The other lines can follow it down and down in any war of rates so far as the Oregon Railway and Navigation lines see fit to venture. Such tactics would be absolute madness in California, as by its new Constitution rates once lowered can not be raised again. But suppose the war of rates is begun in Oregon. The Northern Pacific, when completed according to law, will save one hundred and fifty-one miles in distance, and deliver freight and passengers at deep water on Puget Sound. The narrow-gauge roads and boats together can carry more cheaply than the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company. The valley standard-gauge railroads and the Oregon Pacific share with the Northern Pacific this tremendous advantage, that every dollar they lose on transportation is only invested at enormous profit in the rise and value of their lands. It is the cost of transportation that keeps down value on their lands; lower this, and land rises at once. Nor is it to be supposed for an instant that the same tactics by which it has been attempted to prevent, hamper, or delay the building of the Oregon Pacific Railroad will long succeed. Shortly after the prospectus of that railroad was issued, there appeared in "The Oregonian," of Portland, three columns of abuse over the signature of "Examiner." The writer described himself as a citizen of Oregon, anxious to avoid delusion and disaster to the Eastern public. The whole was telegraphed or mailed long in advance back to New York, and appeared in a garbled and still more contemptible form as a circular, professing to be reprinted from "The Oregonian," as if from the editor's chair of that paper. New York was flooded with the copies. Fortunately, it was easy enough to repel the attack, since the chief points were that the Eastern Oregon lands were worthless, and the statements of the Willamette Valley trade exaggerated. And on both points ample, even overwhelming, evidence was at hand. [Sidenote: _THE CASCADE MOUNTAINS ROAD._] Then, by what hidden influences it is of course impossible to say, the Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Schurz, was set in motion on the allegation that the Cascade Mountains road had never been made, and that consequently the United States had been imposed upon fourteen years ago when Congress granted the lands to the State of Oregon, and that State defrauded in turn ten years ago when, on certificates of due completion satisfactory to the then officials of the State, the lands were duly confirmed to the wagon-road company.