tary Webster, but really from Governor Simpson. … [Whitman goes to Washington and presses upon Webster the value of Oregon.] Mr. Webster … awarded sincerity to the missionary, but could not admit for a moment that the short residence of six years could give the Doctor the knowledge of the country possessed by Governor Simpson, who had almost grown up in the country, and had travelled every part of it, and represents it as an unbroken waste of sand deserts and impassable mountains, fit only for the beaver, the gray bear and the savage. Besides he had about traded it off with Governor Simpson, to go into the Ashburton treaty for a cod-fishery on Newfoundland. [Whitman then goes to President Tyler.] … The great desire of the doctor's American soul. Christian withal, that is, the pledge of the President that the swapping of Oregon with England for a cod-fishery should stop for the present, was attained."[1]
Hudson's Bay Company) had well-nigh succeeded in accomplishing his object of purchasing this country, not for a mess of pottage, but a cod-fishery. Dr. Whitman was barely able to obtain from President Tyler the promise that negotiations should be suspended."[1]
As these negotiations of Governor Simpson in Washington and Whitman's success in frustrating them are the very heart and life of the legend of Marcus Whitman,[2] without which it would never have come to anything, and as they
