Page:Atlantis Arisen.djvu/63

Rh At a distance of about six miles above the Wallamet we come to the town of Vancouver, on the Washington side. This place is beautifully situated on a sloping plain, with a strip of velvety-looking meadow land on its river-front. It is the old head-quarters of the Hudson's Bay Company in Oregon, where resided, for more than twenty-five years, the governor and chief factors of that company, nominally holding "joint possession," with the United States, of the whole Oregon Territory, out really, for the greater portion of that time, holding it alone.

Here lived in bachelorhood, or with wives of Indian descent, a little colony of educated and refined men, who, by the conditions of their servitude to the London Company, were forced to lead a life of almost monastic seclusion. True, it happened sometimes that naturalists, adventurous travellers, and others drifted to this comfortable haven in the wilderness, and by their talk made a little variety for the recluses; and very hospitable they found them—ready to provide every civilized luxury their fort contained, without money and without price, so long as it pleased their guests to abide with them.

There are few traces remaining of the old, stockaded fort. When the British company abandoned it the United States government took possession of Vancouver for a military post; and now the tourist beholds, scattered over the plain, a thriving town of two thousand inhabitants, and bordering on it the wellkept garrison grounds of the troops, with neat officers' quarters encircling the parade. Vancouver is the seat of government of Clarke County, and possesses many advantages, which are to be brought more prominently to light by railroad communication with the Puget Sound region and Eastern Washington in the near future. The Union Pacific Company will soon unite Washington and Oregon, at this point, by a steel bridge whose estimated cost reaches into the millions.

Above Vancouver, for a distance of twenty miles, there are many beautiful situations all along on the Washington side, though the country is timbered heavily. The southern shore is lower: the Sandy—a stream coming down from Mount Hood —having its entrance into the Columbia above and opposite Vancouver, through alluvial, sandy bottoms. Beyond this the whole surface of the country becomes elevated, and we are