Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/128

 Northwest history will now and henceforth receive the wide attention it deserves. Not the least, therefore, of the grounds upon which we ought to welcome the coming centennial of exploration is the educational work in our own history that it will effect among us. The inspiration of their past is the greatest of motives for a progressive people.

This is a rambling address, not intended to concentrate attention upon any particular event in our history, but merely to contribute a little to the interest of a special occasion, by passing before the mind some of the incidents and events readily offered to the gleaner of our earliest records, with some reflections thereon. The approach of the Lewis and Clark centennial makes all this mass of matter and the mass of it is great worth renewed study; for in the celebration of this centennial we should have a knowledge of the underlying facts of our history, as well as of detail and proportion. It was the Lewis and Clark expedition that enabled us to follow up the claim based on discovery of the Columbia River, and enabled us, moreover, to anticipate the English in their further exploration and discovery. It enabled us to hold the country west of the Rocky Mountains and south of the 49th parallel, to the United States. It gave us the footing that enabled us to negotiate with Spain for the southern boundary of the Oregon country, which was fixed at the 42d parallel. And, as we were already firmly placed on the Pacific Coast at the time of the war with Mexico, it was one of the direct sources of our acquisition of California by the double method of conquest and purchase. Thus we have acquired on the Pacific a vast coast line; we have established great and growing States, supported by a cordon of interior States from the Mississippi westward; we are in position for defense in war and for defense and aggression in trade; at our Pacific ports we are nearest of all the great nations of commerce and civilization to the trade of the Orient. The Lewis and Clark expedition, to which the great results so plainly run back, stands therefore as one of the leading episodes of our national history. We must celebrate its