Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/355

349 THE WINNING OF THE OREGON COUNTRY. 349 phers to the Queen, then the good and gracious Victoria, a young queen, aged twenty-six years. The British pro- posal was to limit Oregon to the forty-ninth parallel, where the same is crossed by the Columbia, thence down the Columbia to the sea, excepting that a small circular area from Bulfinch's Harbor to Hood's Canal, as then called, and being the region south and southwesterly from Port Townsend, Wash., was reserved for the United States, but wholly detached from the mainland, and at a point where no harbor exists to-day. The American secretaries based our claim upon prior discovery, and the Spanish and French title, and in part upon the previous treaties. The name of Captain Gray and his discovery of the Columbia are mentioned as strong proof of the American title, and the fact that Captain Meares, the English navigator, failed to discover the same river and gave us a monument to his failure when he named Cape Disappointment and called the inlet opposite the mouth of the mighty river, which he passed by, "Deception Bay." But while Calhouii and Buchanan were fencing in di- plomacy with the representatives of the British crown, and long before, President Polk on August 5, 1846, pro- claimed the treaty with Great Britain by which our title was formally recognized, the pioneers of the great Oregon Country, had taken possession of all this vast domain in the name of their country, and some of them enriched these fertile valleys with the blood of American patriots defending American homes against the Indian savages on the one hand, and the more peaceful aggression of the Hudson Bay Company and other subjects of the British crown. These pioneers as early as July 5, 1845, by their legislative committee, adopted what is now known as the "organic law of the provisional government of Oregon." This document was written by Lee, Newell, Applegate. Smith, and McClure. It was adopted-by the house, or leg-