CHAPTER XVII. 



(I.) Oregon Physical Geography. —(I.) Population. Towns.— (3.) Rivers and 

 Harbors. — (1.) Climate. Productions. ZoSlogy. — (5.) California. — (fj.) Gold 

 Discovery. Mineral Resources — (7) Character of the Population. Rapid 

 Settlement of the Country. — (8.) Geographical Description. Rivers. Har- 

 bors. Towns. —(9.) Animal and Vegetable Kingdom. — (10.) Departure of 

 the American Squadron. Arrival at Manilla. 



(1.) While the diplomatists of Downing Street and Penn- 

 sylvania Avenue, and the legislators of St. Stephen's and 

 the American Capitol, were unsuccessfully engaged, through 

 a long series of years, but with greater or less intervals, in 

 the attempt, to terminate the qualified joint occupancy of 

 the Oregon territory by Great Britain and the United States, 

 and to establish a definite boundary line between their respec- 

 tive jurisdictions, the ultimate destiny of the country was 

 being pretty surely fixed, by the immigration, subsequent to 

 1840, of great, numbers of American settlers, — some of whom 

 were sent out under the auspices of the Foreign Missionary 

 Society and the board of missions of the Methodist Episco- 

 pal Church, and others were attracted by the glowing reports 

 which had crossed the Rocky Mountains in regard to the 

 rich tracts of farming land lying in the great basin of the 

 Columbia river. 



But all the numerous vexed questions in difference, grow- 

 in^ out of the conflicting claims based upon the discoveries 

 of Drake, Cook, Gray, and Vancouver, the Louisiana pur- 

 chase, and the explorations of Lewis and Clarke — all which 

 had been rendered but the more intricate by protracted nego- 

 tiation — were finally settled in amity, by the treaty of 18-10, 

 under which the northern boundary line of the United States 



