brought out by Lieutenant G. W. Totten of the navy, in March 1851, and afterward commanded by William Ball.[1]
The Columbia supplied a great deficiency in communication with California and the east, though Oregon was still forced to be content with a monthly mail, while California had one twice a month. The postmaster-general's direction that Astoria should be made a distributing office was a blunder that the delegate failed to rectify. Owing to the lack of navigation by steamers on the rivers, Astoria was but a remove nearer than San Francisco, and while not quite so inaccessible as the mouth of the Klamath, was nearly so. When the post-routes were advertised, no bids were offered for the Astoria route, and when the mail for the interior was left at that place a special effort must be made to bring it to Portland.[2]
Troubled by reason of this isolation, the people of Oregon had asked over and over for increased mail facilities, and as one of the ways of obtaining them, and also of increasing their commercial opportunities, had prayed congress to order a survey of the coast, its bays and river entrances. Almost immediately
- ↑ 'The Columbia was commenced in New York by a man named Hunt, who lived in Astoria, under an agreement with Coffin, Lownsdale, and Chapman, the proprietors, of Portland, to furnish a certain amount of money to build a vessel to run between San Francisco and Astoria. Hunt went east, and the keel of the vessel was laid in 1849, and he got her on the ways and ready to launch when his money gave out, and the town proprietors of Portland did not send any more. So she was sold, and Rowland and Aspinwall bought her for this trade themselves… She ran regularly once a mouth from San Francisco to Portland, carrying the mails and passengers.' She was very stanchly built, of 700 tons register, would carry 50 or 60 cabin passengers, with about as many in the steerage, and cost $150,000. N. Y. Tribune, in Or. Spectator, Dec. 12, 1850; Dandy's Hist. Or., MS., 10–11.
- ↑ The postal agent appointed in 1851 was Nathaniel Coe, a man of high character and scholarly attainments, as well as religious habits. He was a native of Morristown, New Jersey, born September 11, 1788, a whig, and a member of the Baptist church. In his earlier years he represented Alleghany county, New York, in the state legislature. When his term of office in Oregon expired he remained in the country, settling on the Columbia River near the mouth of Hood River, on the eastern slope of the Cascade Mountains. 'His mental energy was such, that neither the rapid progress of the sciences of our time, nor his own great age of eighty, could check his habits of study. The ripened fruits of scholarship that resulted appeared as bright as ever even in the last weeks of his life. He died at Hood River, his residence, October 17, 1868.' Vancouver Register, Nov. 7, 1868; Dalles Mountaineer, Oct. 23, 1868.
