lifornia in 1850, Minnesota, which had been an organized
Territory since 1849, in 1858, and Oregon in 1859. Kansas, Nebraska,
Utah, and Washington Territories were organized before 1860. By this
date there were settlements far up the Rio Grande. The Pacific coast was
sought for lands and homes as well as for gold. Fremont's expeditions in
1842, 1844, and 1848 had done much to show people the way thither. In
1853 the Government sent out four different parties to survey suitable
routes for a Pacific railway, a work followed up by three other parties
the next summer. The settlements in Oregon had, by 1845, in places
become dense.

[Illustration: Portrait.]
Elias Howe.

Immigration hither was unfortunately checked a little later by Indian
hostilities, the gravest attacks being in 1847 and 1855. In the latter
year Major Haller, leading an exploring party, was surrounded by the
savages and cut off from food and water, only making his escape by a
fight of two days against overwhelming odds. He and his party at last
hewed their desperate way through, losing their entire outfit, besides
one-fifth of their number. The whole territory was harassed by Indians
on the war path, and General Wool had to be sent up from San Francisco
to restore peace. This done, immigration was renewed. A thousand new
inhabitants came to Oregon in 1852, and its northern half was organized
as Washington Territory the following year. The Pacific Mail Steamship
Company had been chartered in 1848, and four years earlier a newspaper
started, the first in English on that coast. Its seat was Oregon City,
its name the Flumgudgeon Gazette.

[Illustration: The Vandalia. The Pioneer Propeller On the Lakes.]

[Illustration: Old Stone Towers of the Niagara Suspension Bridge.]

The old West prospered, notwithstanding the drain which it, in common
with the East, experienced in favor of parts farther toward the setting
sun. The first lake propeller was launched at Cleveland in 1847. The
same year the Tribune was started in Chicago. In 1850 the city had its
theatre and its board of trade. The Chicago streets began this year to
be lighted with gas. The first bridge across the Mississippi was built
in 1855 at Minneapolis; that at Rock Island, 1,582 feet long, in 1856.
The Niagara suspension bridge was finished in 1855.

The increase of railways did not at once end the opening of canals. The
Miami Canal, between Cincinnati and Toledo, 215 miles, begun in 18