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164 passed if not unequaled in America. As the truth grew upon men's minds more families came across the Blue Mountains, and presently the Hudson's Bay Company, thoroughly alarmed, made up its mind to abandon its old-time policy and try to beat the American settlers at their own game. Colonizers were to be brought from Canada in overwhelming numbers. It was in October, 1842, that Doctor Whitman heard of the approach of such a colony of 140 persons. In a moment he grasped the fact in all its relations. The Ashburton Treaty was in progress and there was a possibility that it might terminate the joint occupation of Oregon and surrender the American claim. No time was lost. At once the stout Doctor decided to ride to Washington and lay the case before Daniel Webster, Secretary of State, and take such further measures as would bring wagons over the mountains, not singly, but by the hundred. Our thoughts again revert to New England and to Paul Revere's famous midnight ride, a gallop of twenty miles over the highway to send an alarm and forestall the British in their designs upon Concord.

Marcus Whitman's ride was likewise to send an alarm. It was a ride to forestall Great Britain in grasping an imperial domain. It was a midwinter ride of four thousand miles through forest and desert and over frightful mountain passes, amid frequent peril of cold and famine and hostile savages. It will be cited hereafter, side by^ side with the prodigious foot journey of La Salle, among the grand and stirring events in American history.

Striking far south into the Santa Fe trail, the Doctor reached St. Louis and thence made his way to bur Federal Capital, where he arrived in March, 1843. The Ashburton Treaty had been completed in the preceding August, before he had started on this long journey and fortunately it had left the Oregon question for future adjustment. That delay gave the United States an immense advantage when next the question came up. Whitman's untiring zeal made it known that on the Columbia River was an empire worth saving. When he started westward in June, 1843, to return to his wife and friends, he led a train of two hundred emigrant wagons, not to be left behind at Fort Hall, but to keep on their way over the Blue Mountains. It was the vanguard of the era of occupation. Before three years had elapsed, there was an American population of nearly twelve thousand persons in Oregon, staunch men and women come to build up homes, the sturdy stuff of which a nation's greatness is made.