CHAPTER XXVII.
The manufacturing facilities of Oregon. Commercial and agricultural advantages reviewed. Rail Road to the Pacific. Route, mode of travelling, and requisite equipment for emigrants. Importance of Oregon to the United States. Incident in the early history of Fort Hall. Why the Blackfeet are hostile, and bright spots in their character. Mild weather. Leave for the Platte. Journey to the Yampah, and sketch of the intermediate country. New Park. Head of Grand river. The landscape. Different routes to Fort Lancaster. Old Park.
PERHAPS no country is possessed of greater manufacturing facilities than Oregon. Its numberless watercourses, with their frequent falls and rapids, upon every side, point out the sites for mills and factories, while the adjoining forests and hills produce the timber for their construction, and the metal for their machinery; and the plains and valleys, the food for their operatives, and raw materials for their fabrics. The ships of all nations await as their carriers, and render accessible the best markets of the world.
A large portion of the sterile and otherwise valueless lands of the territory might be turned to good account in the growth of wool, and the valleys and bottoms would easily yield exhaustless supplies of flax and hemp. The southwest displays her cotton fields, and the plains and hills hold out their rich stores of timber and minerals; the busy operatives and thrice effective machinery of the flourishing establishments, as yet scarcely hidden from view by the thin veil of futurity, would achieve the transformation of these varied products into broadcloths, linens, calicoes, and other auxiliaries of comfort and utility; while California, with the other provinces of Mexico, the western Republics of South America, the islands of the Pacific, the Northwestern Coast, and the numerous Indian tribes of the interior, impatient to gaze upon the evidences of creative skill, even now stand their willing purchasers.
With such advantages before her, who might not augur well for the future pre-eminence of Oregon.
But, in other respects, the prospect is still more flattering. Her extensive plains, valleys, and bottoms, need no long lapse of time to transform them into smiling fields; her prairies and hills will then become thronged with countless herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, and the beef, pork, and wool of the stock-grower, the butter and cheese of the dairyman, with all the surplus of the farmer, will find an inviting market at the populous manufacturing towns and commercial cities that will have sprung up close around him, nor need he look elsewhere for a more lucrative disposal.
An interchange of commodities with China, Japan, South America, the East Indies, and the Polynesian and Australian islands, will pour the wealth of nations into her lap, and swell the opulence of her citizens.
A continuous rail-road, from the Mississippi and the great lakes across
