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208 banished. Capital is certainly not seeking it at present as a point of investment. The freshet has left its marks of devastation along the levee and lower portions of the city, and it will require much capital and energy to reinstate Vancouver in the position it occupied two years since; and if the idea of making The Dalles a large commercial emporium be ever consumated, I can not conceive that Vancouver will ever occupy a position of more than secondary importance, unless the western slopes of the Cascades should open up a gold-bearing region. In such an event Vancouver would necessarily become a point of fixed commercial importance; but so long as the permanency which now marks Portland shall continue to be maintained, and the question on the part of the citizens of The Dalles to make it a commercial depot shall continue to be agitated, so long will Vancouver stand the chance of being kept in the background. On the Lower River we traveled to Portland in company with quite a a number of emigrants destined to Puget Sound, and they all regretted that they could not have gone from Walla Walla to the Sound by land. This is a matter in which every citizen of Washington Territory is more or less interested. The road opened in 1853, by the Natchess Pass, has fallen into such a state, that, unless repaired and kept so, it will be useless for all practical purposes of emigrants for the Sound from the States. I understand that the Packwood trail is deemed by many preferable to the Natchess route; but whether we shall have a route via the Natchess, Snoqualmie, Packwood, or any other pass, is a matter about which those truly interested in seeing the Sound section brought directly in communication with the interior, will not fall out. The citizens of the Sound need a good road across the Cascades, direct from Wallula. The valley of the Yakima will doubtless give us a good line, and then across to the Wenatchee,