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
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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