Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/409

358 "As we reach the Rocky Mountains," said the advocate of the occupation of Oregon, "we should be unwise did we not pass that narrow space which separates the mountains from the ocean, to secure advantages far greater than the existing advantages of all the country between the Mississippi and the mountains. Gentlemen are talking of natural boundaries. Sir, our natural boundary is the Pacific Ocean. The swelling tide of our population must and will roll on until that mighty ocean interposes its waters, and limits our territorial empire Then, with two oceans washing our shores, the commercial wealth of the world is ours, and imagination can hardly conceive the greatness, the grandeur, and the power that await us."

Baylies then reviewed the statements of his opponents that the country was sterile and the climate inhospitable; that the mouth of the Columbia was a bad entrance and worse departure, and the harbor indifferent, quoting from the official reports of Prevost, Lewis and Clarke, Cook, and Vancouver. He again presented the facts, as they appeared to him, connected with the commerce of the Pacific, present and to come He reverted to remarks made in debate that there was nothing to fear from Russia because the autocrat of that country had himself fixed the southern limit of his territory at 51, and to other remarks that if Russia chose to enforce the limits set the United States could not successfully encounter that power; to both of which conclusions he took exceptions, and also to the prediction that the proposed settlement could not sustain itself against the savages, instancing the early New England settlers, who for fifty years maintained peace with the savages, and when at last they were compelled to fight, vanquished On the following day, being the last of the discussion, Breckenridge of Kentucky made a speech in which he opposed the bill, because as it now stood it provided neither legislation nor courts; all the power