From Astoria to Portland is a distance of one hundred and ten miles, and as the current is strong, the steamer requires ten or twelve hours to make the trip. As you approach the mouth of the Willamette you meet more arable land, and the shores of this river are generally lower, and often alluvial, like the Missouri and Mississippi bottoms; and here you find cattle, sheep, orchards, and fields; and one who is familiar with the agricultural parts of California notices here signs of a somewhat severer climate, in more substantial houses; and the evidence of more protracted rains, in green and luxuriant grasses at a season when the pastures of California have already begun to turn brown.
Portland is a surprisingly well-built city, with so many large shops, so many elegant dwellings, and other signs of prosperity, as will make you credit the assertion of its inhabitants, that it contains more wealth in proportion to its population than any other town in the United States. It lies on the right bank of the Willamette, and is the centre of a large commerce. Its inhabitants seemed to me to have a singular fancy for plate-glass fronts in their shops and hotels, and even in the private houses, which led me at first to suppose that there must be a glass factory near at hand. It is all, I believe, imported.
From Portland, which you can see in a day, and whose most notable sight is a fine view of Mount Hood, obtainable from the hills back of the city, the sight-seer makes his excursions conveniently in various directions; and as the American traveler is always in a hurry, it is perhaps well to show what time is needed:
To the Dalles and Celilo, and return to Portland, three days.
To Victoria, Vancouver's Island, and return to Portland, including the tour of Puget Sound, seven days.
To San Francisco, overland, by railroad to Roseburg, thence by stage to Redding, and rail to San Francisco, seventy-nine hours.
Thus you may leave San Francisco by steamer for Portland, see the Dalles, the Cascades, Puget Sound, Victoria, the Willamette Valley, and the magnificent mountain scenery of Southern Oregon and Northern California, and be back in San Francisco in less than three weeks, making abundant allowance for possible though not probable detentions on the road. The time absolutely needed for the tour is but seventeen days.
Of course he who "takes a run over to California" from, the East, predetermined to be back in his office or shop within five or six weeks from the day he left home, can not see the Columbia River and Puget Sound. But travelers are beginning to discover that it is worth while to spend some months on the Pacific coast; some day, I do not doubt, it will be fashionable to go across the continent; and those whose circumstances give them leisure should not leave the Pacific without seeing Oregon and Washington Territory. In the few pages which follow, my aim is to smooth the way for others by a very simple account of what I myself saw and enjoyed.