Page:How Marcus Whitman Saved Oregon.djvu/24

 England. Between the French claims and the Spanish claims there was left no territory for England to base a claim 20 on. If the United States did not acquire through to the Pacific in the Louisiana purchase, it was because Spain was owner of the territory prior to the first, second and third transfers. It is difficult to perceive standing ground for the English in either of the claims mentioned.

The claim of England that the Nootka treaty of 1790 abrogated the rights of Spain to the territory of Oregon, which she then held, is untenable, from the fact that no right of sovereignty or jurisdiction was conveyed by that treaty. Whatever right Spain had prior to that treaty was not disturbed, and all legal rights vested in Spain were still in force when she ceded the territory to France in 1800, and also when France ceded the same to the United States in 1803.

The third claim of the United States was by the commission sent out by Jefferson in 1803, when Lewis and Clarke and their fellow voyagers struck the headwaters of the Columbia and followed it to its mouth and up its tributary rivers.

The fourth was the actual settlement of the Astor Fur Company at Astoria in 1811. True it was a private enterprise, but was given the sanction of the United States and a U. S. naval officer was allowed to command the leading