producing large crops, one field of self-sown wheat promising a harvest of twenty-five bushels per acre. At "the Mill,"

nine miles to the southeast, they found "the air and stir of a new secular settlement;-the missionaries [had] made individual selections of lands to the amount of one thousand acres each, in prospect of the whole country falling under our laws."

Wilkes was impressed with the idea that the missionaries had practically abandoned the effort to save the Willamette Indians, who were growing yearly less numerous through the ravages of disease. Moreover, he found the settlers indisposed to act on the suggestion that the Puget Sound country would offer a much more promising missionary field. In fact, the chief desire of these missionary colonists was to establish a government and laws for the Oregon community. Wilkes discouraged this idea as being premature, for the French settlers, controlled by Father Blanchet and McLoughlin, were generally averse to it, and the Americans were, he thought, too few in number to support the burden of government. Moreover, there was no reason for haste since the settlement was perfectly peaceful.

During this period of Oregon's colonization the connection of the settlement with the Hudson's Bay Company was very close. Settlers were arriving each year, usually without the necessary supplies or stock to begin farming, and it was the custom of Dr. McLoughlin to assist all such, agreeing to take his pay out of the crop to be grown. The produce of the valley sought the fort as its regular mart, and thence also came the supplies of manufactured goods and imported merchandise. It is true that the company paid but a small price for their wheat and sold it to the Russians at a very considerable advance, which was a grievous thing to many Americans; but to the impartial student it is clear that the commercial connection thus established was the foundation of the prosperity of early Oregon. Without this assistance and the protection which the fort threw around all comers to this wild region, Oregon could not have been

colonized by straggling parties and a few defenceless missionaries from across the mountains.

Yet Vancouver was to many Americans the type of a great foreign monopoly, which benefited itself while giving aid to settlers and missionaries, and which by virtue of its position held the entire community in a sort of subjection peculiarly galling to men who honestly believed themselves to be the rightful sovereigns of the land. It was from this feeling that there was to come the change of conditions in Oregon which should substitute American rule and protection for that of Great Britain.

Soon after the arrival of the Lausanne, in the summer of 1840, the physician of the mission, Dr. Elijah White, severed his connections in Oregon and returned to the United States. When a little later the government decided to commission a sub Indian agent for Oregon, believing that this step would be wholly within its rights under the treaty of joint occupation, while the appointment of a civil governor might not be, Dr. White was offered this agency, and early in the spring of 1842 he prepared to return to Oregon with as many emigrants as he might be able to enlist. After an active campaign he gathered a company of about one hundred and twenty persons, with whom he made a successful journey to the Columbia during the

summer.

Two other steps were taken by the government in 1842 for the settlement of the Oregon question. Senator Linn had brought in a new bill providing for the occupation of the Oregon country, the granting of lands to settlers, the extension of the laws of the United States over the territory, and the establishment of a line of forts along the most feasible route for emigrants. The idea contained in the last provision was partially carried into effect by the appointment of Frémont to find a route through the Rocky Mountains. This was the beginning of that series of "path finding” operations which led to such interesting results in California a few years later.

But Linn's bill of 1842 was not passed. It was withdrawn when, in the spring of 1842, the United States and Great Britain again opened negotiations for the purpose of settling all differences outstanding between them. It was confidently expected that the Oregon difficulty would be adjusted at this time, but when the treaty was concluded at Washington on the 9th of August, by Daniel Webster and Lord Ashburton, it made no mention whatever of Oregon. The public and private discussion of the Oregon question brought the advantages of that region to the attention of an ever widening circle of people. Oregon was known to have a productive soil and a climate peculiarly attractive to the farmer by reason of its uniform mildness. The settlers of Missouri and other western States, whose crops, for want of easy communication with markets, brought but slight returns, and for whose cattle there was almost no demand, learned that in this land, with ocean transportation, their grain would bring remunerative prices; and that their stock, living throughout the year on the rich prairie grasses, with little or no expense to the owners, would be worth four times the amount paid for it in western Missouri. Then, too, there were to be considered the opportunities for commerce, fishing and manufacturing.

The persistent "hard times" in the newer States of the West predisposed many to a change; and others, especially those living in the Southwestern States, saw in emigration to Oregon a chance to get away from the institution of slavery. Moreover, the excitement of a journey beyond the great mountains into a new country was a lure to the young and adventurous, who possessed the same spirit which had carried their fathers and grandfathers across the Alleghany barriers into the plains and valleys of the middle West. This motive must receive its share of consideration in the discussion of the settlement of the Oregon country. When the spring of 1843 arrived, many persons in various parts of the West made ready for the journey to Oregon. The movement was largely individual, but efforts at