Willamette customs district, with a custom house at Portland.
When Commander Charles Wilkes reported on his exploring expedition of the years 1838 to 1842, which carried him through nearly the entire circuit of the Pacific Ocean, he predicted a great foreign trade for the American communities destined to arise in Oregon and California. Wilkes was especially impressed with the harbours of Puget Sound and of San Francisco — " two of the finest ports in the world." Trade would spring up, he believed, between the west coast of America and "the whole of Polynesia, as well as the countries of South America on the one side and China, New Holland (Australia), and New Zealand on the other. Among the latter, before many years, may be included Japan." He adds, "Such various climates will furnish the materials for a beneficial interchange of products and an intercourse that must in time become immense."
Prophecies of Charles Wilkes. Wilkes' prediction, insofar as it relates to the Pacific Northwest, is not yet fulfilled in all respects. Yet there is much in the course of our foreign trade which justifies it. In particular, the directions which that trade now takes on leaving the Northwestern ports appear in the main to have been clearly outlined by Wilkes seventy years ago. H we take the list of ports given in the Portland custom house records of ships clearing from that port from January, 1909, to December, 1916, we find: (i) That the cargoes in all cases
