Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/333

268 of water. The Government has made surveys of these sections of the River, and has announced that with comparatively small outlay the rocks and reefs may be removed, the channels deepened and straightened, and the River made navigable. One thing may be emphasised in this connection, and this is that the Columbia River has mainly a rocky bed, and hence work on the channels is permanent. It will not cut and fill, nor pile up islands and bars as does the Missouri.

In view of the capability of the River to carry great water traffic, and in view of the fact that railroad traffic is seeking and will still more seek the down-hill grade to the sea, it becomes a question of great interest what the future commerce of the River will be.

It is evident that there will be three kinds of traffic: local, transcontinental, world-wide. Each is bound to be vast beyond the calculations or even the imagination of the present. The local traffic is sure to be immense, for it is estimated that there is a million acres of land immediately contiguous to the River, irrigable and adapted to intensive farming. Present experience shows that five or ten acres of such land are sufficient to support a family. Many cities and towns are sure to grow upon the banks of the River. Its banks will sometime become populated like those of ancient Nile. Besides the immediate region of the River, there are millions upon millions of acres of land more remote, the great wheat fields and stock ranges and valley lands of tributary streams, and these broad areas will seek the river route. Much of this immense local traffic of the future will be conveyed by steamboats and barges.