Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/92

80 imperceptibly sloping, almost unbroken and but gently undulating plains of the Mississippi and the Missouri the problem of providing economic means for carrying the commodities of commerce is quite different from that presented by a region largely composed of table lands, here and there furrowed by deep valleys with precipitous slopes, and bordered by high ranges of mountains stretched directly across the path of the routes leading out to the markets of the world.

The lines of least desistance for traffic are more pronounced in the Columbia basin than in any portion of the East. The uniform meshes of the railway network of the Mississippi Valley will hardly be realized here and for other reasons than a lack of uniform productivity throughout all portions of this basin. The longer way around will, in this region, more frequently be found the more economic route to the market. Until release is found from the pull of gravity so that the lifts and drops in passing over intervening ridges do not involve heavy costs, the main lines of railway here will thread the main valleys. This means that even in the matter of distance the water routes for heavy traffic will be at but slight disadvantage here as compared with the rail; add to this the fact that the Columbia "seeks the ocean on a line parallel with the trade channels and not at right angles to them," as is the case with the Mississippi in relation to the major portion of the volume of trade of its valley; and the further facts that have repeated endorsement of the engineers of the national government, that the banks of the Columbia "are more stable, its waters more clear, its ice blockades are much less in duration than on the great waterway in the East," and we have something of a basis for the presumption that transportation on inland waterways in the Pacific Northwest is destined permanently to assume a comparatively larger importance than in any other section of the country, and that the improvement of these waterways so as to realize their largest utility is a matter of more vital interest to its people than