Page:Portland, Oregon, its History and Builders volume 1.djvu/27



The settlement of Old Oregon, consisting of all the United States territory west of the Rocky mountains, north of California, being the result of a long series of explorations by sea and land covering three hundred years from 1506 to 1806, is an interesting and necessary chapter to any history of the city of Portland. The settlement of this last and then most distant portion of the United States was the result of a world-wide racial impulse to move westward on isothermal lines, supported by the American spirit to go west, take possession of new lands and colonize the North American continent. That impulse and that spirit lias never halted or slept since the united colonies repudiated George the III at Bunker's Hill; and even now is so actively pouring American settlers into the British province of Alberta that the Fourth of July is duly celebrated at the principal town in the province. And while it seems necessary to the completeness of the story to include all such movements of men or population as sustains the proposition of an evolutionary movement, yet it is not intended to burden the record with accounts of the many tentative and abortive efforts at exploration, or of those that were merely for trade. But the meritorious work of such men as Heceta and Viscaino of Spain, La Salle and Marquette of France, Cook and Barclay of England, Mackenzie of Canada, and Gray, Carver, Lewis and Clark of the United States is material and important, and cannot be left out.

Two hundred years before Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos, Spain, the Venetian traveler and explorer, Marco Polo had penetrated the Chinese empire from the west and returned to his home by a sea voyage from the east coast of Asia. Polo's published account of his travels was the great sensation and wonder of that age, and was discussed by learned men all over Europe and formed the basis of many new conjectures about the geography of the earth. Columbus himself had some education in geometry, astronomy, and navigation, and at an early age took to the sea. He had read Polo's narrative and was