264 John H. Mitchell— Oregon 
as far north as the forty-ninth parallel. To this contention the 
United States replied and with much force, and the contention 
should never have been abandoned: If this be so and if it be 
true the right of Spain is good to 54° 40’, then the strip between 
the forty-ninth parallel and 54° 40’, which it was alleged was not 
included in the cession of Spain to France in 1800, was included 
in the cession of Spain to the United States in the treaty of 
Florida of 1819, by which Spain conveyed every right she had 
on the continent north of the forty-second parallel. Mr Secre- 
tary Buchanan, in his reply to Packenham, said: 
‘“Ttis an historical and striking fact, which must have an important 
bearing against the claim of Great Britain, that this Nootka convention, 
which was dictated by her to Spain, contains no provision impairing the 
ultimate sovereignty which that power had asserted for nearly three cen- 
turies over the whole western side of North America as far north as the 
sixty-first degree of latitude and which had never been seriously ques- 
tioned by any European nation.” 
Subsequently to 1818 and down to the final settlement of the 
boundary question in 1846 the only material difference in the 
views of American statesmen and diplomatists was as to whether 
the rightful claim of the United States extended to 54° 40’ or 
only to the forty-ninth parallel. All concurred in the opinion 
that our claim was beyond question good at least as far north 
as the latter, while many of our ablest statesmen and diplomat- 
ists, strengthened and supported by a powerful sentiment among 
the people, insisted that our claim extended to 54° 40’. No one 
thing, however, nor indeed all other influences combined, did as 
. much to strengthen the sentiment and belief in favor of our 
claim to 54° 40’ as the mission of Dr Whitman in 1842. 
The Opening of the Oregon Route. 
Frémont has been designated in history as “the Path-finder,” 
and in some respects he is justly entitled to the pseudonym, but 
he was not the one who opened the great transcontinental trail to 
Oregon by way of Fort Hall. Fort Hall was the leading eastern 
outpost of the Hudson Bay company. It was located on Snake 
river about 100 miles north of Salt Lake City. ‘‘ Here,” says 
one historian, ‘many immigrant companies had been intimi- 
dated and broken up by Hudson Bay men, and so Fort Hall 
served as a cover to Oregon, just as a battery at the mouth ofa 
river protects the inland city on its banks.” Here it was that the 
