Page:Quarterlyoforego10oreg 1.djvu/23

 Warre and Vavasour^ 1845-6. 15 cient officers should be at hand to command and discipline these people. The country is so productive in grain and cattle, and fish are so abundant, that such a force as I have above pointed out could with a little preparatory arrangement be provisioned for twelve months certain. Should the present negotiations happily result in a partition of the country, the branch of the Columbia called Lewis River would be a satisfactory boundary as regards British interests. But if that cannot be obtained the parallel of 49° might be continued as a boundary line until it strikes the north branch of the Columbia, which from that point should be the boun- dary to the sea. If the 49th parallel be adopted as the boun- dary line the whole way from the mountains to the sea, then it would be indispensable to have Vancouver's Island and the free navigation of the Straits of de Fuca secured to us, as in consequence of the prodigious tideway in Johnston's Straits it would be impossible for trading ships to reach Fraser's River by the northern channel. On such partition of the country it would as a matter of course be necessary that the Company and British settlers should be secured in their present possessions by a provision in the treaty, and the free navigation of the Columbia River, as the only practicable communication to the east side of the mountains, as well as the right of way by land (should a prac- ticable route be found) from the Gulf of Georgia to the Co- lumbia, should be secured to us. The provision in the treaty should also secure to us the undisturbed possession of the country now occupied by the Puget Sound Company, the farms on the Cowlitz — in the neighborhood of Vancouver and on the Multnomah Island — our water privileges on the Wil- lamette River, our posts on the Columbia and Umpqua Rivers, and all other establishments now occupied by the Company.* possessory rights in Oregon resembles closely the treaty finally proposed by Great Britain in June, 1846. But three years earlier, March 10, 1842, Simpson urged the government of Great Britain not to yield "any portion of the country north of _ the Columbia River." See Simpson Letters, Am. Hist. Rev. XIV, 87. This is a good index to the progress of British sentiment on the question during the period in which Oregon was being settled by immigrants from the United States.
 * It will he seen that the above outline of a treaty respecting boundaries and