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on her first trip to Oregon)? Can he prove, by documents, that hundreds of men have been there, and conversed with officers of the government, and gone away leaving no record? Certainly he can, because none were left; but the friends of these men can testify that they were men of truth, and believed those that told what occurred when there.
Permit me at this point, in this wild controversy of words without reason or truth, to sum up this whole affair as I have always viewed it:
First— Oregon was, as all admit and documents prove, jointly to be occupied by the citizens and subjects of the two high contract ing parties or powers. Both parties claimed an interest in it by discovery and by purchase. The older country, by the payment of some old horse-dragoon pistols; the other by the discovery of its largest river, and purchase from the actual discoverers by a French title. The nation that bought from the discoverers were the first to enter and name the river, and make a permanent improvement on its largest river shore.
THE COMPANY BETRAYED AND THE COUNTRY SEIZED.
Soon after the citizens of the United States had occupied the country, the French subjects of Britain came into the occupied country of the United States, and a war between the two countries occurred and a vessel of war sent to seize the property of the Americans, which was by treachery transferred to the French subjects of Britain, who eventually held possession under a joint-occupation treaty, and by what may be called doubtful legitimate trade, drove from the country all foreign and especially American traders and settlers from it, up to the year 1834—but one trader, Capt. Wyeth, was allowed to remain till 1S36—there being only transient American vessels that came to it in subsequent years; while sailing and war vessels of Britain were frequent, and war vessels almost stationary in the country, and the organized companies originally chartered by France, forty years before the Hudson's Bay Company had any existence in the country.
THE FRENCH AND HUDSON'S BAY COMPANIES UNITED.
The two companies, after Lord Selkirk joined his interest with the Hudson's Bay Company, an Indian beaver trade—a war in trade—commenced, enlisting the Indians on each side to destroy the profits of the other. This war was continued until the profits of the trade were destroyed, and numbers of the men, and a gov-
