Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/427

376 necessaynecessary [sic] to increase the military force of the United States in order to garrison such establishments.

Poinsett's report set forth that the question as to expenditures and troops could not be satisfactorily answered before the completion of certain explorations undertaken by his direction, and which were expected to be extended to the passes of the Rocky Mountains during the summer. He however believed that a line of posts such as proposed would be of great benefit to the whole stretch of country to be traversed; and that the route ordinarily pursued by the fur-traders would be the most practicable line, for various reasons, including its directions, and its being perpendicular to a line of defences on the frontiers of Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa. Three posts were considered to be sufficient to "prepare the way for the peaceable settlement of the fertile valleys west of the Rocky Mountains;" one at the junction of the north and south forks of the Platte, and another at the confluence of the Laramie branch of that river. The third might be either at the junction of Wind River and Popoagie, the principal sources of the Big Horn, or at the confluence of Horse Creek, called by travellers the Seedskeeder, with the Colorado. And to these, the secretary thought, the stations for the present might be limited. "Under their shelter the rich and fertile valleys west of the mountains may be settled and cultivated by a population which would pour forth its numbers to the shores of the Pacific as soon as the question of boundary shall be definitively settled."

Such was the not very intelligent report of the secretary of war in 1840. It is doubtful if he, or any of those persons, citizens or others, who talked of a road or a line of forts to the Pacific, at all comprehended the fact that when the Rocky Mountains were reached there remained the hardest, if not the most dangerous, part of the route, or that a colony