Frances Fuller Victor

“ It was of the Columbia River, and Puget Sound as a harbor, that the first projectors of a Pacific railroad dreamed. They knew that sailing vessels crossed the Pacific from a point on the coast about opposite the Oregon River, in order to avail themselves of the variable winds of that latitude, when the trades were against them. They did not reckon sufficiently upon the rapid development of steam power as an aid to commerce on the high seas, any more than they foresaw the future importance of the San Francisco Bay, or the Americanization of the whole of California within the present century. ”

“ It was now that a struggle of diplomacy really began between the Government of Great Britain and that of the United States to bring about a settlement of their conflicting claims to the mouth of the Columbia, and the navigation of that river. Neither nation desired to go to war about it. The United States could not afford it. Great Britain remembered her former experiences in fighting her half-civilized relations on their own soil, and judged it would be an awkward piece of business to attempt a seizure of American territory. ”

“ When the travel-worn gold-hunter reaches the mountain-top overlooking Salt Lake City, and sees for the first time this haven of rest in the middle of his exhausting journey, he falls down upon his knees and thanks God, with tears of joy streaming from his eyes. ”

“ That lucky persistence of Captain Gray's decided the question of right by discovery in favor of Americans.
Decency requiring that England should pay some outward regard to her agreement with Spain concerning the northwest coast of America, and the United States being too poor and weak to set up claims, even if they felt disposed to dispute the right of Spain, the vessels of each nation were withdrawn from that portion of the Pacific, and silence and obscurity reigned once more over those remote seas. In the meantime important political changes had been going on in Europe. ”

“ Fourteen years after the convention of 1818 the thirty or forty thousand Indians west of the Rocky Mountains had nearly all become more or less subject to the Hudson's Bay Company, whose employés moved among them with tolerable security, while the American fur companies, who ventured into the mountains from the eastern side, were forced to contend for every inch of the way. That they did contend for it, and encroached every year more and more on savage territory, defying the Indians and Hudson's Bay Company at once, was due to the character of their nation. ”

“ Year after year they had memorialized Congress, asking the Government to take pity on them, and give the necessary notice to Great Britain that the convention of mutual occupancy was at an end. After repeated disappointments from promises long deferred in fulfillment, in 1846 the desired notice was given, and a few months after the boundary question was settled: the United States retaining the whole of the territory south of the forty-ninth parallel, and giving up their claim to the coast lying north of that and south of the fifty-fourth parallel—thus, no doubt, averting bloodshed. ”

“ Gentiles and Heathen, this is truly He!"
All this the Heathen saw; and when once more
The holy Fathers touched the lonely shore—
⁠Then covered o'er
With shells and gifts—the cross their witness bore. ”

“ It was the policy of the Hudson's Bay Company to treat all Americans who came into their neighborhood, or demanded their hospitality, with the greatest courtesy. They only required that none of these adventurers should attempt to trade with the Indians, whom they had brought into subjection to themselves. Competition they would not have: it would ruin their business, and open the way for American settlement. ”

“ It is always, or generally, we will say, your missionary who becomes the avant courrier of commerce; and in that capacity might claim to be supported by the State as well as the Church. It seems like inverting the natural order of things; but man proposes, God disposes. News had been received by the various churches in the East, through the medium of the St. Louis Fur Company, that certain Indians west of the Rocky Mountains were inquiring about the white man's God. ”

“ But the "cloud no bigger than a man's hand," which was to overshadow the heaven of promise then shining on Vancouver, had already appeared. Among the vessels of different nationalities then resorting to the north-west coast to trade with the Indians for furs, which were taken thence to China, were a number of American vessels, owned, some of them, in New York, but chiefly the property of a Boston company. ”