the railroad has been completed just in time to provide for these people; and that these people have come just in time to give employment to the railroad.
The dream of Thomas Jefferson, and the desire of Thomas H. Benton's heart, have been wonderfully fulfilled, so far as the Pacific Railroad and the trade with the old world of the East is concerned. But even they did not prophesy that Chinamen should build the Pacificward end of the road. It was of the Columbia River, and Puget Sound as a harbor, that the first projectors of a Pacific railroad dreamed. They knew that sailing vessels crossed the Pacific from a point on the coast about opposite the Oregon River, in order to avail themselves of the variable winds of that latitude, when the trades were against them. They did not reckon sufficiently upon the rapid development of steam power as an aid to commerce on the high seas, any more than they foresaw the future importance of the San Francisco Bay, or the Americanization of the whole of California within the present century.
Nor is the scheme of Jefferson, of Astor, of Benton, and other far-seeing men of a past generation, an unlikely one at this day. Another decade may see the ships of China and Japan unlading at the wharves of the Northern Railroad in Puget Sound, than which there is no more safe and commodious harbor in the world. Taking into consideration its capacity and excellence, together with the shorter and more direct course of vessels from this part of the coast, there is much to recommend it to the consideration of the commercial world.
The only lion in the way of making the Sound a great naval dépôt is the British lion, who has his lair upon Vancouver's Island, at the entrance to the Sound. It was an oversight on the part of the United States, the giving up the island of Quadra and Vancouver, on the settlement of the boundary question. Yet, "what is to be, will be," as some realist has it; and we look for the restoration of that picturesque and rocky atom of our former territory as inevitable.
PORTALA'S CROSS.
Pious Portala, journeying by land,
Reared high a cross upon the heathen strand,
Then far away
Dragged his slow caravan to Monterey.
The mountains whispered to the valleys, "good!"
The sun, slow sinking in the western flood,
Baptized in blood
The holy standard of the Brotherhood.
The timid fog crept in across the sea,
Drew near, embraced it, and streamed far and free,
Saying: "O ye
Gentiles and Heathen, this is truly He!"
All this the Heathen saw; and when once more
The holy Fathers touched the lonely shore—
Then covered o'er
