Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/617

566 improvement of the lands in the lower end of the valley. To this party belonged the Methodist interests; and Thornton, who was a Methodist, and who soon made the acquaintance of Abernethy and other leading persons among the missionaries, gained the friendship of that society greatly by his abuse of the explorers of the southern road, who, besides having been guilty of this crime, were also of that dominating western element that opposed itself to the Methodist influence in colonial affairs.

Thornton was also a lawyer, and a Methodist lawyer was an acceptable addition to the Methodist influence, supposing that he should be controlled by it; and to gain him over to that position, on the resignation of the office of supreme judge by Mr Burnett, Abernethy appointed Thornton in his place, February 9th, or a little more than six weeks after his arrival in the territory.

Article after article on the merits and demerits of the southern route, as contrasted with the Barlow road, came to the Spectator from various sources, the true effect of which was to call attention to the Rogue River and Umpqua valleys, their desirability for settlement, and the need of a road to them leading directly from forts Hall and Bridger; and also to the fact that a road now really existed by which wagons could go all the way to California, by passing through the Umpqua canon, and over the Applegate pass of the Cascade Range to the California road in the Humboldt Valley, this happy discovery following immediately upon the news of the conquest and Americanization of that country.

In May 1847 Levi Scott led a company of twenty men destined for the States over the southern route,