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About The west shore. (Portland, Or.) 1875-1891 | View Entire Issue (July 1, 1880)
The West Shoke. VOL. 6-No. 7. jL lm&aSt Portland, Oregon, July-August, 1880. I'ri Altmim. I Hllifllf ntiilt'N HOW WE TRAVEL. An Eastern correspondent asks the significant question, "What means have you for reaching the Pacific Ocean, and how do you get, overland, from Port land to Puget Sound and British Co lumbia ?" Now, this is just such an inquiry us we love to answer, since it gives us the opportunity of enlighten ing, through our columns, hundreds of our Atlantic friends who have little or no idea of the modern and approved ways we have of living and doing Columbia, so happily emblematic of the sovereign republic whose historic appellation it so nobly perpetuates. Then, on and on we go, adowu this once mystic river of the West, spanning a full degree of longitude ere we are aware of the day's decline. Having arrived at Astoria, the foster-child of old John Jacob Astor, and essentially the commercial portal of the illimitable Pacific, it is at our option to stop here and listen to the moaning of the tide, or drop down ten miles farther to the and through whose mighty gateway in riding, every hour of the day and night. half the commerce of the great West, we retrace our journuy to start anew for that land of anomalous sights, the Puget Sound country. To do this, we embark on the Dixit 'Vimf.u, or one of her elegant sister craft, and hie like a bird to Kalama, the present river terminus of the Northern Pacific Kail road; thence, in one of the superb pas scngcr coaches of this road, about sixty miles to the junction of the Olyinpia 'jjTjTiiJlCT ' iJIIHpSvMd' 'ii 8PBlKTTJaMuliuMBMB Bawl SECOND STREET, Till: DALLES, WASCO COUNTY, OREGON, Fsom a PmOM uy f, J. OtXtM. business in this far-ofT " Indian coun try." Why, Indeed, after exchanging a ringing "( iood-:norniug " with our ftiends, we take one of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company's steamers, equal, in all resjK-cts, to the floating palaces of the Hudson, the great lakes, or the Mississippi, dash nt the rate of twenty miles an hour down the sparkling waters of the beautiful Willamette, n river owned entirely, and in fee simple, by our booming State, until we find ourselves upon th broad bosom of the gtcat cape and see the waters that bavp rome from a thousand tributaries lose ihanv selves in the profundity of old ocean's dark eternity. I li re, since ages agone, the red man has listened to the voice of the (Jrcat Spirit, manifested in the thunder of the surf as it Iximhards the solid earth and thin retires, crest-fallen, from the ever lasting abutment! of nature's owr. ma sonry. Leaving this broad estuary of n river which has drained more than two hun dred !. f I square mil of territory, k Tenino Railroad, a little hamlet til teen miles from the hind waters of the Sound, lien- il is, "Change cur for Olympia," or, we can remain in our seats anil go to New Tacoma, nhoul fotty mile further on, at prctcut the cxltcmc northwestern terminus of the Northern Pacific mad. Much as this route from the Columbia to the Sound has lccn commented on by travelers, it yet remain, in all its great essential, an unwritten volume. As the iron hoi e rushes tilong in hi iinpcluou careen the c)c i regaled with a living
