The Daily Morning Astorian
March 31, 1887
Along the waterfront
An hour's stroll through the shipping
A saunter along the docks and wharves is always an interesting one, whether the wide stretching river, the blue hills to the north, and the brilliant effect of the sunlight on gleaming sails, be noted, or more practical observation made of the busy scene of commercial life that can more nearly be observed.
Yesterday was "an average day," and the panorama of stream, mountain and forest was particularly attractive. The beauties of our natural scenery, the magnificence of the lower Columbia landscapes and waterscapes become in time unnoticed, but sometimes Mother Nature, dressed in robes of living green and brilliant in the sunlight, compels admiration by the added splendor of her surrounding presence.
The scene of moving life in the stream and at the docks, demanded, however, the greater share of attention. Sail and steam craft of every tonnage, whether at rest or in motion, were everywhere visible.
Beginning at the extreme upper end of the O. R. & N. dock was to be found the stanch old side-wheeler Ancon, of which the writer has pleasant recollections in the matter of sundry trips from San Francisco to San Diego and Los Angeles.
She is now transferred to the northern trade, and in steaming through the thousand islands of the inside route to Alaska, will find as smooth water as along the Santa Barbara coast below Point Concepcion, Where the oil from the bottom of the sea covers the water with an iridescent film.
Out in the stream, lay the British ship Pomona, loaded to "the Plimsoll mark" with wheat to feed the London folks with one breakfast. She is a good specimen of the wooden walls of old England's merchant marine. She is a Glasgow built vessel, was framed in 1867, built originally for an emigrant vessel, but still, in her twenty-first year, doing good service in carrying food half-way round the world.
Farther out floats the cross of St. George from two other vessels, waiting to load grain and lumber, the Sir Henry Lawrence and the Swansea Castle, and coming into port with a low moan, is the steamship Oregon with freight and passengers from Portland, and putting into the dock to take more passengers and freight from Astoria to San Francisco.
As her lines are flung out a crowd gathers, and when she is finally made fast the officers are beset with that question that they certainly must get tired of hearing: "How long are you going to stay here?"
Just below her lies the Columbia, a sister steamship just in from San Francisco. Out from her black iron side opens red painted gates and a score of men roll out bundles, boxes, sacks, kegs, crates, freight of all kinds, goods and material, till that end of the wharf is piled full, and at the other end the mate of the outgoing vessel starts his men to putting aboard shooks (casks broken down for shipment), salmon and oysters.
From the deck of the Columbia streams onto the spacious dock and out into the streets a procession of passengers, some for this place; others farther inland, and all glad of a chance to get on solid land and stretch themselves. Soon the one swings on her way up stream and the other goes out over the bar to San Francisco.
Far down toward the bar is a coil of smoke and the outline of hull gliding toward the cape; it is the Olympian going to San Francisco for repairs that could be done just as well at Astoria had we a dry dock at any point of our fifteen miles of north and south water frontage.
And now the sun has lifted the vapors from the bosom of the sea, and gilding up in tow of the Ocklahama comes an unusual but ever welcome sight, an American ship with the stars and stripes fluttering in the breeze, her trim hull, lofty masts and general rig proclaiming an American-built vessel as far as a glass could make her out. It is the Wm. H. Starbuck going to dock and discharge her New York cargo.
Out beyond her lies the Lady Isabella in water ballast in want of better, and the Cockermouth with 7,000 boxes of English tin aboard, which, presently made into cans, will go back, mayhap in the hold of the same vessel, to where it came from, enfolding the famous salmon whose superiority gives it preeminence.
Presently a river steamer glides alongside, the anchor comes up, and the bark moves slowly past the other vessels on her way to Portland where, contrary to general custom, this particular cargo of tin is to be discharged.
Alongside Main street wharf lies another English bark, the Scottish Knight, with 1,150 tons of coal from Australia, to be flung a glistening heap of black diamonds on the dock; 200 tons of it go to the I. S. N. Co., 500 tons to the Astoria Gaslight Co., and presently the latter company will take the gas out of it and send it through the pipes to light the town.
A quaint thought, but scientifically exact, that the sunlight that fell on Australian fern and forest a million years man was thought of, and which stored up in the dark depths of the Australasian coal veins; that this same ancient sunshine, crystallized in black oily coal, should now be carried across the sea and presently the sunshine that streamed down on those silent stretches of flat, forest should light the streets of this farthest west of American cities.
And farther toward the west lies the Gen. Miles, one of the vessels that makes Astoria the distributing point of a wide area, just in from Shoalwater bay. Tomorrow she goes to Gray's harbor, and next Tuesday to Seattle with the Mountaineer which John A. Devlin has sold to Capt. Elias; there she will load coal and return.
Farther along lies the brig Courtney Ford bound to Alaska, the real and only "far west" that now remains in the American frontier.
Brigs and barks and ships and steamers lie close together in port, and diverging at the mouth of the river, fly to the ends of the earth.