Page:All Over Oregon and Washington.djvu/368

362 Territory is that one now being built between Walla Walla and Wallula, on the Columbia River. This road will furnish an outlet for the Walla Walla Valley, adding greatly to its commercial importance and agricultural development. As the distance is only thirty miles, it is expected that this road will be completed during 1872.

These various railroads, together with the navigable waters of the Columbia and Wallamet rivers and Puget Sound, furnish, or soon will furnish, easy communication to and from almost every portion of Oregon and Washington. Only South-eastern Oregon, without navigable waters, is left to the slow locomotion of freight-wagons and stage-coaches. This, however, will not long remain so when the lines of road already commenced have drawn to themselves the population which they are sure to bring. As the circles ever widen on the water where a stone has been dropped, so the ever-widening waves of population will succeed where great railways penetrate a fertile country with a genial climate, and agreeable scenery.

Two routes are open connecting Portland with the Pacific Railroad and the East. The first via the Oregon and California Railroad, and the Oregon and California Stage Company's line to Sacramento. The second is via the Columbia River and the North-western Stage Company's line. Passengers can leave the river at Dalles, or at Umatilla, and find coaches in waiting which take them across the country to Kelton on the Central Pacific, via Le Grand and Baker City in Eastern Oregon, and Boise City in Idaho. To the tourist this route offers many attractions, from the peculiar scenery of the Blue Mountains and the Snake River Valley. The cost of the journey either way is about