How small these figures really are, compared with the tonnage of the present day may be realized when it is reflected that six ordinary freight trains would now accommodate the entire tonnage of the twelve months above.
A tripartite agreement of which a memorandum copy has been preserved, and is quoted below, expressed the mutual understanding at this time reached that the two portage interests should handle only the business of the Oregon Steam Navigation Company and that they were to receive a compensation of one-fourth the through rate between Portland and The Dalles. This agreement, it will be observed, ignored the lower portion of the Ruckel railroad, and it does not allude to the arbitrary division of earnings between the two portage interests.
This agreement made this second day of October, 1860, between Bradford & Co. and H. Olmstead of the first part, and the Oregon Steam Navigation Company by J. C. Ainsworth, its agent, of the second part, witnesseth:
That the said parties of the first part for and in consideration of the undertakings by said party of the second part as hereinafter set out do hereby undertake and agree as follows:
That they will and shall receive and transport with celerity and dispatch over their rail roads on the Washington and Oregon sides of the Columbia river at the Cascades for the term of five years from the first day of May, 1860, such freight as the said company shall deliver at either end of said roads to be so transported. The rail road on the Washington side of said river is to receive said freight at the Wharf Boat at the Middle Cascades and deliver the same from the warehouse at the end of slide at the Upper Cascades. The rail road on the Oregon side of said river is to receive said freight in a wharf boat at or near the house known as the Col. Ruckel house where the lower terminus of said road shall be, at the first creek about three hundred (300) feet below said house, and deliver the same from the end of the slide at the warehouse at the landing of the Upper Cascades, but it is understood that the improvements and road below said Ruckel's house and the lower terminus of said road,
