While Harriman was able very promptly to carry through his first scheme and recapture the Oregon lines, which had been separately reorganized as a result of the receivership, he found it a far more difficult matter to secure a dominating interest in the great system of railroads controlled by Collis P. Huntington. Huntington was a hard man to deal with. Himself one of the practical railroad magnates of his time, he also had the gift of vision and undoubtedly foresaw that the ultimate result must be a consolidation of the properties; but he fully expected that his company would absorb the Union Pacific. Had it not been that during the panic period the Southern Pacific had heavy loads of its own to carry and that its credit was none too high, Huntington might then have attempted to gain control of the Union Pacific. Events finally worked to the benefit of Harriman. When Collis P. Huntington died in 1900, it was in most people's minds only a question of time as to when the powerful Harriman interests would take over the Southern Pacific properties. Consequently there was no surprise when in 1901 announcement was made that the Union Pacific had purchased the holdings of the Huntington estate in the Southern Pacific Company and was therefore in virtual control. By a master stroke the railroad situation in the West had been radically changed. The Huntington system comprehended many properties of large and growing value, which were now feeling the full benefit of the agricultural prosperity at that time spreading throughout the great Southwest. Aside from this prize, the Union Pacific acquired the main line to the Pacific coast which it had always coveted and thus added to its system over nine thousand miles of railroad and over four thousand miles of water lines, besides obtaining a grip on the railroad empire of this entire portion of the continent not to be readily loosened by competitors. At the same time that Harriman was strengthening his position on the west and south, the Great Northern and Northern Pacific properties, both now operated under the definite control of James J. Hill, were following a policy of expansion fully as gigantic as that of the Union Pacific. The Great Northern lines operating from Duluth to the Pacific coast had become powerful elements in the Western railroad situation, and Hill had devised many plans for diverting to the north the through traffic coming from the central section of the continent. He had established on the Great Lakes a line of steamships running from Duluth to Buffalo, and was also operating on the Pacific Ocean steamship lines which gave him a connection with Japan, China, and other oriental countries.