STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 271 



TEXTILE FIBRES OF THE PACIFIC STATES. 



BY WILSOX FLINT, OF SAGE AMEN TO. 



THE AREA OF TERRITORY AND POPULATION CONSIDERED. 



Stretching along the northern Pacific coast, bet^yeen the parallels of 

 thirty-two and forty-eight degrees of latitude, lie the States of California, 

 Oregon, and the Territory of Washington, while near as well as remotely 

 inland, and belonging to the same general climate, with social and 

 industrial relations co-dependent upon a mutual commerce which finds 

 its way from abroad to the port of Sa'n Francisco, are the Territories of 

 Idaho, Utah, Arizona, and the State of JSTevada. In territorial extent 

 this region covers nearly or quite one fourth of the area of the United 

 States ; and holding, as it does, the western o'utlets of the American por- 

 tion of the continent, it is destined to occupy an importance in the trade 

 with the eastern coast of Asia and the Australian archipelago not less 

 interesting than that which has already grown to such colossal propor- 

 tions between the communities located upon the western shore of the 

 Atlantic. 



The acquisition of most of this territory, and the establishment upon 

 its soil of a numerous population, with many of the industries of civil- 

 ized life, is comparatively the woi'k of a few brief years, as less than 

 two decades have passed since the United States claimed possession of 

 only a narrow strip about the mouth of the Columbia Eiver; and this 

 possession at that time was held more as a dependency of the British 

 Hudson Bay Company, then engaged in the prosecution of the fur trade 

 with the roving bands of savages, who paid more respect to the authority 

 of the English traders than to the few Boston men who were endeavor- 

 ing to plant, amid surrounding hostilities and opposing obstacles, thrown 

 in their way at every step by the jealous Hudson Bay monopolj', the 

 footprints of American progress, which ever go in advance of and unaided 

 by the Federal Government. 



At the period of the gold discovery, about fifteen years since, this 

 entire region contained not more than as many thousand white inhab- 

 itants, few of them having any settled purpose or permanent domicile, 

 and most of them leading a life akin to that of the nomadic aborigines. 



