Page:How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon.djvu/289

 CHAPTER XIV.

OREGON THEN, AND OREGON, WASHINGTON AND IDAHO NOW.

The beginning of a People, a State or a Nation is always an interesting study, and when the beginning has resulted in a grand success, the interest increases. It is seldom that in the lifetime of the multitudes of living actors, so great a transformation can be seen as that to-day illustrated in the Pacific States. Fifty years ago, the immigrant, after his long journey over arid plains, after swimming rivers and climbing three ranges of mountains, stood upon the last slope, and beheld primeval beauty spread out before him. The millions of acres of green meadows had never been disturbed by a furrow, and in the great forest the sound of the woodman's ax had never been heard.

Coming by way of the great river, as it meets the incoming waves of the Pacific, the scene is still more one of grandeur. Astoria, at that