Two Years in Oregon Part 20

"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 Francis...o...b.. way of Portland and Astoria is about eight hundred and seventy-five miles, and from Roseburg to San Francis...o...b.. 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, Ma.s.sachusetts. 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.

Pa.s.sing 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 superst.i.tions cl.u.s.ter 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sing, 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 att.i.tudes 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 ma.s.s 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 cl.u.s.ter 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 princ.i.p.al 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 pa.s.s; but soon you find that the supposed island is the opposite bank of the Willamette, and, pa.s.sing 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sociated 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 inst.i.tution has its headquarters in s.p.a.cious 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 inst.i.tution 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 b.a.l.l.s and concerts, one or two Masonic and societies' halls, the rooms of the several fire companies, and those of the Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation, 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.