Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/128

110, together with their wild lands, reserving only their shipping, merchandise, provisions, and stores of every description, and their enclosed lands, except such portions of them as the United States government might wish to appropriate for military reserves, which were included in the schedule offered, for the sum of seven hundred thousand dollars. The agreement further offered all their farms and real property not before conveyed, for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, if purchased within one year by the government; or if the government should not elect to purchase, the companies bound themselves to sell all their farming lands to private citizens of the United States within two years, so that at the end of that time they would have no property rights whatever in the territories of the United States.

Surely it could not be said that the British companies were not as anxious to get out of Oregon as the Americans were to have them. It is more than likely, also, that had it not been for the persistent animosity of certain persons influencing the heads of the government and senators, some arrangement might have been effected; the reason given for rejecting the offer, however, was that no purchase could be made until the exact limits of the company's possessions could be determined. In October 1850, Sir John Henry Pelly addressed a letter to Webster, then secretary of state, on the subject, in which he referred to the seizure of the Albion, and in which he said that the price in the disposal of their property was but a secondary consideration, that they were more concerned to avoid the repetition of occurrences which might endanger the peace of the two governments, and proposed to leave the matter of valuation to be decided by two commissioners, one from each government, who should be at liberty to call an umpire. But at this time the same objections existed in the indefinite limits of the territory claimed which would require to be settled before commissioners