports a
good growth of grass, and the pine timber stretches to its edge. But
joining it come the bare alkaline plains. Their natural vegetation is
the bunch-grass and the sage-brush (_Artemisia_).
The chief constituents in the alkaline formation are chlorides of
sodium and potassium--demanding irrigation as the remedy for the excess
of alkali, while beet-root is recommended as a first crop to absorb the
surplus salt. Excellent crops are raised in the Ochico Valley, on this
land; and there is no doubt that a very large portion of the tracts now
being abandoned by the cattle- and sheep-herder will prove of enormous
productiveness in wheat.
East of the Blue Mountains is found, among others, the Powder River
Valley. This is in the western part of Baker County and partly in Union
County. On the north and east a steep hill-side separates it from the
Grand Ronde Valley; on the south and west rises the spur of the Blue
Mountain range. The valley is about twenty-four miles long by twelve
wide, thus covering two hundred and ninety square miles.
The lands in this valley may be taken as a type of similar valleys in
Eastern Oregon. They may be divided into three classes. First, the
bottom-lands pure and simple. These consist of alluvial soil of
abundant depth and richness; the only question an intending settler
need ask is whether they are subject to inundation from the overflow of
the river, which invariably is found running through the whole length.
Above the bottom-lands, and far exceeding them in extent, are the
foothills, yielding in this instance fully one hundred and eighty
square miles of excellent grain-producing lands, and adapted in all
respects to farming purposes. And above these again rise the hills for
pasturage, and only useful for grain-growing where facilities for
irrigation can be found. The character of bareness does not apply to
these hill-sides; the alkaline soil does not extend to them, and a
richer vegetation, in which other native grasses and spreading plants
come to the aid of the predominating bunch-grass, affords food to sheep
and cattle all the summer through.
[Sidenote: _SNAKE RIVER AND ITS TRIBUTARIES._]
All the tributaries of the Snake River from the Oregon side run through
a country of a somewhat similar character, and each of these streams is
the source of life and vegetation. Among these other valleys may be
named the Lower Powder River, Eagle Creek, Pine Creek, Upper Burnt
River, Upper and Lower Willow Creek, and the Malheur. This last
requires separate mention. It runs through the boundaries of the
Malheur Indian reservation, now shortly to be thrown open to
settlement, and offering about three million acres of fertile and
desirable land.
The Malheur River runs from the Harney Lake Valley to the Snake. This
last-named valley is about sixty miles long by twenty wide; and this
area of twelve hundred square miles is mainly covered with a growth of
grass so tall that a man riding through it on horseback in August can
tie the heads of the wild-rye together over his head, or, to use
another illustration, sufficiently high and dense to hide completely a
horseman who diverges from the road or track. With the wild-rye are
mixed bunch-grass, blue-joint, and quantities of the wild-pea vine. And
the country north and south of it, though bare, is not barren and
mountainous; but in the spring and summer, before the grass is up to
its full height, a man can ride and even drive his wagon, day in and
day out, until he gets out of the boundaries of Oregon.
The preparations which the settlers make for the winter consist mainly
in cutting and storing for hay the natural grasses of the country. Fort
Harney, which has been until lately a post held by two companies, has
stabling for four hundred horses. Five years ago the troops got cut and
stacked from the surrounding country nine hundred tons of choice hay.
Neither in this valley are the winters very severe. Until railroad
communications are provided, the sparse settlers have to abandon
themselves to isolation from the outside world, because the snow lies
deep on the plateaus and ridges which extend between them and the
haunts of civilized man. But within the limits of the valleys the
inhabitants enjoy life in winter. The snow does not lie long or deep;
and from so many sources that I am forced to credit it comes the
information that no one accustomed to American winter in any of the
Middle States need have any apprehension in coming to live in any of
the valleys I have named.
Turning westward from the Snake River and traversing the Malheur Valley
and the Harney Lake Valley, the traveler may follow one of the military
wagon-roads--that one whose fortunes in the violent and scandalous
attempts on the title to its granted lands I have before referred to.
From Camp Harney to Prineville, the principal town in the southern
portion of Wasco County, the distance is about one hundred and
forty-five miles. For between thirty and forty miles the road runs
through Silver Creek Valley, or along land watered by its affluent
streams. The description I have given of valleys in Eastern Oregon
applies to this. The country on either side of the road consists of
rolling hills, covered with bunch-grass and sage-brush, and
occasionally sparse juniper. Settlement in this valley is very recent.
But thirteen families had taken up their residence there previous to
and during the fall of 1880, and several more are going in this spring.
[Sidenote: _GRINDSTONE CREEK VALLEY._]
Then Grindstone Creek Valley is reached. This is one of the head-waters
of Crooked River. A perfect network of creeks and streams is passed
before the main Crooked River is reached, and each stream and creek
brings fertility to the land on either side of it and through which it
runs.
A farmer named Moppin has the credit of growing the first grain on
Grindstone Creek; and there, in the harvest of 1880, he raised six
hundred bushels of fine oats on nine acres of land, and grew one
hundred and fifty bushels of potatoes on less than two thirds of an
acre; several of the potatoes weighed two pounds and upward.
Then, following down the course of the Crooked River Valley, we pass
through a country which is described in the following terms by a
settler of eleven years' experience:
"This Crooked River Valley is about seventy-five miles long, and
extends almost due east and west. It is a beautiful valley, with little
or no timber in it, with the exception of willows along the river. The
average width of the river is about one hundred feet. Now comes the
stock country on the south of this river, and along its entire length
is one line of hills and plateaus, thickly covered with bunch-grass of
the best quality. Every few miles comes in a creek from the highlands
back on either side. On these streams, from head to mouth, with but few
exceptions, are good farming-lands.
"At this time there are hundreds of thousands of acres of good land
lying idle, waiting for the industrious farmer to fence and plow and
raise grain on. But what is the use? There is no market for the grain
except in limited quantities, as we have no facilities for shipping to
the outside world. The consequence is, that if a man does not have
money enough to go into the stock-business, he won't come here at all.
The one great trouble is to get our supplies. Within a year after the
completion of a railroad to this locality the people over in your
section will be surprised at the vast amount of grain received from
here. As it is now, we have to drive our fat cattle from one to two
hundred miles in the winter to find a market, and by the time we get
them there they are poor. Give us a railroad, and we can ship our fat
stock five hundred miles to market, and afford to sell cheaper than
those who live in your (Willamette) valley. We do not have to feed at
all. We mark and brand a calf, turn him out on the range, and, when he
is four years old, sell him for twenty dollars cash--net profit about
seventeen dollars. Does that pay? Give us facilities for getting to a
better market, and it will pay better."
Passing still eastward after leaving Prineville along this Crooked
River Valley, and then to its junction with the Des Chutes River, the
country retains its fertile and promising character.
[Sidenote: _A FARMER'S OPINION._]
A farmer of twenty years' experience in Oregon, and who is a thoroughly
reliable man, writes thus: "I have known this country well for several
years. This fall (1880) I have taken a journey through it right along
east, traveling slowly and with a view to settling. What my opinion is
you may judge when I tell you that I have made up my mind to settle in
the Crooked River Valley, where I shall go with my family in the
spring.
"I know no part of Oregon that pleases me better. You have the best of
land for wheat, oats, and potatoes. You can get a good garden, and grow
all the vegetables you want. You have unlimited range for your stock,
where they will get fat on the natural grasses, and where you can put
up all the hay you want. Cattle, horses, and sheep do equally well out
there. You are going into a healthy climate, away from all fever and
ague or any other sickness of that nature; and you are going to a place
where the land is bound to be worth four times its present value when
the Oregon Pacific Railroad is opened."
Beginning the ascent of the Cascades, you pass through and over some
twenty miles of rough lava country, interspersed with strips of
scattering timber-land, and then come to Fish Lake and Clear Lake, the
paradise of the fisherman, the hunter, and the berry-gatherer and
botanist.
Before I leave the description of Eastern Oregon, let me quote from one
more letter from a settler of last year out in the Prineville country:
"I am located on a ranch on Camp Creek, and eight miles below the
famous 'soap-holes' (silver-mines). We can raise almost anything out
here, unless it is a mortgage. We have all the potatoes, turnips,
onions, carrots, and beets we want; all were raised on our ranch, and,
by-the-way, they were immense. I pulled one turnip that measured
thirty-four and a half inches in circumference, and quite a number ran
as high as thirty inches. Early-rose potatoes do remarkably well here.
I have in about five acres of rye, and will sow about twenty acres of
wheat and oats in the spring."
I should add that the towns in Eastern Oregon, away from the Columbia,
are beginning to assume considerable importance.
Baker City was described in December, 1880, as having about one
thousand inhabitants, while the amount of business transacted would
average fully $450,000. There were then six substantial fire-proof
business structures, and two large school-buildings, namely, "St.
Joseph's" and "The Sisters of the Holy Names." The former is said to be
a large four-story structure, in brick and stone, of the pure Gothic
style of the fourteenth century, with accommodations for about one
hundred and fifty boarding and day scholars; it is managed by a Roman
Catholic priest named De Roo.
Prineville is a very lively and bustling place, with about the same
number of inhabitants. It is growing fast, several fine buildings
having been recently erected, among them a convenient and substantial
church. There are three large general stores, supplied with heavy
stocks of goods; from this, as a distributing center, the stockmen and
ranchers for fifty miles and more in every direction fetch the
necessaries of life. In the summertime ten or a dozen heavily-loaded
wagons may be seen any day starting out along this road (which was
called no road!) for their distant homes.
[Sidenote: _WARNINGS TO SETTLERS._]
It must not be assumed that all Eastern Oregon could be divided off
into farms of the character of these choicer pieces which such men as I
have referred to have chosen and settled on. There is many a rough,
stony hill-side, where the sparse vegetation struggles for life in the
crannies of the rocks. There is many a stretch of sandy, alkaline
plain, where the dingy sage-brush grows, with here and there a tuft of
bunch-grass; there is many a gully where the thirsty steer would look
in vain for water, even in a dirt-hole, to quench his thirst.
But all this is fully consistent with the fertility and attractiveness
of the valleys and slopes I have described. For, remember, we are
dealing with fifty thousand square miles of country, on which, if the
existing farms were marked on a large scale-map, they would be hardly
noticeable in the vast expanse of land waiting for settlement and
population.
But he would be a short-sighted man who should think of farming in
Eastern Oregon, as it now is, save in a few accessible spots, where
proximity to a road will provide a market at his door for the produce
he has raised. In Northeastern Oregon, where the great crops of wheat
are beginning to be grown, the farmer is at the mercy of the
Transportation Company, which hitherto has sucked the oyster and left
the farmer the shell. For what profit can there be in growing wheat at
thirty and thirty-five cents a bushel, that same wheat being worth one
hundred cents in Portland, and the difference being absorbed in freight
and charges?
And yet, so great is the charm of novelty, so prone are a large number
of the emigrants to this State to try a new place, that land up there
fetches from five to fifteen dollars an acre, just about the same price
for which they could buy a farm in the valley foot-hills, where wheat
was worth seventy-five cents against the thirty-five, and where
churches, schools, post-offices, and telegraphs are already provided.
CHAPTER XXI.
Southern Oregon--Its boundaries--The western counties--Population--Ports
--Rogue River--Coos Bay--Coal--Lumber--Practicable railroad routes--The
harbor--Shifting and blowing sands--A quoted description--Cost of
transportation--Harbor improvements--Their progress and results--The
Umpqua--Douglas County--Jackson County--The lake-country--Linkville
--Water-powers--Indian reservations--The great mountains--Southeastern
Oregon--General description--Industries.
Southern Oregon is defined generally as bounded on the west by the
Pacific, and starting from its western boundary is bounded on the north
by the Calapooya Mountains, shutting in the Umpqua Valley, and then
running eastward, taking in the lake country. In this division are
included the western counties of Douglas, Coos, Curry, Josephine,
Jackson, Lake, and the southern half of Grant and Baker. A great
portion of the last-named counties is yet unsurveyed.
The western counties already possess, according to the census of 1880,
a population of 29,081 souls.
The portions of Grant and Baker Counties properly belonging to Southern
Oregon have only about two thousand people, the reason being that this
country is truly inaccessible, being so far distant from the seaboard,
and hardly traversed by a road.
Southern Oregon possesses several rivers and their attendant seaports.
The most southerly is the Rogue River, which has a course of about one
hundred miles, running through a very fertile but secluded valley. The
bar at the entrance is shifting, and the channel very variable; but it
is entered by both small steamers and by the coasting schooners which
ply along the coast, with San Francisco as their port of delivery.
Coos Bay, some sixty miles to the north of the Rogue River, needs a
fuller description, as it is the headquarters of the coal and lumber
business of Southern Oregon. Detailed reports of the coal-basin give
not less than seventy-five thousand acres of coal-bearing land,
estimated to produce from the one vein at present worked not less than
four hundred and fifty million tons of coal. As many as six workable
seams are, however, known to exist, including one which has been
prospected to eleven feet in thickness. Five coal-mines have been
opened, which are capable of producing about two thousand tons of coal
daily. The working of these mines is of an inexpensive character, much
of the mineral being accessible from adits or galleries delivering
their produce on the hill-sides.
The lumber shipped at Coos Bay is yielded by four large steam
saw-mills, with an aggregate capacity of about one hundred and fifteen
thousand feet per day.
There are also four ship-yards, from which between forty and fifty
vessels have been launched, even up to two thousand tons burden.
The value of coal and lumber exported from Coos Bay was upward of
$445,000 in the year 1877, according to the statistics collected by a
committee of residents, when application was about to be made to
Congress for an appropriation for the improvement of the harbor. It was
then reported that a railroad was found to be practicable from Coos Bay
along the Coquille Valley across the Coast Mountains. Such a line would
then pass through the Umpqua Valley to Roseburg, with a practicable
extension up the North Fork of the Umpqua River and through the Cascade
Mountains into Eastern Oregon.
[Sidenote: _SHIFTING AND BLOWING SANDS._]
It was ascertained that the chief difficulty in improving the entrance
to the port lay in the enormous quantity of movable and shifting sand,
driven along the coast southward by the prevalent summer northwest
winds, and then returned by the winter southwest gales.
So violent is this action that it is thus described: "Large tracts to
the north of Coos Bay and along the rock separating its lower part from
the sea, where once stood farms and pine-forests, are now buried to the
tops of the highest trees. Immense quantities of this wind-borne sand
are constantly going into the bay, and by its swift currents are
carried out to form the bar, or be deposited in the bight to the east
and north of the cape."
Let me quote a short description of this section of the country, on
which before many years the tide of immigration must roll in. The
writer is the Hon. B. Hermann, who is doing all in his power to draw
public attention to his district:
"Ten-mile and Camas Valleys, being respectively ten and fifteen to
twenty-five miles from the terminus of the Oregon and California
Railroad at Roseburg, are without any other outlet. The cost of teaming
to this point, added to the present exorbitant rates of railway
freights, discourages the farmers of those sections in the cultivation
of the soil. And yet some of the best and most extensive wheat-fields
of the country are within those circuits, while a vast area is left
annually to grow brush and weeds, and to remain of comparatively little
value, which should otherwise contribute to the harvest of thousands of
bushels of the finest grain.
"From Camas Valley, and along the Middle Fork of the Coquille River,
until its junction with the main stream is reached, a distance of
twenty-eight miles by survey, three fourths of the route is without
even a wagon-road communication, travel being by trail, with ox and
sled, saddle and pack horse. And yet there is found a goodly
population, having substantial improvements, some very good farms in
cultivation, with flouring-mills for the local accommodation.
"The land is very fertile, and capable of growing the usual cereals and
esculents to perfection, but, owing to the great difficulty of
transporting the productions to market, a very small portion only is
cultivated, and much remains vacant, subject to homestead and
preemption....
"From the junction with the main river, and following the latter to
near Beaver Slough, or Coquille City, the point of diversion of the
route toward Coos Bay, an enterprising community is found, owning
bottom-lands of rich alluvial soil, a great portion of which is now
being cleared of timber, annually placed under cultivation, and large
crops of grain garnered. This same remark applies to all the remaining
portion of the main Coquille Valley, a distance of forty miles or more
to the sea, and also along the North and South Forks, as well as the
smaller tributaries. For a distance of seventy-five miles inland the
Coquille Valley is capable of extensive agricultural development.
Already this distance is closely peopled, all lands on the main stream
settled, and improvements slowly made. Much grain is now grown here, a
large proportion manufactured into flour by the various mills for home
consumption and shipment to Coos Bay, while a considerable quantity of
the grain is exported to San Francisco through the mouth of the river.
[Sidenote: _COST OF TRANSPORTATION._]
"Owing, however, to the condition of the Coquille entrance, only small
ships venture in, and even they are often delayed in the river for
months at a time, with the shippers' cargo on board....
"Thus the hopeful people of this extensive and unrivaled valley for its
soil, its productions, its coals, timber, and other abundant natural
resources, are virtually left without an exit to the markets of the
world....
"The cost on each bushel of wheat for transportation to Portland from
any point in the Umpqua Valley is twenty-three cents, to say nothing of
the added expense of one hundred and ten miles to Astoria, thence by
sea to San Francisco and elsewhere. From Roseburg to San Francisco by
way of Portland and Astoria is about eight hundred and seventy-five
miles, and from Roseburg to San Francisco by the way of Coos Bay is
only four hundred and sixty-five miles.
"Mr. James Dillard, as we are credibly informed, produced last year on
his farm in Douglas County about six thousand bushels of grain. To have
transported this only to Portland on its way to market would have cost
him $1,380. The saving in transportation to Coos Bay by eighty-five
miles of narrow-gauge road would be to this one farmer on one year's
crop $780."
No wonder that in this district, as in all others in the State, the
transportation question should be the burning one of the day.
The Coos Bay people succeeded in gaining the ear of Congress, and two
years ago an appropriation of $60,000 was made for the improvement of
the harbor.
The problem was a very difficult one for the engineers to solve, from
the conditions above stated of the driven and shifting sand. It would
not have been strange if the works first planned had needed alterations
as they progressed.
But the success of the breakwater constructed by the United States
engineers from cheap material, available on the spot, has been
sufficiently marked to encourage the requests for further
appropriations until the plans are executed in their entirety, and the
opening of the harbor carried still farther out to sea.
It is reported now (in the spring of 1881) that the north sand-spit is
being cut through by the current in the direction indicated by the
lines of the breakwater, and that deeper and more constant water is
found than heretofore--a good augury of success for similar works where
the obstructions are not so shifting as sand alone, and where they are
free from the influence of the sand tracts to the north, whence so much
of the obstruction to Coos Bay entrance came. And this is our happy
case at Yaquina.
The Umpqua River is the largest river that, rising in the Cascades, and
draining a large and fertile valley in its course, flows directly into
the Pacific, after cutting its channel through the Coast Range. There
is a wide and very shifting bar at its mouth, through which the usual
channel gives twelve or thirteen feet at low water. The river is
navigable for all vessels which can cross the bar as far as Gardner
City, five miles from the mouth, while smaller vessels can get as far
as Scottsburg, twenty-five miles up.
Douglas County, now possessing a population of 9,596, is capable of
sustaining a vastly increased number. It lies almost surrounded by
mountains, but with a good outlet to the north along the valley lands
through which the Oregon and California Railroad runs. It is well
watered throughout by the Umpqua and its tributaries, while the
northern portion of the county forms the head of the great Willamette,
the aggregate of many creeks and streams having here their rise.
The climate of Jackson County is a good deal warmer than its mere
geographical relations to the counties on the north and east of it
would account for. Indian corn is a staple crop, and peaches and vines
flourish exceedingly. The sun seems to have more power; and I have a
vivid remembrance of heat and dust along its roads.
[Sidenote: _THE LAKE COUNTRY._]
Lake County is well named. Huge depressions in the land are filled with
the Upper and Lower Klamath Lakes, the latter crossing the California
boundary-line.
North of the Upper Klamath Lake, again, some twenty miles, is the
Klamath Marsh, doubtless not long since another lake--now, in summer,
the feeding-ground for cattle, in winter the home of innumerable flocks
of migratory birds. Between the Upper and Lower Klamath Lakes runs a
rapid water-course. The town of Linkville stands on its banks. I am
told that there is water-power enough here to drive as many mills as
are found at Lowell, Massachusetts. At Linkville is the land-office for
Southern Oregon.
It has been proposed to run the California extension of the Oregon and
California Railroad through the gap between Upper and Lower Klamath
Lakes. Should that long-talked-of project ever be realized, the
manufacturing facilities of this splendid water-power will no longer be
suffered to lie dead.
Passing eastward, the great Klamath Indian reservation is reached--a
tract I only know by hearsay as a land of hills and streams, of gullies
and water-courses, of lava-beds and barrenness intermixed with quiet
vales and dells of wondrous beauty--a land where Indian superstitions
cluster thickly. The Indians are few and scattered, and this country,
no doubt, ere long will be thrown open to the white traveler and
hunter, to be quickly followed by the herdsman and the settler.
The great snowy pyramids of the Southern Cascades stand on guard. Mount
Scott (8,500 feet), Mount Pitt (9,250), and Mount Thielsen (9,250) are
placed there, thirty miles apart, forbidding passage between the warm
valleys of Jackson County and the open plains east of the mountains.
But here, too, the hardy pioneers have found their way. I have talked
with several men who are herding sheep and cattle on these plains. The
merino thrives here even better than in Northeastern Oregon, and many
thousand pounds of wool are raised. They describe the country as one of
open plain and rocky hillside, of scarce water and abundant sage-brush;
resembling in general features the tract fifty miles to the north, but,
alas! containing scarcely any of the creeks \and streams which give
life and fertility to Middle Oregon.
[Sidenote: _THE IDAHO BOUNDARY._]
Eastward again of Stein's Mountains you strike the head-waters of the
Owyhee, an important tributary of the Snake, and at once recur the
common features of fertility and consequent settlement. And thus the
Idaho boundary is reached.
CHAPTER XXII.
The towns--Approach to Oregon--The steamers--The Columbia entrance--
Astoria--Its situation, industries, development--Salmon--Shipping--
Loading and discharging cargo--Up the Columbia and Willamette to
Portland--Portland, West and East--Population--Public buildings--
United States District Court--The judge--Public Library--The Bishop
schools--Hospital--Churches--Stores--Chinese quarter--Banks--
Industries--The city's prosperity--Its causes--Its probable future
--The Oregon Railway and Navigation Company--Shipping abuses and
exactions--Railroad termini--Up the Columbia--The Dalles--Up
the Willamette--Oregon City, its history--The falls--Salem--Its
position and development--Capitol buildings--Flour-mills--Oil-mills
--Buena Vista potteries--Albany--Its water-power--Flour-mills--Values
of land--Corvallis--The line of the Oregon Pacific Railroad--Eugene,
its university and professors--Roseburg--The West-side Railroad to
Portland--Development of the country--Prosperity--Counties of Oregon
--Their population--Taxable property--Average possessions--In the
Willamette Valley--In Eastern Oregon--In Eastern Oregon tributary
to Columbia and Snake Rivers.
Having said so much about the country, something needs to be said about
the towns. All persons reaching Oregon, save those few who choose to
face the three nights and two days of staging that divide Redding (the
northern terminus of the California and Oregon Railroad) from Roseburg
(the southern terminus of the Oregon and California Railroad), enter
Oregon by ship from San Francisco. And here, in passing, a word of
praise for the really beautiful and commodious steamers which have now
replaced the Ajax and the other monsters which disgraced the traffic
they were furnished for, as well as their owners. No better boats ply
on any waters than the State of California, the Columbia, and the
Oregon. The first two are new ships, with electric lights, and all
other appliances to match. All are safe and speedy. The State of
California belongs to the Pacific Coast Steamship Company, the others
to the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company.
The approach to Oregon is forbidding and stern. There is nothing
attractive in the sandy coast, in the muddy water, in the broken but
not romantic scenery, where the water is encroaching on the land, and
shifting its position and attack from time to time. Here and there
along the edge are strewed, or stand in various attitudes of death, the
skeletons of the pine-trees, which look like the relics of battle, the
perishing remains of the beaten defenders of the coast; and, once over
the bar, that terror to sea-worn travelers, the approach to Astoria can
hardly be called beautiful.
[Sidenote: _ASTORIA._]
But the city of Astoria itself has claims to beauty of position. It
lies within the course of the Columbia; though here the estuary is so
wide as to give the idea of a lake. Jutting out into the bay above the
town rises a little promontory, crowned with firs; and between the eye
rests on the unfamiliar outlines of a large cannery, the buildings of
gray wood, based on piles sunk into the mud of the bay, and the long,
shingled roofs catching the rays of the departing sun.
The city consists of a mass of wooden structures low down by the
water's edge--wharves and docks and repairing-yards in front, and a
long line of stores and saloons and business-houses behind, broken by
the more imposing custom-house, post-office, and churches. On the
slopes of the high hills rising from near the water's edge are the
scattered white houses of the inhabitants, while the sky-line of the
hills is broken through by the cutting by which many tons of stone and
sand are being piled into the bay. The city proper mainly stands on
piles, the water gurgling and lapping round the barnacles, which
cluster thick; the enterprise of the people is fast filling in
underneath from the hills behind.
There are large and substantial docks of the Oregon Railway and
Navigation Company and others adjoining, where are generally lying two
or three large ships or barks, going out or returning from their long
and weary voyage.
The atmosphere of the place in the salmon-season is fishy, huge stacks
of boxed salmon filling the wharves. The principal street is fringed
with saloons, mainly looking for custom to the fishermen and seamen.
There is a large lumber-mill, which makes the air resonant with the
shriek of the great saws; and a boot-and-shoe factory has been recently
established. Other industries exist; but it is as a seaport that
Astoria justifies its existence and the foresight of its founders.
Clatsop County has 7,200 inhabitants, of which, I suppose, Astoria
claims a third. There is an air of business and life about the place,
and there will be, so far as I can see, even though means should be
found of ending the present practice of all large ships going to sea
from Portland being towed to Astoria, and followed by scows and barges,
there to complete their loading for their outward voyage. A similar
necessity exists for incoming ships to stay at Astoria to discharge a
large portion of their cargo before facing the shallows and mud-banks
of the Willamette on the way to Portland as their port of discharge.
[Sidenote: _PORTLAND._]
The voyage up the Columbia for a hundred miles, and up the Willamette
for twelve, to Portland, has many charms. First, the grand stream of
the mighty Columbia, telling in its size and volume of the three
thousand miles some of its waters have come from their far-off sources
among distant mountains; then the banks, rising generally sheer from
the water's edge, crowned with rich and varied vegetation, and here and
there the rugged rocks breaking through, to give clearness and strength
to outline; and then on either side the more distant hills, clothed
with the dark fir-timber to their summits, and behind the mountains
proper, with Mount Hood and Mount Saint Helen's showing their snowy
heads. Here and there in a niche or angle under the bank lie huddled
close the buildings of a cannery, the blue smoke rising from the
central chimney, and the white boats tied to the piling which juts out
into the deep water of the river.
You are hardly conscious of leaving the Columbia for the Willamette. It
looks as if it were an island in mid-stream behind and to the south of
which you are about to pass; but soon you find that the supposed island
is the opposite bank of the Willamette, and, passing beacons and marks,
set to define the channel with the accuracy that is absolutely needed
(since a sheer to the east or west of only a yard or two would leave
you fast in a mud-bank for hours), you come in sight of Portland.
I ought to have noticed that here and there along the banks coming up,
almost on the river's level and exposed to inundation at each high
water, you pass dairy-farms, consisting of a shanty, or tumble-down
house, and a few acres of rank and muddy pasture, where ague seems to
sit brooding on the branches of the trees, whose trunks and limbs yet
bear the traces of last season's flood.
But now for the juvenile but audacious Portland, who describes herself
as "the commercial metropolis of the Northwest." One considerable
suburb, called East Portland, stands on the east bank of the
Willamette; but the main part of the town is on the west bank, and now
nearly fills all the level land between the river and the hills behind,
which seem to be pushing at and resenting the intrusion of the streets
along their sides. Extensions are taking place along the northern end,
where a considerable stretch of low-lying land is yet available along
the banks of the river, and also to some extent at the farther or
southern end of the city. The building westward is mounting the
hill-sides, already dotted with the somewhat pretentious wooden houses
of the more prosperous towns-people.
To one who has seen real cities it is but a little place; but some of
its twenty-one or twenty-two thousand inhabitants raise claims to
greatness and even supremacy that make it difficult to suppress a
smile. In thirty-five years the place has grown from a collection of
log-huts, set down as if by chance, to its present dimensions, and, no
doubt, could go on growing as fast as Oregon developed, could the same
conditions last. The city consists of near a dozen streets running
parallel with the Willamette, and about twenty-three at right angles.
Front Street and First Street contain some brick buildings, remarkable
for so very young a place: the former backs on the Willamette, and on
it front the warehouses and wharves, against the backs of which the
ships are moored; the latter contains nearly all the city's stores and
shops of any consequence.
[Sidenote: _THE PUBLIC LIBRARY._]
The United States District and Circuit Courts sit at Portland. The
former is and has been for several years presided over by the Hon.
Matthew P. Deady. This gentleman's name will be long associated with
the jurisprudence of Oregon, having been one of the original compilers
of the Code, and reporter of the decisions of the Supreme Court of the
State, until, promoted to the bench of the United States Court, he has
taken a high place as a conscientious and able judge. To him also
Portland mainly owes that which I consider the chief ornament and pride
of the city, rather than the ambitious but faulty structures in wood,
stone, and iron on which most of the citizens glorify themselves--I
mean the Public Library. This institution has its headquarters in
spacious rooms over Messrs. Ladd & Tilton's Bank; the shelves are
filled with upward of ten thousand well-selected books, and the process
of addition is going on under the same careful oversight. Here every
evening are groups of readers, and it must be a source of constant
satisfaction to the judge to have been the means of organizing and
continuing the successful working of an institution which is effecting
silent but untold good.
Portland is also the residence of Bishop Morris, of the Episcopal
Church. He has resided there for twelve years past; and to him the city
is indebted for the St. Vincent's Hospital, where accidents are treated
at all times, and which is open for receiving besides a certain number
of sick persons. The bishop has also founded and kept going the Bishop
Scott Grammar-School. This is a high-school for boys. Last year it had
fifty-nine pupils and five teachers, and a sound and solid education is
there given. St. Helen's Hall, the best girls' school in the State, was
also founded by him. There were here one hundred and sixty pupils and
twelve teachers last year. Other churches exert themselves to occupy
and hold prominent positions in the city: notably the Roman Catholics,
whose archbishop, Seghers, resides in Portland, and who have erected a
large red-brick cathedral. It is as yet unfinished, but a further
effort by the Roman Catholics in the diocese is about to be made to
complete and furnish it.
There is a fair theatre in the city; it is occupied now and again by a
traveling troupe from San Francisco, generally consisting of a star,
and his or her supports of a more or less wooden consistency.
The building of the Mechanics' Fair, which is used for balls and
concerts, one or two Masonic and societies' halls, the rooms of the
several fire companies, and those of the Young Men's Christian
Association, complete the list. There are a good many expensive stores
of all kinds, and all seem prosperous.
The Chinese quarter is, of course, not so large and picturesque as in
San Francisco, but it is equally well marked: a complete range of
Chinese stores, with doctors' shops and theatre, the usual lanterns
hung out over the doors, and the common display of curious edibles.
There are several substantial Chinese firms and business-houses; one of
their chief sources of revenue is the bringing over and hiring out the
large numbers of Chinese laborers required for the railway works now in
progress. The census disclosed nineteen hundred Chinamen as residents
of Multnomah County; I suppose eighteen hundred of them were found in
Portland.
[Sidenote: _BANKS AND MANUFACTORIES._]
Four banks do a large general business, and there is also a
savings-bank. A mortgage company, having its headquarters in Scotland,
at Dundee, takes up cheap money in Scotland, and lends it out to great
advantage in Oregon, at the rates prevalent here, with results
satisfactory to its manager, Mr. William Reid, as well as to its
stockholders.
There are two iron-works, a large sash and door factory, a brewery, and
a twine and rope factory, but beyond these scarcely any manufacturing
industry.
The prosperity of the city, which has been very great during the last
few years, is solely attributable to its character of toll-gate.
Situated at the extreme northern boundary of the State, in a position
which was not unsuitable when Oregon and Washington Territory were
bound together, it is perfectly anomalous to suppose that the capital
city of Oregon should have been there placed by deliberate intention.
As matters now stand, it is the only port in Oregon, save Astoria, to
which the large grain-ships can come, and at which the deep-draught
ocean-going steamers can take in and discharge their cargoes; and, very
naturally, its business-men seek to perpetuate that state of affairs,
regardless of the growing interest of the great country which now pays
tribute to their little town. It is not easy to forget how more than
one of its leading citizens, when applied to to add their signatures to
a petition to Congress in aid of the removal of the reef partially
obstructing Yaquina Bay, replied, "Every dollar you get is so much
taken directly from our pockets."
A further adventitious help that Portland got was by being made the
headquarters of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, which brought to
its wharves the produce of the Columbia River traffic as well as that
of the Willamette. It might be natural to bring to and to leave at
Portland wharves the wheat of Western Oregon, but there seems little
sense in bringing grain down the Columbia, and then up the Willamette,
to be deposited in Portland, thence to be transferred partly in ships,
partly in barges and river-steamers, to Astoria, where alone the
loading of the ships could be completed.
The present style of the Portland and Astoria newspapers is to make
very light of the Columbia bar. In fact, they boldly state that to
hardly any port is so good an approach vouchsafed as to Portland; they
instance London and Philadelphia, Glasgow and New Orleans, as parallel
instances in position; and "The Oregonian" is never weary of singing
the praises of their Tom Tiddler's ground of a city.
But it has not always been so with them. "The Astorian" stated, on the
30th of January, 1880, that there were thirty vessels off the bar,
unable to enter. The same paper, on the 23d of March, 1880, published
this item of news: "Pilots on the bar all agree that, unless some
measures are adopted for permanent improvement of the channel, it will
not be longer considered safe for vessels to enter or cross out with
more than eighteen feet draught of water." "The Astorian" in the same
issue also informed us that "Captain Flavel has been making personal
inspections of bar-soundings, ... and is himself fully satisfied that
it is only a question of very brief time, so rapid and broadcast is the
shoaling process, when it will be impossible for deep vessels to cross;
the North Channel, along Sand Island from the head, is filling up as
fast as does the South Channel"; while "The Oregonian" told us as
recently as December, 1880, that "the Gatherer, with railroad-iron for
the Northern Pacific Railroad Company, was compelled to lighter four
times between Baker's Bay and Kalama, at heavy expense. The Chandos,
sailing from this port within the past two weeks, lightered thirteen
hundred tons. The A. M. Simpson lightered eleven hundred tons; and the
last departure, the Edwin Reed, getting off on a winter rain-flood,
scraped over the shoals with all but two hundred and eighty tons of her
load, the lightest lighterage of a wooden vessel for many months. The
report has gone forth that to reach Portland a ship must be dragged up
a hundred miles or more of river over four bad bars, and at the
shipping season lighterage at enormous cost is necessary. Naturally
enough, we now have no large ships."
[Sidenote: _SHIPPING ABUSES AND EXACTIONS._]
The abuses of the present system of shipping are many and great, and
all on the principle of making hay while the sun shines. Hear a
shipmaster who published his experiences in October last:
"On the fourth day we got two tugs and crossed the outer bar and
anchored in Baker's Bay, where the ship had to be lightened to twenty
feet and six inches draught before she could cross the inner bar and
reach Astoria. This lighterage cost two dollars per ton, and had to be
paid by the ship. As four other ships arrived about that time which
required lightering also before they could proceed farther, we were
detained at Baker's Bay for nine days, having the expense of a full
crew on board all that time. The distance from outside of the outer bar
to Astoria is about fourteen miles, for which the towage is $500,
pilotage $192, and that was in the middle of a beautiful day, ship also
using her own canvas and hawser. I believe this charge is almost equal
to salvage. The pilots are hired by the owner of the tugs, who collects
the pilotage, paying the pilots $100 a month for their services.... As
the pilots have no boat of their own, they are obliged to go in the
tugs, which are all owned by one man. I was just fourteen days from the
time I anchored off the bar till I reached the dock where I was to
discharge cargo, and for towage and pilotage alone from the bar to the
dock, paid $1,009."
Portland is the Oregon headquarters of the Oregon Railway and
Navigation Company, a corporation formed by the fertile genius of Mr.
Henry Villard in June, 1879, by the amalgamation of the Oregon
Steamship Company, owning the ocean-going steamers between San
Francisco and Portland, and the Oregon Steam Navigation Company, owning
the river-boats plying on the Columbia and Willamette. Here are the
termini of the East and West Side Railroads (originally formed by Mr.
Ben Holladay, a name very familiar to Oregon ears), but until this
spring of 1881 owned and worked by the committee of European
bondholders, into whose hands the lines in question fell by virtue of
the securities they held. And in Portland also are the head offices in
Oregon of the Scotch system of narrow-gauge railroads, now being
constructed by means of Scotch capital attracted to the State by the
successful working of the land-mortgage company referred to above.
It will be seen, therefore, that there are abundant reasons for
predicting that a large portion of the business of Oregon will center
in Portland, for many years to come, at any rate. The more cause that
Portland men should welcome the development of the other portions of
the State, with which in the future profitable business is certain to
arise, as new industries are started, existing interests widen and
strengthen themselves, and new centers of population and business find
their places in the growing State. Time will show whether the sanguine
hopes of the Portland people that their city will hold the virtual
monopoly of the trade of the Northwest are well founded or not. There
can, in my mind, be little doubt that she will have a very formidable
rival in the city on Puget Sound which will spring up, as by magic,
when the Northern Pacific Railroad there receives and discharges
passengers and freight. It will be an evil day for Portland when the
wharves at Tacoma find the grain-ships alongside, and the cars pouring
in the grain of Eastern Oregon and Washington Territory. And some
little effect on her tolls will be produced when Yaquina Bay is opened,
and the cars of the Oregon Pacific are there delivering the freight of
Middle and Southern Oregon.
Portlanders rely on what they call the concentration of capital to pull
them through. They have yet to learn the sensitiveness of the movements
of their divinity--how prone she is to follow the current of trade to
its points of receipt and delivery. And should that day ever dawn, when
figures show her "supremacy" to have departed, not one single sigh will
escape these valley counties, which Portland has levied tribute on, and
done her best to keep in bondage till the end of time.
[Sidenote: _UP THE COLUMBIA RIVER._]
Passing eastward from Portland up the Columbia, in one of the large and
comfortable boats of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company, a day's
journey brings you to the Dalles. I have already mentioned how rapidly
this town is growing, as the point of distribution for the greater
portion of Northeastern Oregon, and the point of reception for vast
quantities of grain, wool, hides, and other productions of that
pastoral and agricultural country.
Taking a Willamette River boat, notice in passing the Oswego
Iron-Works, seven miles from Portland, and then the village of
Milwaukee, with large and well-appointed nurseries, whence many of the
orchards of the State have been supplied.
The steamer will then stop at the wharf of Oregon City, just below the
great falls of the Willamette. Notice the magnificent river throwing
itself over the rocky ridge which shows one or two black points of rock
amid the foam of the falls. See the lofty hills on either side, clad
with vegetation to their very tops, while the little town is crowded on
the narrow strip down by the river on the eastern side. What a
water-power is yet running to waste, though lumber-mills, flour-mills,
and woolen-mills take their tribute as it passes!
On the west side are the locks. Here the steamer crosses the river from
the city, and you get a pretty view of this, one of the earliest
settled towns in the State. It dates from the Hudson Bay Company's
rule, and the oldest inhabitant can tell you story after story of the
early days, when the meetings were held here which virtually determined
the allegiance of the infant State.
Iron-ore has been prospected in plenty in these hills above the town,
but waits for development.
[Illustration: The Columbia Point below the Dalles.]
[Sidenote: _SALEM._]