which were carried out generally succumbing in a short while. Some of the schemes we are told by the letters and reports of J. C. Ainsworth whose views were naturally affected by his loyalty to the company of which he was the president, were for political ends, some for blackmail, some wholly visionary, and their promoters without financial standing. Perhaps this judgment was severe; Captain Ainsworth was given, it appears, to expressing his thoughts in direct language, forcible and sometimes picturesque.
Among these would-be competitors which after 1863 declared intention of obtaining right of passage over the Oregon Portage were three successive companies with which W. W. Chapman of Portland was connected. These were in turn The Oregon Cascade Rail Road Company, incorporated December 18, 1866, by W. W. Chapman, F. J. Carter, John B. Price and J. H. Mitchell; Portland Dalles, and Salt Lake Rail Road Company incorporated March 20, 1871, by Josiah Failing, Jacob Stitzel, S. J. McCormick, C. M. Carter and others, and The Portland, Salt Lake and South Pass Railroad Company, incorporated September 9, 1876, by Chas. P. Church, J. M. Strowbridge, Gideon Tibbetts, J. G. Glenn and W. W. Chapman. The latter was a lawyer, and one of a group of men who owned the townsite of Portland in its earliest days. The president of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company took notice of the steps taken by Chapman's first company in a vigorously worded communication to the superintendent at Eagle Creek:
"One Mr Neyce, we learn, went to the Cascades yesterday, at the instance of a few sharpers here who have filed articles of incorporation, for the purpose of locating a railroad on the Oregon side at the Cascades. I write this to say that if Mr. Neyce attempts in any way to interfere with our road we shall expect you to boot him off the premises. * * * We are tired of paying blood money to such men as Mr. Neyce and his associates. If he in any
