Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/402

Rh treaties by which the United States had enlarged their original boundaries since achieving independence. Following this was an able and suggestive examination of the profits of the fur-trade in the west and north-west over the territory acquired by discovery and treaty, but which was still almost a terra incognita to the citizens of the union.

As to the expediency of occupying the Columbia, Floyd was sanguine, for the reasons contained in his report on the fur-trade, the profits of that business, and the opportunities for greatly enlarging the commerce of the United States by direct communication with China by way of the Columbia and Missouri rivers, that idea of which the eccentric John Ledyard Was author, President Jefferson, however, usually receiving the credit of it, and in whose mind it was confirmed by the expedition of Lewis and Clarke. The route recommended by Floyd was the same, namely, up the Missouri, across the mountains, and down the Columbia.

Accompanying the report was a bill authorizing the president to occupy the Oregon Territory, extinguish the Indian title, and provide a government.

The bill was twice read, and referred to a committee of the whole for the following day, but was not taken up, and nothing further appears to have been said upon the subject till the 10th of December, when Floyd again made a motion for a committee to inquire into the expediency of the measure, with leave to report a bill. This was agreed to, and he was appointed chairman of the committee, with Baylies of Massachusetts and Scott of Missouri as associates. The report of the committee, accompanied by a bill authorizing the occupation of the Columbia, was presented to the house the 18th of January, 1822. This, hke the previous bill, was twice read, after which it disappeared for the remainder of that session. Meanwhile Floyd had submitted a resolution requiring the