tion and pregnant with so many grand results) become a matter of past history. The railroad company have resumed the work of grading and ballasting, and it is the desire of the company to have the cars running by the first of next May. The roadbed is prepared for some five or six miles out from the city, and the iron track laid for half a mile. My own convictions are that the railroad, eventually, is to be more beneficial to Walla Walla than The Dalles, but that the latter is also to derive much benefit no one will doubt.
We found the line of opposition steamers running, which, having the tendency to reduce the rates of freight and travel, was a thing that the commercial and traveling public were but too glad to see. The passage from The Dalles to Portland was only one dollar. That competition on this immense line will be fraught with healthy results no one will doubt. The Oregon Steam Navigation Company, as the pioneers on an untested river, do certainly merit much credit for the bold hazard they so successfully made, and merit reward as such; and though many complaints (founded in justice, doubtless,) have been urged, still the history of all monopolies has shown a greater degree of extortion than I have heard urged against this company. But so long as the Columbia River shall remain an open sea I do heartily desire to see competition seek here a channel of investment—and which it will always do so long as it is found to pay. All philanthropic ideas of "parties desiring to serve the public, without being remunerated," will find no believers among the merchants and travelers of the Upper Columbia. The merchant and traveler will take that line where the rates are the lowest and accommodation the best, irrespective of the owners of the line or those who pioneered them through to a success. At least this is the history of the commercial past, and I see no reason why
