Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/551

Rh at $10,536,234. During the same period the shipments of the same commodities from San Francisco totalled $4,143,592, while from the three Puget Sound ports of Seattle, Tacoma, and Everett, the aggregate was $13,989,178. During November, 1908, there were shipped 903,000 bushels of wheat, 180,145 barrels of flour, 209,246 bushels of barley, and 9,752,552 feet of lumber. During the year 1908 the value of wheat and flour reached a total of $18,340,405, while the lumber exports aggregated 162,089,998 feet.

Perhaps the most gratifying feature of the shipping trade to Portland people has been the increase in the size of ships entering the River. In 1872 the average wheat cargo exported was 33,615 bushels, while now it is four times as much. The record cargo was that of the British bark Andorinha, in the fall of 1908, 189,282 bushels. The channel from Portland to the Columbia Bar and that across the Bar have so much improved that no lightering was necessary during the year 1908, and ships of twenty-five and twenty-six feet draft have gone from Portland to the ocean without difficulty. In connection with this fact we are told that in June, 1907, the International Sailing-ship Owners' Union abolished the differential of thirty cents per ton which had stood for some years against Portland. These conditions, together with the completion of the North Bank Railroad, by which a greatly added traffic from the Inland Empire will be turned to Portland, seem to indicate that Portland is on the direct road to a greater commercial leadership than she has yet known. The lumber industry centring in Portland is as remarkable as that of grain. Oregon's available forests,