scs, herds of eattie and horses, and roving fields of hay and 
grain, gives variety to the landscape, and speaks of home, 
plenty and comfort. Beyond these rise the everlasting moun¬ 
tains, miles away, yet distinctly outlined against the sky. To 
the eastward stands St. Helens and Adams, and Ranier, and 
Baker, mighty sentinels upon the Cascade range, whose summits 
penetrate far into the regions of ice and snow, and shine in the 
sun’s rays like mountains of frosted silver. To the westward 
stands Olympus, solitary in his grandeur, without peer or rival 
in his dominion. This mountain is not only visible from the 
sound, but may be seen far out upon the ocean, occupying as it 
does the peninsula between the two. Vancouver’s Island, San 
Juan, and the disputed archipelago, with Whitby Island the 
garden of the Puget Sound country, all constitute interesting- 
parts of the varied and ever-changing scenery.”— Garfield . 
North Pacific Railroad. For nearly a century the leading- 
statesmen of our country have cast longing looks across the 
continent, even to “ the continuous woods, where rolls the Or¬ 
egon.” In 1784, Thomas Jefferson, while representing his coun¬ 
try at the French Capital, secured the services of John Led- 
yard, and equipped that famous traveller for the purpose of ex¬ 
ploring the northwest coast, to search for the source of the Co¬ 
lumbia, and continue with the meanderings of that river to its 
mouth ; also to obtain information relative to the Indian tribes 
in those regions, and the facilities for developing the fur trade 
among those tribes, and the possibility of extending that rich 
trade to the Indies. In 1847, Mr. Benton, in the U. S. Senate, 
when advocating a similar policy, said, “ The preservation of 
our territory on the Pacific, the establishment of a port there 
for the sheltering of our commercial and military marine, the 
protection of our fur trade, and the aid to the whaling vessels, 
the accomplishment of Mr. Jefferson’s idea of commercial com¬ 
munication with Asia, through the heart of our own continent, 
was constantly insisted upon as a consequence of planting an 
American colony at the mouth of the Columbia. That man of 
large and useful ideas, that statesman who could conceive meas 
ures useful to all mankind, and in all time to come, was the 
first to propose that commercial communication, and may also 
be considered the first discoverer of the Columbia river. His 
philosophic mind told him that where a snow-clad mountain, 
like that of the Rocky Mountains, shed the water on one side, 
