Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/367



It will be seen from the preceding Chapter that there was nobody in the Oregon country inviting settlement; no real estate agents; no boom towns; no get-rich-quick schemes; no colonization schemes, and no government agents of any kind. The country was two thousand miles from the nearest American settlement on the Missouri river; and separated from it by thousands of miles of trackless plains, rugged mountains, inhospitable deserts, and savage tribes of Indians. Why should any American citizen with a family go to such a country as that? About all that anybody knew about Oregon that could be relied on before the emigration started, was to be found in the following brief notice of the country, in Mitchell's Common School Geography, of 1842, as follows:

"Oregon Territory is the most western part of the United States. It extends from the Rocky Jlountains to the Pacific Ocean, and contains an area greater than that of the whole southern states. Though claimed by the United States, the territory is at present actually in possession of Great Britain. The Hudson 's Bay Company have established forts at various points and exercise an unlimited control over the native Indians reckoned to amount to a population of eighty thousand."

Woodbridge's Geography, published by Oliver Cook and Co. of Hartford, Conn., in 1829, has no mention of Oregon; but classes the territory of Old Oregon in with and as a part of "Missouri Territory."

The emigration to Oregon actually commencing in the year 1843, was one of the most remarkable movements in all history. Neither the pioneers who wrought the great work, or their descendants who have lived to see its great results, have ever comprehended the full force of the great achievement. Moved by an impulse which they did not detect the origin of, and over which they seemed to have had no control or ability to foresee its possible failure or success, the pioneers of 1843 accomplished a result equal to the founding of ancient Rome or the colonization of the Atlantic coast by the Puritans of the North and the Cavaliers of the South. The goal to be obtained was neither wealth, power, selfish isolation, a new faith, cult, government, or destruction of enemies. And neither time, toils, distance, hardships, savage tribes and enemies, or deadly pestilence could stay or defeat it. The poet Whit-