Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 1.djvu/32

20 While some regarded the measure as visionary, others opposed it because it seemed too practical, would draw capital and labor from the older sections, where they were still needed, and would beget a trade with the Orient which would detract from that of the Atlantic Coast. No friend of the measure could have painted a bolder and more prophetic picture than that of the opponent who said: "The trade of the Pacific will naturally be with China, Japan, and the Philippines. They will not only be invited to this by their local position, but by the circumstances of their situation. Commerce is never so profitable as when it is carried on between a newly settled country, in which land is fresh and easily obtained, and one in which a dense population has made manufactures cheap and abundant." Considerable importance was attached to the establishment of a waterway connection by the river systems of the Missouri and Columbia, between the east and the west, "when distance and time will be conquered, and the ends of the earth be brought together. ': Should this prove feasible, and statistics were not wanting to demonstrate it, the United States would have the proud distinction of establishing that waterway for which the nations had been so many centuries in search.

Attention was called to the value to the nation there would be in the encouragement of the fisheries, for the training of seamen, and the advantages of a naval station at the mouth of the Columbia in case of .war with Great Britain. General Jesup suggested that troops stationed there could be used in removing the British from the territory when the time came to settle the boundary. Such propositions were not palatable to the English, nor were they especially calculated to hasten a friendly settlement of such diplomatic proceedings as were necessary at a later time. They rather served the purpose