had already been done, found it difficult to conceive of the American population expanding till it should reach the Pacific. But he only hinted at these things, knowing very well that most members of Congress would regard predictions of this kind as the merest folly.
Floyd's argument. Floyd's main argument had to do with the importance of the Columbia River to American commerce. Our people ought to have the benefit of the fur trade now going to British subjects; many whalers from New England annually visited the Oregon coast and needed some safe port in which to refit and take supplies; the trade with China would be greatly advanced by maintaining a colony on the Pacific. He tried to show that the Missouri and Columbia together would form a good highway for commerce across the continent, and that the entire distance between St. Louis and Astoria could be traversed with steamboat and wagon in the space of forty-four days.
Mr. Bailies's remarkable predictions. Other speakers also urged the commercial importance of a fort at the mouth of the Columbia. Mr. Bailies of Massachusetts declared that in all probability there would one day be a canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, which would be an added reason for maintaining a colony on the Pacific. Most persons feared that Americans going to this distant land would separate from us and set up a government for themselves; but Mr. Bailies pointed out that such a canal would bind them closely to us. Yet, if they should
