Fourth Columbia Tour: Portland to Alaska and return.

Fifth Columbia Tour: Portland to San Francisco by boat.

PORTLAND

Is a very beautiful city of 60,000 inhabitants, and situated on the
Willamette river twelve miles from its junction with the Columbia. It is
perhaps true of many of the growing cities of the West, that they do not
offer the same social advantages as the older cities of the East. But
this is principally the case as to what may be called boom cities, where
the larger part of the population is of that floating class which follows
in the line of temporary growth for the purposes of speculation, and in
no sense applies to those centers of trade whose prosperity is based on
the solid foundation of legitimate business. As the metropolis of a
vast section of country, having broad agricultural valleys filled with
improved farms, surrounded by mountains rich in mineral wealth, and
boundless forests of as fine timber as the world produces, the cause
of Portland's growth and prosperity is the trade which it has as the
center of collection and distribution of this great wealth of natural
resources, and it has attracted, not the boomer and speculator, who
find their profits in the wild excitement of the boom, but the
merchant, manufacturer, and investor, who seek the surer if slower
channels of legitimate business and investment. These have come from
the East, most of them within the last few years. They came as seeking
a better and wider field to engage in the same occupations they had
followed in their Eastern homes, and bringing with them all the love of
polite life which they had acquired there, have established here a new
society, equaling in all respects that which they left behind. Here are
as fine churches, as complete a system of schools, as fine residences,