Part 10 (2/2)

”Whenever there may arrive at the port of San Francisco a s.h.i.+p named the 'Columbia,' said to belong to General Was.h.i.+ngton of the American States, commanded by John Kendrick, which sailed from Boston in 1787, bound on a voyage of discovery to the Russian settlements on the northern coast of the peninsula, you will cause said vessel to be examined with caution and delicacy, using for this purpose a small boat which you have in your possession.”

Two months after this order was promulgated in the Santa Barbara presidio, Captain Gray, of the s.h.i.+p ”Was.h.i.+ngton,” and Captain Kendrick of the s.h.i.+p ”Columbia,” changed s.h.i.+ps in Wickmanish harbor.

Captain Gray took the ”Columbia” to China, and did not sail into San Francisco harbor at all, whereby he escaped being ”examined with caution and delicacy” by the small boat in possession of the San Francisco garrison. Not till the 11th of May, 1792, did he return and sail up the Columbia River, then called the Oregon. He renamed it, for his s.h.i.+p, ”Columbia's River;” but the possessive was soon dropped.

When one looks at the crowded rows of steamboats at the Portland wharves now, it is hard to realize that it is only thirty-two years since the first one was launched there. Two were built and launched in one year, the ”Columbia” and the ”Lot Whitcomb.” The ”Lot Whitcomb”

was launched on Christmas Day; there were three days' feasting and dancing, and people gathered from all parts of the Territory to celebrate the occasion.

It is also hard to realize, when standing on the Portland wharves, that it is less than fifty years since there were angry discussions in the United States Congress as to whether or not it were worth while to obtain Oregon as a possession, and in the Eastern States manuals were being freely distributed, bearing such t.i.tles as this: ”A general circular to all persons of good character wis.h.i.+ng to emigrate to the Oregon Territory.” Even those statesmen who were most earnest in favor of the securing of Oregon did not perceive the true nature of its value. One of Benton's most enthusiastic predictions was that an ”emporium of Asiatic commerce” would be situated at the mouth of the Columbia, and that ”a stream of Asiatic trade would pour into the valley of the Mississippi through the channel of Oregon.” But the future of Oregon and Was.h.i.+ngton rests not on any transmission of the riches of other countries, however important an element in their prosperity that may ultimately become. Their true riches are their own and inalienable. They are to be among the great feeders of the earth.

Gold and silver values are unsteady and capricious; intrigues can overthrow them; markets can be glutted, and mines fail. But bread the nations of the earth must have. The bread-yielder controls the situation always. Given a soil which can grow wheat year after year with no apparent fatigue or exhaustion, a climate where rains never fail and seed-time and harvest are uniformly certain, and conditions are created under which the future success and wealth of a country may be predicted just as surely as the movements of the planets in the heavens.

There are three great valleys in western Oregon,--the Willamette, the Umpqua, and the Rogue River. The Willamette is the largest, being sixty miles long by one hundred and fifty wide. The Umpqua and Rogue River together contain over a million of acres. These valleys are natural gardens; fertile to luxuriance, and watered by all the westward drainage of the great Cascade Range, the Andes of North America, a continuation of the Sierra Nevada. The Coast Range Mountains lie west of these valleys, breaking, but not shutting out, the influence of the sea air and fogs. This valley region between these two ranges contains less than a third of the area of Was.h.i.+ngton and Oregon. The country east of the Cascade Mountains is no less fertile, but has a drier climate, colder winters, and hotter summers.

Its elevation is from two to four thousand feet,--probably the very best elevations for health. A comparison of statistics of yearly death-rates cannot be made with absolute fairness between old and thick-settled and new and spa.r.s.ely settled countries. Allowance must be made for the probably superior health and strength of the men and women who have had the youth and energy to go forward as pioneers.

But, making all due allowance for these, there still remains difference enough to startle one between the death-rates in some of the Atlantic States and in these infant empires of the New Northwest.

The yearly death-rate in Ma.s.sachusetts is one out of fifty-seven; in Vermont one out of ninety-seven; in Oregon one out of one hundred and seventy-two; and in Was.h.i.+ngton Territory one out of two hundred and twenty-eight.

As we glided slowly to anchorage in Portland harbor, five dazzling snow-white peaks were in sight on the horizon,--Mount Hood, of peerless shape, strong as if it were a bulwark of the very heavens themselves, yet graceful and sharp-cut as Egypt's pyramids; St.

Helen's, a little lower, yet looking higher, with the marvellous curves of its slender s.h.i.+ning cone, bent on and seemingly into the sky, like an intaglio of ice cut in the blue; miles away in the farthest north and east horizons, Mounts Tacoma and Adams and Baker, all gleaming white, and all seeming to uphold the skies.

These eternal, unalterable snow-peaks will be as eternal and unalterable factors in the history of the country as in its beauty to the eye. Their value will not come under any head of things reckonable by census, statistics, or computation, but it will be none the less real for that: it will be an element in the nature and character of every man and woman born within sight of the radiant splendor; and it will be strange if it does not ultimately develop, in the empire of this New Northwest, a local patriotism and pa.s.sionate loyalty to soil as strong and lasting as that which has made generations of Swiss mountaineers ready to brave death for a sight of their mountains.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] John G. Hittell's Commerce and Industries of the Pacific Coast.

[3] ”The term 'pueblo' answers to that of the English word 'town,' in all its vagueness and all its precision. As the word 'town' in English generally embraces every kind of population from the village to the city, and also, used specifically, signifies a town corporate and politic, so the word 'pueblo' in Spanish ranges from the hamlet to the city, but, used emphatically, signifies a town corporate and politic.”--DWINELLE'S _Colonial History of San Francisco_.

[4] In the decade between 1801 and 1810 the missions furnished to the presidios about eighteen thousand dollars' worth of supplies each year.

[5] Special Report of the Hon. B. D. Wilson, of Los Angeles, Cal., to the Interior Department in 1852.

[6] The missions of San Rafael and San Francisco de Solano were the last founded; the first in 1819, and the latter in 1823,--too late to attain any great success or importance.

[7] John W. Dwinelle's Colonial History of San Francisco, pp. 44-87.

II.

SCOTLAND AND ENGLAND.

II.

SCOTLAND AND ENGLAND.

A BURNS PILGRIMAGE.

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