A RIDE THROUGH OREGON.<br/>

  THEY sat opposite me, leaning heavily from each other, and looking sour and sullen. By these signs I knew they were man and wife.<br/>
  "My dear, I hope you are comfortable." The man who said this was short, dark, heavy, and black-bearded, with a niche in the side of his nose. He looked straight at my boots as he spoke, and did not deign to even lift his heavy brows in her direction. We had sat in the stage silent for hours. When he spoke, she merely dusted her threadbare silk with a large, gloved hand, half straightening, as if adjusting her spinal column, coughed slightly, and subsided into statuary.<br/>
  "I hope you are comfortable, my dear," he spoke again, in the same tone and manner-a tone and manner as cold and false as an epitaph. No answer from the statuary, not even a ruffle; and, whatever may have been the hopes of the short, dark man, as to the comfort of the tall, fair woman, it was very evident that he was not altogether comfortable himself. After awhile, she impatiently drew off her glove, and I saw that there were no finger-nails on her right-hand. How fortunate, thought I, for her husband! Finally, I saw that she wanted to "blow him up;" and not having the slightest objection, I took the first opportunity to get a seat outside.<br/>
  "Who are they?" said I, twisting my head inquiringly toward the pair in the coach.<br/>
  The driver snapped his silk under the leaders' heels, and, from under the stiff hat that rested on his nose, answered:<br/>
  "Webfeet."<br/>
  A well-known, but not popular writer, as far as the will of Oregon goes, once wrote, when on the tour of the Pacific, that California ended and Oregon began where white sugar failed, and a brown, Kanaka article was substituted. This is, perhaps, fiction; but it is safe to say that even the Chinese wall does not divide two more distinct peoples than did the Siskiyou Mountains, until within a very few years. And, even now, after the infusion of the new life, the original Chinook or Cayuse Oregonian-a transplanted cross of Pike and Posey County -remains, as uninformed and unaffected as the Chinaman, after twenty years' contact with the Yankee.<br/>
  These people held, by donation of the Government, all the best portions of the State; every head of a family holding 640 acres, as a rule. They put up log cabins, fenced in a calf-pasture and a cabbage-patch, turned their stock loose on the native meadows, and, living on the increase of the same, reared as idle and worthless a generation as ever the sun went down upon. The old men trapped, traded in stock, ate, smoked, and slept, were very hospitable in their way, and, no doubt, were happy. The young men wore long hair, rode spotted Cayuse horses; in fact, lived mostly on horseback, and mixed largely with the Indians. True, there were many men of enterprise, education, and all that, in this country - skilled mechanics, fine farmers, good lawyers, and sound men generally, who held and still hold high places in the State; but, as a rule, the old Oregonian was and is a distinct and singular individual. This is the manner of man I found on the Wallamet, twenty years ago.<br/>
  Twenty years ago, the old Oregonian, with his cattle on a hundred hills, had neither butter nor milk on his table, save that which he bought of his neighbor, the newly arrived immigrant. He is the same to-day - improvident and uncivilized. The first one you encounter is on the Oregon side of the Siskiyou Mountains. He stands in the door as the stage passes, with his hands in his pockets, patches on his knees, and with three or four blue-haired children clinging to his legs and staring at the great stage-coach. He wears a broad, slouch hat, long hair, and looks as though he had just got out of bed, and is only half awake. But what will attract your attention at this first house in Oregon, is the immense sign that stretches across the toll-road. We pass under it as under a great gateway on entering an ancient city. The letters are so large and prominent that they suggest a popular text in Holy Writ:<br/>
  "T-o-l-e Road."<br/>
  "What does that mean?" Charley Robinson, who held the lines at my elbow, again snapped the silk at his leaders, and, lifting his head to the Great Rogue River Valley before us, said, "That means that we are in Oregon."<br/>
  Oregon is an anomaly. With a population made up largely of such people, she has always had some man in Congress who was, in his day, a power in the land.<br/>
  Here you pass a house that stands in a little pen, mossy with age. In it a generation has been born and raised, yet it has never had a window. Get into the house, if you can for the dogs and deer-skins under your feet, and there you find an order of things not much above the simple Siwash. The next house you pass, perhaps, will be a model of architecture and rural ornamentation, with people polite and progressive. And so it goes. Oregon is wonderfully mixed. The best and the worst of men; the sunniest and wettest of weather, and the first and most worthless live stock in the world. Rogue River Valley, which mainly lies away from that stream to the south, on Bear River, is a staid, sweet place. Rains are less frequent here than farther on, and many accept it as a compromise between the droughts of California and the great rains of the Wallamet, and are not to be allured away, although it is now the most isolated portion of the State. This is the only part of Oregon that has a military history. Away down the valley, not unlike a magnificent castle in appearance, stands Table Rock, the old fortress of Captain John, the famous Chief of the Rogue River Indians. Here were fought some sharp skirmishes; and here General Lane, "the Marion of Mexico," received wounds and won laurels in the capture of the battlement. The brave old Chief and his son, who burnt and butchered successfully up and down this lovely valley for many years, are even now, I believe, prisoners of war at Alcatraz. He fought to the last, and even when on the ship on the way to his military prison, the reckless old savage, with his son, rose against the officers one night, and fought till they were both shot down. But bad Indians die hard; and, I believe, they both recovered, though the old warrior lost a leg in this his last battle. He is now nearly forgotten, and his wild and bloody history unwritten. Umpqua Valley is really no valley at all, but a succession of little hills, with dimples and depressions along the crooked, rocky Umpqua and its tributaries. Roseburg is a little, peaceful-looking town of a thousand souls or more, but it is no baby, and has a bloody record. Here, on this rickety old bridge, a howling mob hung its victim; and there, in that dusty, dog-fennel street, last summer, the editors of the two rival little papers had a lively six-shooter war-dance, and, when the ball closed, three editors were found fearfully wounded. The cold, cold world may learn with a possible tinge of regret, that no one of the three has, so far, died of his wounds. Back yonder, on the banks of the Umpqua, one night, at a little country ball, a misunderstanding arose, and, in a moment, more than half a dozen strong, fine young men lay dead or dying on the floor.<br/>
  Roseburg is the home of the Lanes- once the political power of the State - and up this creek, that comes pitching down between the great oak-topped hills, three miles in an easterly direction, and four miles perpendicular, as his son has it, lives General Joseph Lane - soldier, Governor, Senator, and at last candidate for the Vice - Presidency. Very old is the General now, and quite retired, but the same as of old. His quiet, unpretending fireside and frugal meal are shared by the hermit the same now as when he was not poor, but strong and well-to-do, a great politician, and a power in the land.<br/>
  Boats do not reach Roseburg; but down the rocky Umpqua, at Scotsburg, was once a lively trade, and many steamers decked the river-a river rich in scenery, deep and dark from rugged cliffs in many places, and then overshadowed by the spicy myrtle. Two hours' ride from this little town, through rolling hills of oak, and we touch the advance of Holladay's railroad army. Farther on, we pass a town of tents. Thousands of men, it seems-and mostly Chinamen- are at work, like beavers, sweeping away the great fir-forest, that shuts out the sun the whole year through. Two hundred miles from Portland, and three hundred miles from the sea, by the line of travel, we take the cars. At present, the gap between the California and Oregon sections, that the traveler has to cross by coach, is three days' hard travel; but it is safe to say that, in another year, somewhere up about the Siskiyou Mountains, the last spike will be driven. The Oregon section has the heavier force employed, is displaying the greater energy, and will probably first reach the junction.<br/>
  We are now in the matchless and magnificent Wallamet Valley, fifty miles wide, one hundred and fifty long, watered and timbered like a park, and capable of being turned into one unbroken field of grain. The cold, clear river, with its fringe of balsam and fir, winds directly through its length; while, on either hand, far back in the clouds, loom mountains, black in their forests of eternal green. Here, if a man sows, he shall surely reap; while many even reap who do not sow at all, for a succession of volunteer crops is no new thing. Here the seasons never fail. That reliable individual, known as the oldest inhabitant- who, I believe, makes his home in Oregon-fails to remember a time, in the last half - century, when this prolific valley failed the husbandman. Here, on the river, at the head of navigation, is Eugene City - a dear, delightful town among the oaks, but slow and badly "hide-bound." It needs a good shaking up; wants some one who has the courage, and is enough its friend, to tell it of its sins. Here are six great church-buildings -never half filled-and hardly two decent school-houses. Here is a great army of boys growing up, proficient chiefly in the mysteries of "kissing-bees" and country-dances." No trades, no professions, no education to speak of; nothing but helpless dependence on the "old man." This is a representative interior town. After awhile, the keen, cultivated Yankee will come along, and push these young men off the track, out of their homes, back into the mountains; and they will murmur some, and wonder how it is, but should not complain.<br/>
  Here, too, is an army of men at war with the railroad. Men, whose land has been trebled in value by the location of this line, are fighting every foot of its advance. While some men, awake to the interests of the country, have generously given a right of way to the enterprise, the sleepy Webfoot, who is afraid his cow will be run over and his grass burnt up by the railroad, is suing for damages, and displaying an energy in his opposition that he has never shown in any thing else. If Holladay had undertaken to pass through the lines of the Apache Indians, he could not have encountered more trouble than this class of people have given him in Oregon.<br/>
  A little way from here is the junction of the East Side and West Side lines, both owned by Holladay. The "West Side," with its southern terminus now in the city of Portland, but which will be carried to Astoria, runs all the way up the west side of the Wallamet; while the " East Side" keeps up the other side, and makes its crossing just below the forks of the river, to the junction; thus giving this valley railroad advantages equal to any in the Union. In fact, it is safe to say, that, at the end of the present year, Oregon will have more railroad, according to its population, than any State you can name.<br/>
  Be sure and stop at Albany, a little wide-spread town on the east bank of the Wallamet; for this is the heart of the valley. Ten and twenty miles, in many directions, you see only level fields, farm-houses, and orchards. It looks much like Illinois. Wheat is the great production. It never fails. No floods, no droughts, no grasshoppers, no weevil; nothing that can make the farmer feel less secure than if insured. Here are fields, I am told, that for twenty successive years have brought forth their unfailing crops of wheat, without fallow or manure. However, we must know that such is not the rule, and, at best, is only a shiftless Webfoot way of getting on that no farmer should boast of. Still, if there is a soil under the sun that can endure such culture, this is surely the soil. Go down to the river, and see where it has cut through its banks of fifteen feet of loam and black alluvial bottom, and you will agree with me. Yet, with these broad and matchless fields, all kinds of produce are high and scarce. All along the stage-line through the southern part of the State, the drivers stated they could not get oats at even $1 a bushel, and had to feed wheat to a great extent. This is remarkable. Labor is needed here. I have taken pains to look into this, and write advisedly. Nearly twenty years' residence in the State, and then recent observations abroad, where I could make comparisons, enable me to speak truly, as well as plainly; and I think it safe to say that no country presents nearly so many attractions to settlers, either with or without means, as this. There are some who complain of the climate of this valley-and it is certainly not attractive during the winter months-yet it is almost exactly like that of England, with the advantage of temperature on the side of Oregon. That of England is a little more cold and crisp, while this is the more damp and humid of the two, but not excessively so.<br/>
  Salem, the Capital (how one tires of these old Eastern names all through this country. Why not, like California, have given pretty local names to their towns? Named them after the old Indian chiefs, for instance, who wore feathers in their hair and quills in their noses, and were well up in the art of tomahawking missionaries), is in the woods, on the banks of the Wallamet. This is the Boston of Oregon: famous for its schools and churches. The city is magnificent in dimensions; is, in fact, rather thickly settled for the country: yet, far too thinly settled for a city.<br/>
  A little while ago, this State was called a northern county of California. This infant commonwealth then stood holding on to her apron-strings, and looking up into her face helpless and pleading-like, much as a barefooted country girl to a big, proud sister just back from boarding-school. Then you may remember, also, that California frowned a little, looked wise, talked patronizingly, and put on many airs. Now, Oregon is her rival. She has a city, railroads, commerce, and wealth. Yet she is still tied up by the old "Webfoot" laws. A county can not incur a debt in excess of $5,000, while the State is almost powerless to contract under the present Constitution. And what can be said of the laws of a State where a legislator receives the same pay as a Chinese day-laborer? However, a new order of things is here, and this will soon pass away. Oregon, in the last year, has become thoroughly wakened from her twenty years' sleep, and she now wears a new face. Holladay has galvanized her into a real life, vigor, and energy that will last.<br/>
  I do not say that this man built the city, or brought all the wealth and ready money that now floods the State; but I do venture to say that he has done more in that direction than any other individual.' His ships go directly from the Wallamet to Liverpool, laden with grain, and they return with iron. The English eat the bread of the Wallamet on the Thames, and Oregon is thus made rich with English money. It is safe to add that money is more plentiful in this new State to-day, and more readily earned, than in any other part of the world. Holladay having had a great part in bringing about this recent prosperity, he is, as a matter of course, an object of jealousy, and receives the guerrilla attacks of the Webfoot portion of the Oregon press, already famous for personal onslaught. He is treated as a sort of fearful earthquake, that is finally to swallow up Oregon, Mount Hood, Webfeet, and all. The great sin with which hes now stands charged is  that of having designs on the Senate; while the truth is, he is not even a citizen of the State. His residence is in New York--that is if a ten-thousand acre farm and a home that cost half a million, can be considered a residence.  This Pacific Caesar may have ambition, but it does not lie in the direction of the United States Senate; certainly not from Oregon. This splendid specimen of American energy and Western manhood was born in Bourbon County, Kentucky, and is now just fifty. His family resides in Paris. With his twenty years of stormy life on the Pacific, he looks to be only in his prime. I pronounce him one of the finest types of manhood the West can boast of.<br />
  Portland is split in two by the Wallamet, not far from its confluence with the Columbia, with the larger half on the right bank. This is now, by far, the most prosperous town on the Pacific. It is, in many senses of the word, a city, though its bankers and merchants - mostly home-made, or "valley-tan" - still show traces of their weak pin-feathers, and decline to take any great flights in speculation or outside commerce. This place has singular attractions of scenery. Here is a sort of blended savage and civilized life, that is encountered nowhere else. The town is in the heart of a forest deeper than the Black Woods of Germany. May be it is these woods that give it the sense of newness, and make it seem as if built but yesterday. On every hill-side the trees press hard on the town, and in some places overshadow the new, white houses. The contrast of color is rich. In some places you see great stumps of trees in the streets: the town has grown so fast, they have not had time to decay.<br/>
  To see the town and forest well, and enjoy the wild and the tame, the natural and the artificial, go back on the fir topped hills, a mile west of the river, and turn your face toward sunrise and Mount Hood. Here, with your back jammed up against a wood, dense, deep, and magnificent, you have a mile of city at your feet; then a tide-river, with many ships, and not unlike the Thames; then a mile of open town; then firs, tall, taller, deep, dense, and black as Erebus, in the distance; then hills, forest-crowned, of course; then grander hills, still black with forests, but nearly hidden in the clouds - rolling clouds, that sometimes sweep like seas, then drift, and lazily drag themselves through the tree-tops; higher up are peaks, crags, clouds; then Mount Hood, rugged, scarred, and broken, matchless and magnificent, and white forever, as the throne of God.<br/>
  Grand and lovely, beyond the touch of words, are these steep and stupendous peaks of snow in Oregon, when flashing under a summer sun. Hood is only an elder brother of a well-raised family. Under skies that are less intensely blue, they might not thrill you so. Did they stand as in other lands, only as additions to and extensions of other mountains, gray, barren, and colorless, the effect then might not be so great. But here, the shining pyramids of white, starting sudden and solitary from the great black sea of firs, standing as supporting pillars to the dome of intense blue sky, startle, thrill, and delight you, though you have stood unmoved before the sublimest scenes on earth.<br/>
  It is an hour or so from Portland to where the Wallamet joins hands with the cold Columbia, and a full day's sail down that river to the sea. The first thing you do on this day's journey is to take out your book for notes, and write: "What splendid forests! Green ! black! boundless!" Then you turn a point in the river, pass a fleet of clouds laden with rain for the upper valley, and write again, "Forests! black! billowy and magnificent;" and so on, all' day, till you almost tire of the splendor and majesty of the scene. The woods come down to the waters' edge, and all day long, neither on the Washington Territory nor Oregon side do you see open land enough to turn a four-in-hand. But the soil is very rich, I know from observations of old, and though the face of the ground is broken, it will admit of many farms. Now and then the Columbia is miles in width, is never narrow, and has many islands, thick with forests of ash, and balsam, and maple.<br/>
  Many lumber-mills are along the river's edge, with little towns building about them; but they have hardly made a dimple in the exhaustless sea of timber. In places, ash and maple fringe the river, instead of fir; and now and then a black, basaltic cliff, not much unlike the Hudson Palisades, hangs above us. But, as a rule, the river is wide and shallow, with alluvial shores.<br/>
  Astoria, the oldest town in the State, has a Historical Society and a historian. It is a sweet, but not a thriving place at all, and clings helplessly to a humid hillside that seems to want to slide into the great, bay-like river. Above the town are low, broken, timbered hills, fallen trees, burnt black, and tumbled up and down and across; then sturdy firs up the river away, stately black in their intense green, impenetrable! Clouds drag lazily through their tops, and are tangled there, like floss. Sometimes you see the hill-tops bursting through the clouds, with the fir-trees tossing in the wind; and that is very grand. Across the river, some miles away, you see some cliffs of rock, a little town or two, and a steamer stealing around the points that run out into the river. The scenery here is all natural - wild, but peaceful, splendid, and impressive! The stillness is marked and imposing. Even the petrels and the sea-doves that blow about in flocks are still as ghosts. When you look above the fleets of snowy clouds that come silently in from the stormy ocean, to the cliffs and firs across the river - the ships, and clouds, and birds, and all things seeming to drift in dreamy silence-it is passing grand, and, after all, you are thankful for Oregon, the great cloud-land, her matchless forests, and her mountains.<br/>
  Although this little town of the Astors is twelve miles from the open sea, the ocean steamers touch land no more in Oregon, after casting loose from this. When we had descended to dinner, and were seated at the table-which, by the way, was about the best I had seen since leaving San Francisco - I saw what I took to be the blonde companion, of the black man I had encountered in the coach when crossing the Siskiyou Mountains. She seemed supremely happy now, and leaned warmly toward a brown whiskered man, in a miner's overshirt, with six-shooter in his belt, who sat, all attention, at her side. He bombarded her with all manner of dishes and delicacies as they talked in a low, cooing tone, and seemed oblivious to every thing save each other, and their hash! Finally, she raised her right-hand in a sort of affectionate gesture to the brown-bearded man at her side, and then I knew that I was not mistaken.<br/>
  "Just married," said the Captain, nudging at me with his left elbow, as he winked at the happy pair and looked straight down in his plate.<br/>
  "Just married! just divorced, I should say!" chipped in a little, old maid, in black, who sat up close to the Captain's right; and she said it in a bitter, spiteful way, too, as if she was grating her teeth and trying to stick pins into somebody's back. A queer, little, sour, dried-up apple was she, whom I took to be a disappointed and dyspeptic strong-minded importation from the East; yet one who knew every body and every thing, and had a ready opinion for all occasions and on all affairs. She wore glasses, and, I should say, had drank strong Bohea tea till she was as tough and tawny as a Chinaman.<br/>
  "They are just divorced-that is, a portion of them - the female portion;" and here the wise and ancient virgin settled the glasses on her nose, and looked as though she believed in herself thoroughly, and felt that she had said a really clever thing.<br/>
  "Very true," answered the Captain, gently; "divorced yesterday, married to-day, and now off to California for their honey-moon. What adds to the interest of the situation, her former husband-a short, black man, in black - is with us, a passenger in the steerage."<br/>
  "Is it possible!"<br/>
  "' Possible!' All things in that line are possible in Oregon."<br/>
  "Softly, there," chimed in an old Oregonian, who was jammed up against the old maid's right elbow. "Oregon is not responsible for all the vagabonds that cross her lines. These people, I happen to know, are from down the coast- California - your own State, Captain. This lady down at the other end of the avenue, started first to Chicago to get divorced, but when that matrimonial Eden went up the flume, she switched off and came to Oregon, as the next best place in the Union for her purpose."<br/>
  This man was a firm believer in his new State; and, as we arose from the table, sauntered out on deck, and stood in the clouds that came driving in from the sea, he declared that he would not allow it to be traduced, even in' such a trifling matter as divorces!<br/>
  Here we are at the bar. The ship begins to roll and lurch. One feels nervous and uneasy, and something 'worse than snakes seems creeping up and down the spine. Passengers look at each other, and turn pale. Now they turn' and lean, and look into the sea for whales and pretty mermaids!<br/>
  Mercy! The savage old Columbia pitches us out of her mouth into the sea, as if glad to get rid of us--as if we were a sort of Jonah. A stormy sea is this; and in this, the winter season, one of the roughest in the world. Here are indeed the seas the poet would adore: <br/>

"The seas full of wonder and peril, <br/>
 Blown white round the capes of the North." <br/>