Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 13.djvu/98

 90 FREDERICK V. HOLMAN In this addresss I cannot go into the details of the respec- tive claims of the United States and of Great Britain to the Oregon country, nor on what these respective claims were based. After the discovery of the Columbia River by Capt. Robert Gray, May 11, 1792, there were, no land expeditions by either government, nor expeditions by any of its citizens to the Oregon country until the expedition of Lewis and Clark which reached the mouth of the Columbia River in 1805, and except- ing also the journey of Alexander Mackenzie, one of the part- ners of the Northwest Company, in 1793, which was north of latitude 52 degrees. On this journey, Mackenzie discovered the upper waters of what is now called the Fraser River in British Columbia. Nor shall I more than mention the estab- lishment by the Northwest Company (of Montreal), in 1806, and thereafter, of posts in the northern interior of British Columbia on the Fraser River, its tributaries, and its and their vicinities, nor the discovery by David Thompson, in 1807, of the head waters of the Columbia River. I shall but merely mention the founding of Astoria, April 12, 1811, by the Pacific Fur Company, controlled by John Jacob Astor; of the treacherous sale of the assets of this company by Duncan McDougal one of Astor's partners to the Northwest Company in October, 1813 ; of the capture of Astoria, November 13, 1813, by a British sloop-of-war, and of the restoration of Astoria to the United States, October 6, 1818, under the provisions of the treaty of Ghent, signed December 24, 1814, by which the war of 1812 was terminated. The Northwest Company continued the business and enter- prises in the Oregon Country, which it had acquired by the purchase of the business of the Pacific Fur Company, and also of the. business which the Northwest Company had established on its own account in the Oregon Country, until it coalesced with the Hudson's Bay Company in 1821. In 1824, Dr. John McLoughlin came to take charge of the Hudson's Bay Company's affairs west of the Rocky Mountains. He changed the head-