Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 2.djvu/401

Rh time in the Oregon question may be ascribed to Kelley as the promoter. The fact that it was not powerful enough to overcome the inertia of the East, or to arouse the migratory instincts of the West, should not detract from the service actually rendered in educating the American people and showing them their opportunity. That they were slow in availing themselves of it was a discredit neither to him nor to them. Prophets have always been without honor in their own country, because time alone can verify their predictions.

Impatient of delay and of irritating criticisms Kelley at length—in the autumn of 1832—set out for Oregon, to see with his own eyes what he had so often described to others. Furnished with a passport, he chose the route via Mexico and California. At New Orleans the small party which had accompanied him at the outset abandoned the enterprise. Shipping his goods intended for trade on the Columbia River to Vera Cruz, they were seized by the Mexican authorities for duties and confiscated. Hoping to recover in some measure his loss, he offered his services to teach pedagogy to Mexican schoolmasters, even to the college at Guadalajara. The Mexicans were not sufficiently impressed at this period of their history with the superiority of Yankee methods to appreciate Kelley's offer, who proceeded to California.

In this dependency of Mexico reigned Figueroa as governor, who was quite as jealous as other Mexicans of the citizens of United States. He rejected Kelley's proposal to make for him a survey and map of the Sacramento Valley, fearing, no doubt, that so much knowledge of the country might endanger the Mexican sovereignty—as afterwards it did. For Kelley made a surreptitious survey for himself, and a map which he published on returning to Boston.