"The majority of the cities in the Northwest owe their prosperity to the timber industry. In fact, some cities could not exist at all, were it not for this traffic. Saw- and shingle-mills abound, and the output of some of the shingle-making machines is truly astonishing. When I was out here last fall, I inspected a shingle machine that turned out five thousand first-class shingles an hour. One town in Washington turns out nothing but shingles, and sends them by trainload and shipload everywhere." "I suppose we'll find a big difference in the work there from what it was in the East," said Dale. "Not so very much different outside of the fact that everything is done on a large scale, as I said. The lumbermen of the United States are about the same everywhere. To be sure you'll find plenty of foreigners out in Oregon, especially Scandinavians, and also a fair portion of French-Canadians. But the men are a whole-souled lot, and if you do what is right by them, they will stick by you, no matter what happens. Ten years ago I was a total stranger in the Northwest; now I have a host of friends out there--real friends, who will help me down to their last dollar, if I actually need it," concluded the man who had given out so much valuable information. CHAPTER XXV AN INTERVIEW WITH ULMER BALASCO "Here we are on the Columbia at last!" cried Dale, in the morning, a couple of days later. The train had come up from Pendleton and struck the river at Umatilla. Again they saw a broad sheet of water, but this time hemmed in by a gorgeous cañon, overgrown with heavy brushwood and trees of large size. The railroad runs along the south bank of the river, through the cañon, and passes over Willow Creek, John Day and Deschuttes rivers, and numerous other streams. Portland is the great lumber center of Oregon, and the distance to this city from Umatilla is about a hundred and seventy-five miles, as the river runs. But the young lumbermen were not going to Portland. Instead they were to stop off at a small station called Tunley, at a point where the Columbia made a slight turn to the northward. Here there was something of a cove, and beyond this a creek running up to the property owned by the Wilbur-Balasco Company, who also had a large "yard" at this point on the big waterway. The ride along the riverside to Tunley was a picturesque one, and the young lumbermen were astonished when the brakeman called out the name of the station for which they were bound. "Here we are, Dale!" cried Owen, as he reached for his valise. "We'd better step lively, for they don't stop over an hour at such a settlement as this."