Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 19.djvu/160

 148 REVEREND EZRA FISHER and west of the Cascade Mountains. This territory extends more than 200 miles from the Columbia to our northern boundary and about 140 from the Pacific to the summit of the Cascade ridge, having about 300 miles of seacoast, with three fine harbors and a small land sea 180 miles in length, with an almost endless number of harbors entirely secure from storm. And then the majestic Columbia, whose tides daily ebb and flow to the Cascade falls, rolls her deep, broad column of water along the southern border. I know of no state in the Union which combines within its own limits so many sources of wealth. Timber of an excellent quality and in vast quantities abounds on Puget Sound, along the coasts and on the Columbia, and water power is nowhere wanting to drive the machinery to cut it into lumber. Along the Chehalis and south and east from the Sound, the country opens into extensive prairies, the northern portion of which the white man has not yet explored. The Sound abounds with islands, among which Whitby's is said to be 60 miles in length and on an average seven in breadth, with a soil unsurpassed in fertility. The people residing in this division give it as their conviction that the soil as a whole is equal, if not superior, to that of the Willamette Valley. Colonel Eby, the member of the legislature from Thurston County, informs me that two navigable rivers (the Duwamish34 and the Snohomish) empty into the Sound from the southeast and flow through the ex- tensive prairies west of the Cascade Mountains. Between the Sound and the ocean much of the land is good, but prairies are said to be small. This county, which scarcely numbered 300 souls in 1850, except the government troops, contains at this time a population estimated from 3000 to 5000, and the present session of the legislature has passed bills to organize four new counties, making in all seven counties in this new portion of Oregon. 305 In this district not less than ten or twelve towns of importance will soon be the result of the en- 304 This was the Dewamish or White River. ' 305 These seven counties were: Lewis, organized by the legislature of 1845-6; Clarke; Thurston, organized by the legislature of 1851-2; Jefferson; Pierce; King and Island.