the Missionaries and shared their anxieties. In 1840–'41 many of them met and canvassed the subject whether they should make an attempt to organize a government under the Stars and Stripes; but they easily saw that they were outnumbered by the English, who were already organized and were the real autocrats of the country.
So the time passed until the fall of 1842, when Elijah White, an Indian agent for the Government in the Northwest, brought a party of Americans, men, women and children, numbering one hundred and twenty, safely through to Waiilatpui. In this company was a more than usually intelligent, well-informed Christian gentleman, destined to fill an important place in our story, General Amos L. Lovejoy. He was thoroughly posted in national affairs, and gave Dr. Whitman his first intimation of the probability that the Ashburton Treaty would likely come to a crisis before Congress adjourned in March, 1843. This related, as it was supposed, to the entire boundary between the United States and the English possessions.
The question had been raised in 1794.—"Where is 'the angle of Nova Scotia,' and where are the 'highlands between the angle and the northwest head of the Connecticut River?'" Time and again it had been before commissioners, and diplomats 102 had many times grown eloquent
