Page:McLoughlin and Old Oregon.djvu/329



"FIFTY-FOUR FORTY OR FIGHT" 323

The brother of the Earl of Aberdeen fretted on his warship in Puget Sound: "McLoughlin is right. 'Tis a beastly country, not worth a war. Nisqually plains are a bed of gravel. Curse the deer! They will not wait for me to shoot them. Curse the salmon! They will not bite with the very best flies and a patent English angling rod. I would n't give tuppence for the whole country; "and he sailed away.

Lieutenant Peel took the shortest cut to London. What he poured into the ears of his father, Sir Robert, has never been known.

Lieutenant Cushing, also, reported to his father at Washington. All at once Congress adopted conciliatory resolutions.

Said Lord Aberdeen, "I did not delay a moment, but putting aside all ideas of diplomatic etiquette I made a proposition of settlement that was immediately accepted by Congress."

With joyful countenance Sir Robert Peel announced to the House of Commons, "The governments of two great nations have by moderation, by mutual compromise, averted the dreadful calamity of war."

Word reached Vancouver in the autumn of 1846 by way of the Sandwich Islands. Douglas immediately sent the news to Governor Abernethy. The settlers fired their anvils, the bluffs flung back the jubilee. Canadians and Americans rejoiced together. "Now Congress will take us under her wing," was the joyful cry. "Now we shall have territorial rights. Now they will recognize the acts of our Provisional Government. Until then how can we be sure that we own a farm or that any transaction that we have made will stand in law?"

Then for the first time the United States began to