Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 16.djvu/28

 will be anything in the interior of this forbidding stretch of country to induce the movement of such a force into the interior should a reasonable show of defense be exhibited by a field force." It was impossible "to defend the mouth of the Columbia River with any known practical system of fixed batteries." Besides, fortifications were not really necessary, as the river "mouth is always blocked by a mass of oscillating sand," and "at high tide a vessel drawing eighteen feet can seldom pass the bar." So also on Puget Sound land fortifications would be useless, steam floating batteries necessarily being the weapons there. "Sea steamers of ten feet draft," he said, "ascend the river to the City of Portland." Willamette Valley would sustain a population of one hundred and fifty thousand. Portland would continue to be the commercial center of that district, unless it were found that sea steamers could "at all times ascend to the foot of the Cascades." The vast region drained by the Columbia River was one which impressed the observer as incapable of sustaining a flourishing civilization. This, said he, "is the general view to be taken of Oregon from the Pacific to the summit of the Rocky Mountain Range, a region only fit, as a general rule, for the occupancy of the nomadic tribes who now roam over it, and who should be allowed peacefully to remain in its possession." Speaking more particularly of Washington this sagacious military engineer, historian and author declared that "the whole Yakima country should be left to the quiet possession of the Yakima and Klickitat Indians." Also this: "In the acquisition of this strip of territory it is certainly not to be denied by any sensible man who has examined it carefully that the United States realised from Great Britain but very little that is at all valuable or useful to civilised man. For the Indians, but for the presence of the whites, it would ever have remained well adapted." The document was replete with utterances of a disparaging, belittling, slanderous, false and absurd character, concerning the people, officials, soil, timber, waters and future possibilities, of the Oregon country given out with high military approval, published by the Government, circulated broadcast,