The last time I visited Yaquina Bay was during the closing days of September. The afternoon sun shone on the little dancing waves as we rowed across from Newport to the South Beach, where the harbor-works are going on. A heavy equinoctial storm had raged for two days before, and it would have been no surprise had the incomplete works suffered. But we found the men busily employed in piling large blocks of rock on the mattresses made of large, long bundles of brushwood, secured with cords, and deposited carefully in the line of the breakwater. Many of the hands were Indians, who were working very intelligently and quickly under the direction of our old friend Kit Abbey. No damage whatever had been done, but, on the contrary, the storm had piled the sand in even layers, five or six feet deep, on each side of the breakwater, solidifying and strengthening the work. Already the channel nearest to the beach, which had robbed the main channel of some of the tidal water, had been permanently closed. And the increase of the tidal in-and-out flow thus caused had proved to the satisfaction of the United States engineer officer in charge the correctness of the theory on which the works were designed. So that all tends in the one direction of opening this harbor, on which so many hopes are fixed, to ocean-going ships of deep draught.
Fortunately, the facts are being daily ascertained, tabulated, and certified by the independent authority of the United States engineers; they have minute surveys of the channel, and the changes operated by the new breakwater will be observed and recorded. Thus, as soon as the time comes to invite the shipping sailing to the Northwest coast to enter the port, there will be no further room for question as to depth of water and ease of access; but the facts will be so patent and plain to the world, that no one need be longer blinded by the persistent misrepresentations of interested parties.
Entrance to Yaquina Bay (Looking seaward).
The effect of the opening of the Oregon Pacific Railroad, which in two, or at most three years from now, will meet at or near Boisé City, Idaho, the lines rapidly pushing westward to that point, will be manifold:
First, it will open the new port at Yaquina to commerce, and so give the Willamette Valley its independent outlet, unaffected by terror-dealing bars, winter ice, and exorbitant charges. Second, it will in its eastward progress open up to settlement a broad belt of fertile and well-watered country, at present well-nigh untenanted. Third, it will operate as a check to the pretensions of the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company to entire monopoly of the transportation of the State, and its boasted consequent ability to fix fares and freights at its own sweet will.
THE END.
TWO YEARS IN OREGON.
By Wallis Nash, author of "Oregon There and Back
in 1877." Second edition. With Illustrations.
12mo, cloth, $1.50.