Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/97

Rh banks (not a little of its course is run between walls of basalt), such is the comparative freedom from the silt that causes erosion and shifting bars, and so short are the periods when it is locked by ice, that its adaptability as a waterway for purposes of commerce may be rated very high.

It was the judgment of John Jacob Astor, or his representative, in establishing Fort Astor, in 1811, near the mouth of the Columbia, that the emporium should be there for commerce with the Orient. A little more than a decade later that judgment was dissented from by the sagacious McLoughlin of the Hudson Bay Company. He moved the entrepot of trade a hundred miles up the river. His idea, in so far as it affects the use of this lower stretch as an arm of the sea, seems destined to stand. It has not merely the sanction implied in the building up of a city of 200,000 people at the head of navigation on the lower Willamette, twelve miles up from its junction with the Columbia, but also a hearty seconding in the plans and projects of the engineering service directing river and harbor improvements. The consideration that weighed with Dr. McLoughlin in establishing Fort Vancouver near the region whence was obtained his company's wealth of commerce holds good today. The ocean liner is brought for its cargo as near as possible to the heart of a large and rich producing country. The improvement, therefore, of the Willamette and Columbia below Portland is virtually of the nature of harbor improvement while that contemplated for the river above and its tributaries is that of inland waterway improvement.

That the waterways of the Columbia basin had eminent natural fitness as avenues of commerce and travel is conclusively proven in the flourishing economic development of this region in the pre-railway era. Up to about 1880, the Columbia River with its tributaries, constituted the only trunk lines of inland commerce and travel in the Pacific Northwest. The facilities of transportation afforded by these waterways had sufficed for the upbuilding of a very