Page:How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon.djvu/215

 there are multiplied expressions and acts proving the opposite.

As early as the year 1828, the Hudson Bay Company saw the value of the Falls of the Willamette 193 at Oregon City for manufacturing purposes, and took possession of the same; as Governor Simpson in command of the Company said, "To establish a British Colony of their retired servants." "Governor Simpson," says Dr. Eells in his "History of Indian Missions," "said in 1841 that the colonists in the Willamette Valley were British subjects, and that the English had no rivals on the coast but Russia, and that the United States will never possess more than a nominal jurisdiction, nor will long possess even that, on the west side of the Rocky Mountains." And he added, "Supposing the country to be divided to-morrow to the entire satisfaction of the most unscrupulous patriot in the Union, I challenge conquest to bring my prediction and its own power to the test by imposing the Atlantic tariff on the ports of the Pacific."

Such sentiments from the Governor, the man then in supreme power, who moulded and directed English sentiments, is of deep significance. A man only second in influence to Governor Simpson and even a much broader and brainier man, Dr. John McLoughlin, Factor of the Company, "said to me in 1842," says Dr.