on this bar than that of San Francisco or New York. Since the pilotage system was established, there has never been an accident on the bar. It is safer than navigating the Straits in a fog. There is no advantage in having more water than you can use, and there is enough and to spare in the Columbia. The Sound is 'the finest inland body of water in the world,' but you can not build a city all around it—there is nothing to support it. Talk about lumber and coal, and other minerals! Why, we have got the same here. Talk about ship-building and navy-yards, and all that! We can build ships, too; and we have the iron, within a few miles of us, to build into iron-clads, and fresh water for them to lie in. There's fifty to seventy feet of water right across the river at our point—and a mile wide at that!"
"Granting all you claim, that you could compete with San Francisco and the Sound—are not the Idaho and Montana merchants going to buy the bulk of their goods in Chicago?"
"Well, we hope to prevent that by judicious management. What we claim is, that the soil and population are going to fix the centres of commerce; and these we have on the south side of the Columbia."
There is so much common sense in this proposition that we refrain from contradicting it, and inquire the name of the little town with the beautiful location, at which the steamer is stopping. "St. Helen." A pretty name, and a pretty place; but why do the Oregonians repeat their names so much: Columbia River and Columbia City; Mount St. Helen and town St. Helen? Why not let every thing have a name of its own?
This is an attractive spot. The rocky bank forms a sharp, clear line of frontage, of a convenient height
