Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 9.djvu/80

 68 Marie Merriman Bradley. between May and September.^ Moreover, he considered Ore- gon worth holding for the sake of the Columbia fisheries and timber.'^ Tracey of New York was one of the bitterest opponents of the bill. He declared that, rather than being a Garden of Eden, this Oregon country was an inhospitable wilderness, or an inaccessible coast; the climate was bleak, and the cheering sunbeams were hardly ever seen; that because of the humid- ity, it was impossible to raise the valuable products of the Atlantic Coast.^ He objected further to the establishment of military posts, ''For," he said, "we now enjoy all the ad- vantages we have the right either to expect or demand. ' ' He considered that a small garrison would only provoke a cruel and expensive Indian war. Military posts, he held, were for the purpose of protecting the frontier, but not for attracting of population to an exposed situation. ' ' The God of Nature, ' ' he said, "has interposed obstacles to this connection which neither enterprise nor science of this or any other age can overcome. Nature has fixed a limit for our nation, she has kindly interposed as our western barrier, mountains almost inaccessible, whose base she has skirted with unreclaimable deserts of sand. This barrier our people can never pass. If it ever does, it becomes the people of a new world, whose feelings and whose interests are not with us, but with our antipodes."^ Furthermore, he thought it impossible that the two sections of the country could ever be brought under the jurisdiction of the same government; and it is a significant fact that very few statesmen of the time considered it possible to bring the trans-Rocky territory to a footing equal to the Eastern States. Most of the men who advocated American occupancy, thought that the country should be held as a colony, and that in the case of independence, it was better to 6 Seventeenth Congress, 1st Session, Vol I, p. 308 (Benton's Speech.) 7 At that time Columbia River timber was being shipped to Chili and Peru. 8 Seventeenth Congress, 1st Session, Annals, Vol. II, p. 592. 9 Seventeenth Congress, 1st Session, Annals, Vol. I, p. 598.