The Oregon Country, with which these chapters are chiefly concerned, has been the goal of expeditioning for a century and a quarter. First came Captain Robert Gray in 1792, by sea. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, twelve years later, tracked 'cross country from the Missouri to the mouth of the Columbia. In 1810, the Astor expedition, under Wilson and Hunt, succeeded, after hardships that materially reduced the party, in making its way from St. Louis to the Columbia and down the river to the mouth, where was founded the town of Astoria. Finally, after a half-century of horse-and-wagon pioneering, the first railroads spanned the continent in 1869. But the Union Pacific and Central Pacific were more the concern of California than of Oregon, for the Northwest had no iron trail to link it with the parent East until in 1883 the Northern Pacific Railway, under the leadership of Henry Villard, reached Portland.
So Oregon was discovered by sea and land, and finally, as highways of steel replaced the dusty trails of the emigrants, she has come into her own. From within and without she has builded, and what she has done for her sons, and offers to her settlers, has established a place for her in the respectful attention of the world.
Now, in the year nineteen hundred and fifteen, a new era is dawning for Oregon and for all our Western Coast, through fresh enterprise, this time again by sea. The waters of the Atlantic and Pacific have been joined at Panama, our continental coast line, to all intents and purposes, being made continuous, and the two Portlands, of Oregon and Maine, become maritime neighbors. Our East and our West have clasped hands again at the Isthmus, and comparative strangers as they are, there is need for an introduction when they meet.
Not strangers, perhaps; better brothers long separated, each unfamiliar with the attainments and the developed character of the other. The younger brother, the Westerner, has from the very nature of things changed most. His growth, in body, mind, and experience, is at times difficult for the Easterner to fathom. A generation ago, he was such an immature fellow, so lacking in poise, in accomplishments, and even in certain of those characteristics which comprise what the East chooses to consider civilization; and his country, compared with what it is to-day, was so crudely developed.