fore, his mind had for a long time been studying the future of the far west. Captain Gray had discovered the great "river of the west," and his discovery had been hailed by our people as settling the title to a vast and important territory. And the same spirit which had taken possession of and held the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, was ready to move on to the Pacific when the advance was necessary. The report of Lewis and Clarke had electrified the whole nation with the wonders of the far west they had made known to the world. The Napoleonic commercial spirit of John Jacob Astor leaped across a continent, and without national recognition or protection, founded the semi-military post at the mouth of the great river, and flung the stars and stripes to the world in claiming for his adopted country its most valuable and grandest national outpost.
And while England made a pretense that Captain Gray did not really enter the Columbia river, but had only sailed into a bay into which the river emptied, and that an English ship had, subsequent to Gray, sailed up the Columbia a hundred miles, and therefore the English discovered the river, yet that pretense had to be abandoned when actual sea-faring men proved that the Columbia was a real irresistible river clear down onto the ocean bar.
And England never disputed the right of Lewis and Clarke as a government expedition to explore this region in 1805; nor did the British object to the founding of Astoria until the war of 1812 gave them an excuse to rob American citizens of their property wherever they could find them; and so they robbed Astor of what his treacherous partners had not already stolen. But this gave England nothing but a robbers title to Astoria, which they surrendered after the close of the war.
President Jefferson attempted to get the northern boundary line settled with England in 1807; and because the English negotiators attempted to insert a paragraph in the treaty that would make Spain believe that the United States and England intended to claim Spanish territory west of the Rocky mountains, Jefferson rejected the whole business as an unfriendly intimation to Spain. In 1814, after the close of the war of 1812, President Madison renewed the effort to have the northern boundary line settled, and offered the proposition of 1807, to wit: that the boundary should run west from the most northern point of the Lake of the Woods (at the head of the Mississippi river) to the,, summit of the Rocky mountains, but, "that nothing in the present article be construed to extend to the northwest coast of America, or to the territory claimed by either party westward of the Rocky mountains."
The British ministry offered to accept this article, provided, England was granted the right of navigation of the Mississippi river from British America to the Gulf of Mexico. And this, of course, was rejected by the Americans.
In 1815 our government notified the British that immediate possession would be taken of Astoria and the mouth of the Columbia river, and ordered the sloop of war, Captain James Biddle, to make ready to sail for the Columbia. The British minister at Washington objected and remonstrated, but finally agreed to the unconditional surrender of Astoria by the British, and that the status quo before the war should be restored; and that in treating about the title to old Oregon, the United States should be in possession.
And again for the third time, 1817, negotiations were renewed to establish the boundary line. President Madison offering to extend the 49th parallel of north latitude boundary from the Lake of the Woods through to the Pacific ocean, but without prejudice to the rights or claims of Spain. But to this proposition the British would not agree unless they could have free navigation of the Mississippi river. And this was again rejected by the Americans.
And again for the fourth time, 1818, negotiations were renewed to settle the northern boundary, James Monroe having become president, he appointed the two able statesmen. Albert Gallatin aid Richard Rush to manage the business. The whole history of the discovery and exploration of the North Pacific
