otherwise unconnected. To pierce these mighty mountains
with tunnels, and whisper across them with the human voice,
were miracles unguessed. But Astor closed his eyes and saw
pack-trains, mules laden with skins, winding across these
mountains, and down to tide-water at Astoria. There his ships
would be lying at the docks, ready to sail for the Far East.
James J. Hill was yet to come.


A company was formed, and two expeditions set out for the mouth
of the Columbia River, one by land and the other by sea.

The land expedition barely got through alive--it was a perilous
undertaking, with accidents by flood and field and in the
imminent deadly breech.

But the route by the water was feasible.

The town was founded and soon became a centre of commercial
activity. Had Astor been on the ground to take personal charge,
a city like Seattle would have bloomed and blossomed on the
Pacific, fifty years ago. But power at Astoria was subdivided
among several little men, who wore themselves out in a struggle
for honors, and to see who would be greatest in the kingdom of
heaven. John Jacob Astor was too far away to send a current of
electricity through the vacuum of their minds, light up the
recesses with reason, and shock them into sanity. Like those
first settlers at Jamestown, the pioneers at Astoria saw only
failure ahead, and that which we fear, we bring to pass. To
settle a continent with men is almost as difficult as Nature's