Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/280

274 increasing spirit of territorial expansion pervading the American people west of the Atlantic seaboard, could ever be convinced without the presentation of irrefutable evidence that there was even any likelihood, much less any danger that the American government, once having secured a foothold on the Pacific, would relinquish it for any consideration whatever. Its stand was explicitly taken 1826 when Mr. Gallatin, our minister to England, was authorized "to propose" the extension of the line on the parallel of 49 from the Stony Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. "This," wrote Secretary Clay, in June of that year, "is our ultimatum and you may so announce it; we can consent to no line more favorable to Great Britain." In the following August Secretary Clay repeated the statement to Mr. Gallatin, "The President can not consent that the boundary on the northwest coast should be south of 49."

It would be interesting to dwell briefly upon other aspects of early Oregon history, such as the earlier Oregon literature, to estimate the contribution to popular interest in that far off Pacific Northwest of the fact that Washington Irving, the most eminent living prose writer of the country, found in the history of the Astoria adventure material for his pen not unlike that which had occupied him earlier in following the voyages of the companions of Columbus, or to enlarge upon the learning and critical scholarship which characterize Greenhow's History of Oregon and give it a very high place among the historical productions of that day. Or, on the other hand, to dwell upon the origin of the missions, both Catholic and Protestant, and to compare the mission work with the early efforts of Eliot and his coadjutors in Massachusetts and