Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/24

14 "The work now formally inaugurated, shall, in its completion, be made the servant and promoter of your future growth, prosperity and wealth, until here on the banks of the Willamette, shall arise a city, which, holding the keys (md being the gateway and handmaid to the commerce between the Atlantic and the Indies, shall rival Venice in its adornment and Constantinople in its wealth." (Extract from address of Joseph Gaston at ground breaking ceremonies for construction of Oregon Central Railroad, April 15, 1868.)

"I tell you my friend if you have any money to invest, to purchase lots here in Portland, or good lands nearby, and hold on to them, for this will be the great city of the Pacific coast." (Advice given by James J. Hill to a friend, at Portland, May 2, 1910.)

The history of nearly every American state or city, has been largely the history of the men and women of the state or city. But the history of Portland, Oregon, is more than that. Produced by the evolutionary forces of the dominant race of man, pursuing its irresistible course around the earth from farthest east to the confines of the west at the sundown seas, and there from natural causes and superhuman forces, selecting, and converging at the gateway of a continent and the seaport to the unobstructed highway to all nations uniting the civilization of the ancient east to the all conquering powers of the youthful west, we are to write the history of a city, unusual, unique and extraordinary among all American communities. Portland is more than a population of so many thousands; more than its great and growing commerce; more than the gateway to the Pacific; and more than the lives of all its leading men. Its foundation and existence stand for a principle; it is the result and fruit of evolutionary forces which could not be turned aside; and it has been, and must continue to be the nerve center towards which and from which tend all the historic ideas and influences which turned the tide of dominion from Russia and Great Britain, and made Portland, Oregon, in fact and truth, unconsciously, the guiding star of that empire which westward took its predestined and irresistible way.

About the time that portentous events were concentrating continental forces at the neck of woods where the great city on the Willamette and Columbia was to be, we find national affairs on the other side of the Atlantic to be in a very incoherent condition. George III, with all his follies and blunders, was passing down from the British throne through the cloud of insanity, while his unspeakable son, George IV, with all his vices and crimes against common decency, had taken his place. Austria was still at the head of that Holy Roman Empire, which Voltaire sarcastically remarked, had ceased to be an empire, to be Roman, or to be holy.

Alexander II, the grandson of the great Empress Maria, was on the throne of all the Russias. He had been the main force in the overthrow of the great Napoleon, whom he treated with great consideration after his downfall. Spain was dwindling to its decadence as a world power; Italy, to use the phrase of the great Austrian, Metternich, was but a geographical expression; and France, after Napoleon had passed its title to Oregon over to President Jefferson, was still in that ferment left behind by the Revolution, by Napoleon, and by the on and off reign of Louis XVIII, who is remembered most by his brilliant epigram—"Punctuality is the politeness of Kings."

From this perspective we get our start for Oregon and Portland. Portland stands alone in its founding and development. In less than sixty years it has arisen from an unbroken forest, uninhabited save by wild beasts and native Indians, separated from its native hearthstones by two thousand miles of unpeopled deserts, plains and mountains, to a city and seaport, one hundred and ten miles from the ocean, that ships more lumber than any other city in the world, more wheat than any other city in America, except New York, and handles more money every day than any other city in the nation of its class. While in wealth it stands without a peer, man for man, yet its growth and development of all