The Settlement planted by Astor 249 
without any effort whatever to either develop or increase the 
natural productions of the country or locate or promote a single 
settlement. It was therefore by mere occupancy, and not by set- 
tlement, that England sought originally to strengthen her claim 
to and acquire rights in the Oregon territory. With the United 
States and the people of the United States it was entirely dif- 
ferent. With the latter occupancy was coupled with that other 
and higher attribute of development and civilization, namely, 
scientific exploration-and actual settlement. 
Astor’s project contemplated not merely occupancy of this dis- 
tant territory for purposes similar to the Hudson Bay company; 
his purposes were of much higher order. They embraced settle- 
ment, the establishment of civil society, the physical develop- 
ment of the country, the leveling of the forest, the construction 
of houses, the cultivation of the land, the building of homes, 
the erection of school-houses and churches, the making of towns 
and cities, the establishing of marts, the creation of commercial 
arteries, and, in a word, the establishment of such civil institu- 
tions as would tend to attach the new territory, with bonds indis- 
soluble, to the states of the American union, and thus weaken 
and finally and forever sever every adverse claim, and at the 
same time expand and develop the country and the commercial 
and political prestige and power of the nation. Irving in his 
“Astoria” summarizes the plans and expectations of Astor in 
these words: “ He considered his projected establishment at the 
mouth of the Columbia as the emporium to an immense com- 
merce; as a colony that would form the germ of a wide civiliza- 
tion; that would in fact carry the American population across 
the Rocky mountains and spread it along the shores of the Pa- 
cific as it already animated the shores of the Atlantic.” 
It was prompted by such impulses and with an aim to such 
results that the town of Astoria was established by Astor in 1811. 
The war of 1812 coming on, the English captured Astoria, hauled 
down the American flag, hoisted the English ensign and changed 
the name of the fort from Astoria to Fort George ; but at the close 
of the war in 1818 it was restored to the United States by a treaty 
which stipulated the restoration of “all territory, places and 
possessions whatsoever taken by either party from the other 
during the war.” In this restoration the English denominated 
it “the settlement ;” and however many may have been the oc- 
cupants of this country or those employed by the Hudson Bay 
