north by a supposed line drawn from the mouth of the Anchiyoke (Pudding) River, running due east to the Rocky Mountains, west by the Multnomah River, and south by the boundary line of the United States and California. The third district, "to be called the Clackamas district," comprehended all the territory not included in the other districts.
In this quaint manner was a region of almost continental proportions, yet containing only a few hundred inhabitants—they wholly in the Willamette Valley—divided into representative districts. The southern line was the 42d degree of latitude, known as the line of boundary between California, then belonging to Mexico, and Oregon. Our claim extended to "fifty-four forty;" the British claim to the country north of the Columbia River was strongly asserted, and Englishmen made a kind of claim, indefinite and nebulous, to the territory south of the river. No citizen of the United States had yet settled in the country north of the Columbia. Within the present limits of Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho there were some American missionaries, but they were not so situated as to be able to participate in this political movement. It was not till two years later that the first American settlers entered the territory north of the Columbia and west of the Cascade Mountains. Persons who came over the plains in 1844 were the first Americans who settled in the Puget Sound country. They were led by Michael T. Simmons, who settled at the head of Budd's Inlet in October, 1845. It was his party that opened the first trail from the Columbia River to Puget Sound.
Under the constitution reported by the committee the legislative power was to be vested in nine persons to be chosen by the qualified electors; each district to have representation in proportion to its population, excluding
