268 Harvey W. Scott
not be able to attain to a degree of similar or comparative progress. The natural resources of Oregon are not inferior; yet the census of next year will show not much more than 600,000 inhabitants in Oregon to nearly 1,000,000 in Wash- ington.*^
(The Oregonian, May 31, 1908.)
It was natural and necessary that Western Oregon should have been the first part of the Oregon country to attract set- tlers. The Willamette Valley was a paradise for pioneers. Nature had endowed it with every possible attraction. More- over, through the rivers, it was accessible from the sea. The first settlers were agriculturists, and the valley of Willamette opened to them finer opportunities than elsewhere in the region of Oregon. California was still Mexican territory. The Puget Sound country, though accessible from the sea, was not accessible from the land, and the pioneers, making their way across the continent, were unable to reach it. The early immigrants could not remain in the interior region, in the upper valley of the Columbia, for commuication with the' sea was necessary, and the Indians of the interior were more inclined to hostility.
The immigrants, therefore, spread over the Willamette and other valleys of Western Oregon, and later passed into the Puget Sound country from the Columbia, by way of the Cow- litz. Expulsion of the missionaries from the upper valley of the Columbia by hostile Indians left that great region without settlement for many years ; till finally discoveries of gold took a white population there and slowly gave it permanent estab- lishment. Military posts protected the people, and, after the railroad came, the population grew rapidly and towns and cities appeared Extension of railroads across the mountains to Puget Sound led to quick and enormous development of the country about that great estuary, and to creation of ports of commerce there. But Western Oregon, the seat of the orig-
