No large city has grown up in the Northwest on the site of the great water powers of the Columbia, Fraser, Willamette or smaller streams. Also, excepting Victoria and New Westminster, no large city has grown up on the site of the trading posts of the Hudson's Bay Company or the villages first started by the American settlers in the Willamette valley or on Puget Sound. Seattle, Portland, Spokane, Tacoma, and Vancouver in British Columbia, appeared on the map years after a dozen of their early rivals had been thriving little towns, and the most successful were founded by farmers from the Mississippi valley who, perhaps, had never seen a large city. A regular transportation line was established on the Lower Columbia in 1843; and in 1845, deep sea vessels began to frequent the harbor of Victoria and the Columbia River. These included many war vessels of the United States and Great Britain. Steamship communication, more or less irregular, began between San Francisco and the Columbia River in 1850, and between the former city and Puget Sound about 1857, though the _Otter_ and other steamers had made occasional trips on the latter route long before that time. Also, about 1850, steamers began to operate on the Lower Willamette and on the Columbia below the Cascades. After Vancouver's day little is reported of the Puget Sound region for about thirty years. As early as 1827 the schooners _Vancouver_ and _Cadboro_, owned and operated by the Hudson's Bay Company, are known to have sailed from the Columbia River to Puget Sound and engaged in traffic with the natives as far north as Sitka. In 1836 the Steamer _Beaver_ arrived in the Columbia River from England, but in a short time she left the Columbia and began running up and down the coast in and out of the rivers, bays, and inlets between Puget Sound and Alaska, carrying grain and other food stuffs northward and bringing back furs and skins and at times towing sailing vessels to and fro.