limits until our country, in those limits, is filled with a dense population. It is the denseness of our population that gives strength and security to our frontier." That "interminable desert," those "arid plains," those "impassable mountains," and "the impossibility of a wagon road from the United States," were the burdens of many speeches from the statesmen of that time. And then they emphasized the whole with the clincher that, after overcoming these terrible obstacles that intervened, we reached a land that was "worthless," not even worth a "pinch of snuff."
Senator Dayton, of New Jersey, in 1844, in the discussion of the Oregon boundary question, said: "With the exception of land along the Willamette and strips along other water courses, the whole country is as irreclaimable and barren a waste as the Desert of Sahara. Nor is this the worst; the climate is so unfriendly to human life that the native population has dwindled away under the ravages of malaria."
The National Intelligencer, about the same date, republished from the Louisville Journal and sanctioned the sentiments, as follows:
"Of all the countries upon the face of the earth Oregon is one of the least favored by heaven. It 44 is the mere riddlings of creation. It is almost as barren as Sahara and quite as unhealthy as the Campagna of Italy. Russia has her Siberia and England has her Botany Bay and if the
