In 1792, a Boston ship entered the mouth of the Oregon river.
The charts carried by the vessel showed no river upon the coast-line, and the captain named the breaker-tossed estuary after his ship “the Columbia.” He thought he had discovered a new river; in reality, he had but found again the older known Oregon. It is more than probable, that this new named river would again have found its ancient designation, had not an enterprising German now appeared upon the scene. One Jacob Astor, a vendor of small furs and hats, in New York, turned his eyes to the west.
He wished to plant upon the Pacific the germs of American fur trade. The story of his enterprise has been sketched by a cunning hand; but under the brilliant colouring which a great artist has thrown around his tale of Astoria, the strong bias of the partisan is too plainly apparent. Yet it is easy to detect the imperfect argument by which Washington Irving endeavours to prove the right of the United States to the disputed territory of Oregon. The question is one of “Who was first upon the ground?”
Irving claims, that Astor, in 1810, was the first trader who erected a station on the banks of the Columbia.
But in order to form his fort, Astor had to induce several of the employées of the North-West Fur Company to desert their service. And Irving innocently tells us, that when the overland expedition under Hunt reached the Columbia, they found the Indians well supplied with European articles, which they had obtained from white traders already domiciled west of the Rocky Mountains. He records the fact while he misses its meaning. British fur traders had reached Oregon long before Jacob Astor had planted his people on the estuary of the Columbia. Astor’s factory had but a short life. The war of 1813 broke out. A British ship appeared off the bar of the Columbia River, and the North-West Company moving down the river became the owners of Astoria. But with their usual astuteness the Government of the United States claimed, at the conclusion of the war, the possession of Oregon, on the ground that it had been theirs prior to the struggle. That it had not been so, is evident to any person who will carefully inquire into the history of the discovery of the North-West Coast, and the regions lying west of the mountains. But no one cares to ask about such things, and no one cared to do so, even when the question was one of greater moment than it is at present. So, with the usual supineness which has let drift from us so many fair realms won by the toil and daring of forgotten sons, we parted at last with this magnificent region of Oregon, and signed it over to our voracious cousins.
It was the old story so frequently repeated. The country was useless; a pine-forest, a wilderness, a hopeless blank upon the face of nature.
To-day, Oregon is to my mind the fairest State in the American Union.
There is a story widely told throughout British Columbia, which aptly illustrates the past policy of Great Britain, in relation to her vast Wild Lands.
Stories widely told are not necessarily true ones; but this story has about it the ring of probability.
It is said that once upon a time a certain British nobleman anchored his ship-of-war in the deep waters of Puget Sound. It was at a time when discussion was ripe upon the question of disputed ownership in Oregon, and this ship was sent out for the protection of British interests on the shores of the North Pacific. She bore an ill-fated name for British diplomacy. She was called the “America.”