Page:Route Across the Rocky Mountains with a Description of Oregon and California.djvu/149

Rh covered with vast multitudes of stock of all kinds; the upper country will become a manufacturing district, and every where, on and around the extensive Bay of San Francisco, the most active and extensive commercial operations will be constantly going on.

But no country of which we have any knowledge, is so fitted by nature to become one great manufacturing region, as the territory of Oregon. It has every where, over it, an abundance of never failing water power, sufficient to propel machinery of any kind and to any amount; and as we have already said, all parts of the territory are suitable for raising the finest sheep, (not excepting the best ever reared in Spain,) and over this country sufficient numbers can and will be raised, to keep the numerous and extensive factories in constant operation.

But little is yet known of the minerals of the country. Some lead and iron have been discovered; and if an intimate acquaintance with the country shall discover an abundance of the metals, then will there be nothing wanting, to make Oregon one of the greatest manufacturing countries in the world, but the necessary population and capital; both of which, time and the enterprise of out countrymen, will give. And, although much of it is rocky and mountainous, and every where over it, are strong and evident marks of powerful, and not very remote volcanic action; as the country is very healthy, the climate mild, and the volcanoes, from appearances, mostly, if not all except Mount St. Helen, extinct; we think the day not distant, when it will be sufficiently peopled to carry on extensive manufacturing and commercial operations. And as it is situated for carrying on a direct trade with the South Sea Islands, all the countries on the Western shores of South America, and with China, the trade of which, under the treaties that have been made with this country, since the British war, must, in a few years, be extensive and important. Oregon must, at some future day, become a great Commercial as well as Manufacturing country.

But we do not profess to give a full description of these countries. There is no one whose knowledge concerning them is not very limited. After the natives, from whom, of course, little is to be learned, those who have longest inhabited them, and traveled over them most, the traders, are nearly all illiterate; and the few who were somewhat competent to investigate and judge, have had their minds wholly engrossed with other matters. A few years is insufficient to acquire a particular knowledge of