Just as a Bede Bible and a “quart of seed wheat” saved the British Isles to Christianity; so “the Book” and another “quart of seed wheat” carried in by the Reverend Spalding, saved Oregon to the United States, notwithstanding the Russian Bear, the British Lion and the bull of Alexander the VI. in which he delivered over all North America to Spain.
“Good old times those were when kings thrust their hands into the New World, as children do theirs into a grab bag at a fair, and drew out a river four thousand miles long, or an ocean, or a tract of wild land ten or fifteen times the size of England.”
The king of Spain sold Louisiana to France for money to buy his daughter a wedding present and for one brief while France had hopes of planting her lilies in the Walla Walla Valley. France, however, had met her Waterloo in America, on the Plains of Abraham.
Then came England denying the validity of the old Franco-Spanish title under which we claimed the Oregon country, but the same policy that lost to Great Britain her thirteen colonies, lost to her this princely domain.
American and English settlements contrasted strangely. The one emigrant came with his traps and snares, the other with his plow and quart of seed wheat. The one came for the fortune which he might carry out of the country, the other to make a home for himself and his children. So, the English trapper with his snares and the Indian with his pogamoggan retreated before the advance of American civilization.
In 1836 Mrs. Whitman, wife of Dr. Whitman, wrote from Fort Vancouver that the Hudson Bay Co. had that year four thousand bushels of wheat, four thousand bushels of peas and fifteen hundred bushels of oats and barley, besides many root vegetables, also poultry, cattle, hogs and sheep.
The metropolis of the valley is Walla Walla. It is a well-built town having a population of several thousand. Many of the stores and business blocks are of brick. Its streets are wide. In the suburbs is a military post, also a college established by the Congregational church in honor of Dr. Marcus Whitman, the well known missionary who was massacred at his mission near Walla Walla in 1847. So died the brave, patriotic Whitman.
In 1813 England, basing her claims on Drake’s discoveries, captured Astoria and for years kept her hands on the Oregon country, to be thwarted at last by one brave American.
The story of Marcus Whitman’s life should be enshrined in the heart of every school-boy in America.
From the busy thriving city of Spokane, the center of the agriculture empire of the Pacific Coast, to Missoula along the headwaters of the Columbia is a most interesting journey. High above, the grim Cascades rear their shaggy heads. Magnificent pines lift their crested heads skyward. The Columbia, “rock-ribbed and mighty,” sweeps on, now placidly, now whirling and eddying, tossing its waters up in foamy spray, now breaking into white cascades, beautiful as Schauffhausen on the noble Rhine. The rugged rocks along the shore are hidden by festoons of grape and wild honeysuckle vines, while the bright salmon berry adds a touch of color.