cial outpost to that of a nascent state of the Union. In his first report he had thought of the settlement of the country through Chinese emigration. "It is believed," he wrote, "that population could be easily acquired from China, by which the arts of peace would at once acquire strength and influence and make visible to the aborigines the manner in which their wants could be supplied." Similarly Benton in supporting in the Senate, Floyd's early efforts, declared "The valley of the Columbia might become the granary of China and Japan and an outlet to their imprisoned and exuberant population."
Of particular interest in this second bill of Floyd's is the formal proposal January 18, 1822, to call the territory "Origon." The name Oregon was originally applied by the author of The Travels of Jonathan Carver[1] to the fabled river of the west which appeared on the French maps about the middle of the eighteenth century. The origin or derivation of the name has never been satisfactorily explained. Made familiar by this work, the most popular book of American travels until the narratives of the Lewis and Clark expedition began to appear, it was impressively used by Bryant in his Thanatopsis as synonymous with the unknown remote,—
Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound
Save his own dashings."
After Gray's voyage the names Columbia and Oregon are used interchangeably for the river, but the circumstances of the application of the name to the territory have not before been made clear. Hall J. Kelley asserted in his later life that he first gave the name Oregon to the territory, and his claim was accepted by Mrs. Victor and in the Bancroft Histories.
- ↑ For a critical discussion of the authenticity of Carver's Travels see a paper by the writer in The American Historical Review, January, 1906.
