had to the Florida and Louisiana territories, which were obtained by treaty from nations claiming them by the right of discovery.
But the claims of the United States to the so-called Oregon territory had even better foundations than this, if it be considered that Spain had actually abandoned her possessions in the north-west; for, in that case, the Oregon territory was theirs by the right of discovery and actual occupation, as well as by contiguity, by treaty, etc. At the time that Gray discovered and named Columbia's River, important as the discovery was, it awakened but little thought in the American mind; because, as yet, we had not acquired Louisiana, stretching to the Rocky Mountains, nor even secured the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, which was much more of an object, at that time, than the coast of the Pacific. However, when Louisiana became ours, the national mind awoke to the splendid possibilities of the nation's future. It was not for naught that a company of Boston merchants had opened a trade between China and the North-west Coast; albeit, their captains gathered up trinkets of all sorts to add to their stock in trade, should furs fall short of the market. Not in vain had the prying Boston traders peered into all inlets, bays, and rivers on the North-west Coast. When it came to discovery-rights, they had more claims than any people, the original discoverers excepted; and when Captain Vancouver's journal was published, it only convinced them that they should be fools not to profit by what it was so evidently fair they should profit by, though they did not quite see the way clear to the occupancy of the country which Columbia's River was believed to drain, nor of the islands and bays which their trading ships had explored. If Spain
