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in Oregon, and who was familiar with all the correspondence during a period of fourteen years, concerning Simpson's visit to Washington, and he wrote me in return that Simpson never was in Washington, so far as he knew, although he had agents there during the period when the company was endeavoring to get an award for their lands in Oregon after the treaty."
According to Governor Simpson's book, he reached London, on his return home, October 29, 1842, and, hence, it was not impossible for him to have been in Washington by February or March, 1843, the time Mr. Gray alleges he was there. Dr. Whitman almost crossed the continent after October 29, 1842. A letter just received from Dr. W. F. Tolmie of Victoria, formerly in charge of Fort Nisqually, and dated December 15, 1884, says: "Mrs. Victor is decidedly mistaken in stating, on the alleged authority of George Barber Roberts, recently deceased at Cathlamet, W. T., that George Simpson, afterwards Sir George, was never at Washington, D. C. Recollect having heard that he had been there, diplomatizing for the company. Can not recall to mind in what year. The British government of those days was, as usual about American matters, very ignorant, and as regards Oregon, in the midst of their other manifold responsibilities, very careless. Barber Roberts, a subordinate clerk at Vancouver until late in the forties, was afterwards locum tenens for the company at Cowlitz farm, Lewis county, W. T., when, through influx of settlers, it had ceased to be of any profit to the company. It was not the custom of the leaders of the Hudson's Bay Company to let their business, in its intricacies, be known to persons in the position held by the late Mr. Roberts."
This does not prove that Governor Simpson was in Washing ton in the winter of 1842-3, but it does show three mistakes in this paragraph: First, that Governor Simpson could not have been in Washington at the time claimed; second, that Governor Simpson was never in Washington; third, that Mr. George B. Roberts, a subordinate clerk, was the factotum of the business of the company in Oregon.
Sixteenth—In speaking of the proofs of Dr. Whitman's going to Washington, she says: "One proof is a letter by S.J. Parker, son of Rev. Samuel Parker, who says Whitman wished his father to go to Washington with him, but he is not sure his father went. How then can he be sure that Whitman went? If Mr. Parker is right, how about the story that the Doctor went immediately to Washington in his soiled buckskins?"
