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uninhabitable. In the English papers and magazines of that day the facts in regard to the soil and climate of Oregon were frequently published. The government knew all about the soil and climate of that country; the good features of the country being exaggerated rather than understated.
A charge was made by partisan Journals, and repeated on the floor of the House by Charles J. Ingersoll, that Daniel Webster, in a speech at Baltimore, in 1842, had offered to trade Oregon for concessions from England to the fishermen of the Eastern States. The charge was untrue and had to be abandoned. This calumny might have been carried to Oregon by emigrants that year, but for Whitman to have acted upon such a rumor would have shown great lack of judgment.
It is also related that after Whitman had determined to go East, he went to Fort Walla Walla. While he was at dinner, an express arrived with the information that 150 Canadian and English settlers had passed Fort Colville on their way to the lower Columbia, and that a young priest, on hearing the news, rose from the table, threw his cap into the air, and said:
"Hurrah for Oregon! America is too late! We have got the country!" This story is made out of whole cloth; there was no emigration from any part of Canada that year to Oregon and there was no priest, young or old, at Fort Walla Walla at that time.
Gray and Spalding assert that Whitman told Webster, while in Washington, in March, 1843, that he would take a train of emigrants in wagons to the Columbia, that year, and that Webster answered that if he would pledge himself to do this "the treaty would be suppressed." What treaty is spoken of is not stated, but the inference is that it was the treaty of Washington, negotiated by Webster and Ashburton, agreed to the previous August and ratified the previous November, which had no reference to Oregon whatever; and if it bad affected Oregon, Webster would never have said that be would suppress it. If the treaty of 1618 was meant, Webster could only have said that in such an event notice would be given Great Britain terminating it in a year. But the story is absurd as are the words said to be used by Tyler in speaking to Whitman: "If you can establish a wagon route to the Columbia, I will use my influence to hold Oregon." Upon such ridiculous and unsupported assertions as these we are asked to believe that Whitman saved Oregon.
The government could not have been ignorant of the fact that wagons had been taken across the plains. Bonneville took wagons to Green river in 1832. Whitman had taken a spring wagon to Fort Hall in 1836, and two years afterwards, Gray brought it to Wailatpu, packing it over the Blue
