restraint upon those habits of life to which they were accustomed."
Knowledge of a "new country" was sure to create in them an almost irrepressible longing to move on. Such natures as these furnished the best culture conditions in which to develop an Oregon movement with the reports explorers and travelers brought from the far Pacific Coast region. Such Oregon material had early been disseminated among these susceptible people. The journal of the Lewis and Clark expedition was published in 1814 and distributed far and wide as a government document. Pioneers speak of reading it as boys and of becoming permanently interested in the Oregon Country. The journal of Patrick Gass, a sergeant in the company of Lewis and Clark, fell into the hands of others and stirred their imaginations. From 1817 on until 1832 Hall J. Kelley, a Boston schoolmaster, was compiling and distributing information designed to awaken a desire to join in a movement to establish a civilized community in Oregon. His society is said to have had thirty-seven agents scattered through the union. An Oregon question became a subject of negotiation between Great Britain and the United States in 1818. These negotiations were renewed in 1824, 1827 and 1842. The occupation of Oregon was proposed in congress in 1821. The subject was kept before congress almost continuously until 1827, and again from 1837 on. The proposed legislation elicited exhaustive reports and warm discussions, which were published in the newspapers of the land. The bill of Dr. Lewis F. Linn, senator from Misouri, introduced in 1842, with its provision for a grant of six hundred and forty acres of land to every actual male settler, was naturally a most potent cause of resolutions to go to Oregon. The fact that during all these years Great Britain disputed our
