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people Wilkes heard much about a plan to establish a provisional government for Oregon, This he discouraged, believing that there were as yet too few American settlers to make the experiment a success.

Relations with the Hudson's Bay Company. Wilkes found some of his countrymen disposed to complain of the Hudson's Bay Company; but he appears to have given little heed to these mutterings, knowing that there was no serious cause of trouble between the two nationalities.

Dr. White's company of 120 settlers, 1842. The year after Wilkes's visit, Oregon received the first considerable party of the emigrants coming from the United States by the overland route. Dr. Elijah White, who had arrived in the country in 1837, returned to the East by sea in 1840, Soon after this the government began to think of sending an Indian agent to Oregon, and early in the year 1842 White was appointed to this position, with instructions to take out as many emigrants as could be got together in the West. White delivered lectures in various places, interviewed pioneers in Missouri and elsewhere, and soon had a company of about one hundred and twenty men, who started from Independence, Missouri, in May, and made a successful journey across the mountains. The party took wagons as far as Fort Hall, using pack horses from this place to the Columbia.^

1 About the same time the government sent out Lieutenant John C. Fremont to explore a route into the Rocky Mountains. This was the first of his "path-finding "expeditions.