of cargoes at the Cascades portage, a mandate issued by the United States Military Department of the Pacific later in the year must have been viewed with more lasting concern. This was General Wool's order[1] to emigrants and other white persons (excepting the Hudson's Bay Company's employees and persons having ceded rights from the Indians) forbidding their settlement or even remaining in the Indian country, as the section east of the Cascade Mountains was then known. A modification of this order was issued by Brigadier General Newman S. Clarke, Wool's successor, on June 29, 1857, limiting settlement to the territory west of the White Salmon river in Washington, and west of the DesChutes river in Oregon.[2] These regulations, designed to prevent friction with the Indians, could not be given full effect, for gold discoveries constantly increased the number of "white persons" in the forbidden territory and emigrants began to settle in the more promising fertile valleys.
In April, 1856, the owners of the steamboat Belle having bought and rebuilt the wrecked Gazelle at Canemah, renaming her Senorita had substituted this larger steamboat for the Belle on the run between Portland and the Cascades.[3] Immediately afterward the United States government began, under the supervision of Lieutenant G. H. Derby of the Engineers' Department, the building of a military road around the Cascades on the Washington side,[4] and in that fall a coach was placed on this road by private interests, for the conveyance of passengers across the portage.[5]
Further, Bradford & Co. were during the spring and summer of 1856 rebuilding and improving their portage railroad,[6] and before winter set in they had contracted for the building of a steamboat which
