Page:Quarterlyoforego10oreg 1.djvu/17

 Warre and Vavasour, 1845-6. 9 ticability of forming military stations therein and conveying troops thither." He called their attention first to the cordon of posts the United States were forming — as he said — along the Great Lakes, on the Mississippi, and from the Missouri westward to the Rocky Mountains, a project calculated to give them a powerful influence over the Indian tribes which would be a most important preparation in the event of a war with Great Britain, since the British frontier was quite unpro- tected. He proposed certain defenses on the Canadian side, one in the neighborhood of Fort William on Lake Superior, another at Red River. Simpson described in rather optimistic terms the route they were to traverse from Red River to the Oregon country, declaring in advance of their scientific inves- tigation "that troops, either cavalry or infantry, might by that route be forwarded to the mouth of the Columbia." He sug- gested, for the Oregon division of their work, a survey of Cape Disappointment, which Mr. Ogden had private instruc- tions to take possession of for the Company, with a view to its ultimate occupation for military purposes by the Government; also the examination of Tongue Point, places between Fort Vancouver and Cape Disappointment on the north side of the Columbia controlling the ship channel, and the settled portion of the Willamette Valley. Mr. Ogden had orders to obtain possession, for the Company, of any points deemed important in a military point of view. In accordance with his consti- tutional mental habit, Simpson described with a genial expan- siveness the resources of the country for the sustentation of troops. He ordered Ogden to provide all the means necessary to enable Warre and Vavasour to make their inspection and to support them in every portion of their work ; Ogden was to keep their mission a secret and give out that they were known to the officers of the Company merely as private gen- tlemen traveling "for the pleasure of field sports and scientific pursuits." The character they were expected to sustain probably ex-