Page:The Overland Monthly, volume 1, issue 1.djvu/33

 in the Evening Bulletin are published at Portland the following morning in the Daily Oregonian and Herald.— The Oregonian is the oldest paper in the State now published. The weekly was commenced in 1850 and the daily in 1861. It has been published the past ten years by Henry L. Pittock. In typographical appearance and general appointment it is not excelled, if equalled, by any paper.on the Pacific coast. The annual cost of publication is from $40,000 to $50,000.

The present surveyed limits of the city, including Couch's addition on the north, and Caruther's addition on the south, is about three square miles. The houses on Front street are of a substantial character. Many of them are built of brick, and three stories high, with stone or iron fronts. The best of brick are made in the vicinity; in fact, anywhere in the Wallamet valley. A quarry lately opened up the river furnishes a stone of a light grey color, with a bluish tinge, that cuts into any shape, and hardens with exposure to the air. First street is devoted to retail business. Both it and Front are laid with the Nicolson pavement. The latter was laid in 1865. Owing to the fact that the ground was soft in some places, and sank away, several yards of the pavement were taken up this Spring and relaid. Not a block or a board gave any evidence of decay, and the wear was hardly perceptible. The streets are laid out at right angles. Those running parallel with the river are numbered first, second, and so on to eleventh. This does not include the street immediately upon the river, which is called Front, nor Park street, which is intended to be the Broad street of the city. It is between Seventh and Eighth, and about the centre of the city from east to west. The streets running at right angles with the river are called principally after the forest trees, and some few after individuals and places. One is very properly named after the great Oregon fish—the Salmon. Probably, in days gone by, the Indian fisherman landed his "Light birch bark canoe" at the foot of this street, and "swapped" the finny monarch of the Columbia and Wallamet for Boston Muck-a-muck, (American's food) and hence the name. Alleys and Places—the localities where dwell the marked social extremes of city population—are not yet invented.

On the city front the Wallamet is about a fourth of a mile wide. From the foot of Stark street it is crossed by a tolerable steam ferry every ten or fifteen minutes. At this point the tide ebbs and flows from eighteen inches to two feet. Any vessel that can come in the Columbia can lie at the docks. The wharves are extensive and of a very superior character; one of them—the Oregon Steam Navigation Company's—being the finest on the Pacific Coast. Front street is about twenty-five feet above low-water mark, and once within the memory of white men the northern portion of it was a few inches de/ow high water. At about a half mile from the river, the elevation above Front street ranges from a few feet to a hundred, the greatest elevation being at the south. This elevation is maintained, without much variation, for another half mile eastward, when the plateau terminates in a semi-circular range of fir-clad hills, which overlook all the surrounding country.

The special drive of the Portlanders is out to the "White House," and "Riverside Race Course," six miles south of town. The road—an excellent Macadam one—winds along the west bank of the Wallamet. The drive is a very romantic and interesting one. On the one hand is the clear, blue river, apparently of an unfathomable depth, and on the other the river range of hills, rising quite abruptly in places from the line of the road to the distance of several hundred feet, and cov-