Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/15



Men yet living, men not yet old, have seen the Oregon country develop from smallest beginnings to its present greatness (1905). But its present greatness is only the promise of its future.

Portland is at the point of natural communication and exchange between the interior and the sea. To this fact Portland owes her existence. This city has done a mighty work already and is now just getting forward to the stronger position which the future is to give her.

Our life, in Oregon, once isolated, is now under the influence of world-wide conditions. Markets, manners, customs, habits, opinions, faiths are brought under this all pervading control. Our industrial processes, our social usages, our religious creeds are all subject to the same law of influence and variation. These changes come by almost imperceptible gradations, but become very marked from one generation to another.

Pioneer life is now but a memory. It will soon be but a legend or tradition. Once we had but a little world of our own. We shall have it no more. The horizon that once was bounded by our own border enlarges to the horizon of man.

Just now, we are having in Oregon a material development such as we never hitherto have known. It is well; we all rejoice at it and all try to promote it; and yet we should not become so fully occupied with it as to overlook the greater importance of the other side of life—that is, right development of thought, feeling, character.

The story of the toilsome march of the wagon-trains over the plains will be received by future generations almost as a legend on the borderland of myth, rather than as veritable history. Mystery was in the movement, mystery surrounded it. It was the effort of that profound impulse which for a time far preceding the dawn of history, has pushed our race to discovery and occupation of western lands.

It is only through industry, stimulated by the instinct for accumulation of property, that the individual or a people can get forward. Nature made the Oregon country a paradise; yet for the native Indian it was no paradise, but only a sort of dog-hole in which he dwelt in darkness, because he had not the principle of growth within himself.

As a geographical expression, the west has ever been indeterminate. The east has been treading on the heels of the west, yet never has overtaken it. Latterly, the west has taken ship on the Pacific and through one of the movements of history has overtaken the east. America has put a new girdle around the earth and the west has moved on till it has reached the gateway of the morning