legal protection except the self-constituted tribunals, originated by an ill-instructed public opinion, and sustained only by force and arms. They declared that the crimes of theft, murder, and infanticide were increasing to an alarming extent, and they were themselves powerless to arrest the progress of crime in the territory and its terrible consequences.[1]
Having made this appeal on account of their helpless condition, congress was artfully reminded of the richness of the country in soils, pasturage, timber, and minerals; and also that a British surveying squadron had been on the Oregon coast for two years, employed in making accurate surveys of all its rivers, bays, and harbors.
The latter allusion referred to the expedition of Sir Edward Belcher, then Captain Belcher, who commanded the English surveying squadron in the Pacific. Belcher's attention was fixed at this time, however, not on Oregon, but on the Russian possessions. The attempts of the Hudson's Bay Company to get a footing there had up to this period occasioned a feeling of hostility, which led the Russians not only to fortify at Stikeen, but to have a sloop of war in readiness to repel invasion. The English, not to be behind in a show of strength, sent the Sulphur and the Starling to survey the Pacific coast, a business which occupied the expedition from 1837 to 1840. The only reference to Oregon in Belcher's instructions was contained in a single paragraph. "Political circumstances have invested the Columbia River with so much importance that it will be well to devote some time to its bar and channels of approach, as well as its inner anchorages and shores." The few
- ↑ There had not been a murder among the white men since the killing of Thornburg four years previous. Thefts of some small articles may have occurred, but probably by the Indians. To charge infanticide, except on the Indian women, who also practised it, was to create a scandal about the only white woman in the country, those of the Mission. Wilkes mentions that an opinion had gone abroad that vice prevailed at Vancouver; but he felt compelled to give his testimony to the contrary; that he saw no instance in which vice was tolerated in any degree. Wilkes' Nar., iv. 355.
