the gulf of Mexico; and when Great Britain, perceiving the rapidly growing strength of the republic, was beginning to consider whether it was not best to defer somewhat to its demands for more favorable commercial treaties. To involve the nation in a war at a moment so favorable to its prosperity would have been poor statesmanship. The treaty secured the better portion of the disputed territory to the United States, and made their northern boundary one continuous line westward from the Lake of the Woods to the gulf of Georgia, where alone it deflected south and continued through the Strait of Fuca to the ocean.
As to Oregon itself, the boundary left it in the best possible shape, with the Columbia River, Puget Sound, and all the harbors of the mainland belonging to it. But notwithstanding its apparent merits, the treaty was not a popular one in Oregon. Instead of healing all wounds, and establishing peace by removing causes of contention, it confirmed the hostility of the anti-British monopoly and missionary party, and set them to devising methods of doing for themselves what the treaty had not done for them—that is, to providing for the ejectment from the lands occupied by them of the members of the Hudson's Bay Company.[1]
The year of 1846, the most exciting and eventful of any since the settlement of the country, witnessed a great change at Fort Vancouver. John McLoughlin was no longer at the head of affairs, having retired to private life in Oregon City. James Douglas had removed to Vancouver Island, where a post had been established at Victoria, which became the company's headquarters, and Peter Skeen Ogden[2] was in conmaud on the Columbia. Mr Roberts, a clerk in the company's service, who had been fifteen years at Van-
- ↑ I have before quoted a remark by Roberts, that it was the appearance of the American flag in the Columbia which first occasioned the colonists to show openly their dislike of the company. It was not, however, the flag, it was the treaty which immediately followed it, which brought out the apparent change.
- ↑ The factors at Vancouver after Ogden were Ballenden and McTavish.
