the events on which our right to the Oregon country rested, and trying to show that the British claim was not well founded. In these respects it differed little from the earlier report by Floyd; yet on many points Linn was able to give information never before presented to the country. For example, he described the road to Oregon, which had recently been traversed by two women in the Whitman-Spalding party. Many brief documents containing valuable information were printed as appendices to the report, which thus became a sort of text- book for the study of the Oregon question. Thousands of copies were printed, and in the next few years they were distributed all over the country, especially through the West, with the result that numbers of men soon became interested in "our territory on the Pacific," as Oregon was frequently called.^ Jason Lee's return; the Farnham party. Other influences were working to the same effect. Jason Lee, the superintendent of the Willamette mission, returned to the United States in the summer of 1838 "to obtain additional facilities to carry on . . . the missionary work in Oregon territory." He travelled overland with a few companions, passing through the frontier settlements of Missouri and Illinois, where he accepted invitations to lecture and to preach in the churches. A principal aim was to raise money for his missionary enterprise, but incidentally Lee aroused a good deal of enthusiasm for the far-off country, so rich in natural
1 When the pioneers began to go to Oregon copies of Linn's Report were among the very few books taken across the plains.
