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272 Fred Wilbur Powell

conformity with good faith towards Great Britain, to extend the active jurisdiction and guardianship of the General Gov- ernment over this territory, so that it might be brought under the restraints and protection of political organization and of law, by the country to which it justly belongs.

Another of my objects has been to give my fellow-citizens correct information, and thus induce a full and free emigration to this territory, of temperate, orderly, and industrious men; such men as might most certainly carry thither all the ad- vantages of civilization, and lay the foundations of a virtuous community; and thus to convert the wilderness into a [47] garden, the wild retreats of Indians and roving hunters into the smiling abodes of knowledge and Christianity.

/ longed and labored, also, for the highest interests of the native owners of the g^eat West ; for their social, intellectual, and moral culture; and my objects were not less benevolent than commercial, and looked as much to the elevation and melioration of the red race as to the benefit of the white.

And, finally, I desired most earnestly that the United States should secure to their western frontier the ocean as its de- fense, and thus remove from one of our borders, at least, the dangers arising from the vicinity of foreign states — ^an object which I deemed of vast importance, and upon which I need not enlarge.

These were the objects to whose accomplishment I looked forward, and from which I confidently anticipated many bene- fits: such as a more friendly and profitable intercourse be- tween our people and the various Indian tribes ; the immediate occupation of the harbors and havens of the Oregon, and the use of its abundant ship timber ; great profit from the whale and salmon fisheries of the northwest coast ; a free and grow- ing commerce with the islands' and coasts of the Pacific, with worlds should be united, and their wealth interchanged and speedy line of communication over land from the Mississippi to the Oregon, by means of which the Eastern and Western China, and India, and th(p Southern America ; a certain and