not until many years had passed that
the system penetrated the mountains and reached the Pacific coast. But
when the new company took possession in 1879, aggressive building
was resumed, and for a time it looked as though the project would be
promptly finished. However, in 1882, the company still had about one
thousand miles to construct in order to complete its main artery. At
this time financial difficulties appeared, and the days of stress
were tided over only by the help of a syndicate and the Oregon and
Transcontinental Company.

With the formation of the Oregon and Transcontinental Company begins
the regime of Henry Villard, the dominating factor in Northern Pacific
affairs for many years afterward. Some years before, Villard, who had
long been interested in Western railroad enterprises and who had become
prominent through his activities in connection with the Kansas and
Pacific Railway, had succeeded in forming the Oregon Railway and
Navigation Company as a combination of steamboat lines operating on the
Willamette and Columbia rivers in Oregon, with an ocean line connecting
Portland and San Francisco. A connecting railroad line, which had been
built to Walla Walla in southeastern Washington, penetrated a portion of
the territory through which the Northern Pacific was projected. In 1880
a contract was arranged between the two companies whereby the Oregon
Railway and Navigation Company, in order to share in the traffic,
undertook to construct a line eastward to meet the Northern Pacific
line at the mouth of the Snake River. This arrangement would allow the
Northern Pacific to run its trains into Portland and would obviate the
necessity of constructing its own road into that city.

In spite of this arrangement, Villard feared that the Northern Pacific
Company might decide, after all, to build its own line to Portland as
soon as it was able to finance the project. It was for the purpose of
preventing this move that he formed the Oregon and Transcontinental
Company, a holding corporation which promptly acquired, in the open
market and by private purchases, a dominating interest in the Northern
Pacific Railroad. At the same time Villard placed the control of
the Oregon Railroad and Navigation Company in the hands of the new
Transcontinental.

Villard thus came to control the entire Northern Pacific system and,
backed by the Deutsche Bank of Berlin and other German and Dutch
interests, at once began an aggressive p