The first town deserving any notice from the tourist is Drain, situated just where the railroad emerges from the Pass Creek canon through the Calapooya Mountains, joining Elk Creek, a branch of the Umpqua River. This place, founded twelve or fifteen years ago by Mr. Drain, an old resident of the county, and a wbilom State legislator, was for a long time only a station where passengers for Scottsburg, on the west side of the Coast Range, took stage for the rough but enjoyable journey across the mountains.
And here I cannot refrain from saying that I think travel suffers greatly from the levelling influence of railroads. There is nothing in the traveller’s rapid transit by the straightest route, through the lowest passes, across the outskirts of nature and of cities, confined to a seat which you may not have chosen, and in propinquity with (perhaps) very undesirable fellow-travellers, eating unwholesomely, and sleeping uncomfortably, to compensate one for liberty to choose his route, to breathe unpolluted air, to “take his ease in his inn” when he chooses, sleeping and eating in comfort. It is all very well for the demands of commerce to be satisfied in this way, but travel—why, one does not travel: he is snatched and tossed from place to place without having enjoyed one of the foremost purposes of travel, which is to gain health, pleasure, and instruction. Railroads are great civilizers ; but they also need to be civilized in some directions.
The ride from Drain to Scottsburg furnishes all the delights to be gathered from a magnificent forest, alpine heights, awful declivities, glimpses of a rapid river dashing itself over rocky obstructions, the balsamic odors of the woods, pure stimulating air, social converse, an hour for your dinner, and a friendly inn at your journey’s end. We are promised that all this, or much of it, is to be changed in a year or two by a railroad from Drain to the ocean, by a new route, and with new towns along it. Glasgow and Reedville are two which are not yet to be found on the maps.
Scottsburg, situated at the head of tide-water, was named foi Levi Scott, its founder, in 1850. A military road once connected it with the interior, but the great flood of 1861-62 washed away the road and a large part of Scottsburg, since which it has Bteadily declined. An attempt was made to render the river
