Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 25.djvu/223

 Oregonian at the opening of winter regarding a journey just completed thus expressed himself: I arrived here Friday evening, having had a pleasant trip from Portland on the river steamers. It rained, and sometimes it poured down for a change, but a comfortable boat and pleasant company made the outside world cause little trouble. When we arrived at the Cascades the weather had improved and the mists hanging about the mountain tops added no little to the picturesque character of the scene. To more completely enjoy the wildness of the mountains and the turbulence of the river we took a free-gratis walk upon that ticklish specimen of art and monopoly, the wooden railway around the portage, and finally found ourselves safe upon the Idaho.

It does not appear in the narrative whether the correspondent was deposited on the Oregon or Washington side of the Columbia, so that his walk may have been taken on either the Ruckel or the Bradford railroad.

Some of the settlers on the Washington side of the Cascades portage secured from the Territorial legislature a special Act chartering the Cascades Railroad Company proposing to build a steam railroad with T rails over the whole length of the portage on the Washington side, and this scheme having passed into the control of Bradford & Co., they had surveyed the route in October, 1861. Impelled in part at least by this activity across the river, and with a realization too, that the increasing population served by the river steamboat lines was shortly going to demand better service on the portages, the owners of the Oregon Portage Railroad determined to substitute a locomotive for the mules used on their line.

An order was given to the Vulcan Iron Foundry of 137-139 First Street, San Francisco, an establishment