Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/266

248 November 1848, whose business it was to make an examination with reference to points of occupation for the security of trade and commerce, and for military and naval purposes.

The commissioners were Brevet Colonel J. L. Smith, Major Cornelius A. Ogden, Lieutenant Danville Leadbetter of the engineer corps of the United States army, and commanders Louis M. Goldsborough, G. J. Van Brunt, and Lieutenant Simon F. Blunt of the navy. They sailed from San Francisco in the government steam propeller Massachusetts, officered by Samuel Knox, lieutenant commanding, Isaac N. Briceland acting lieutenant, and James H. Moore acting master, arriving in Puget Sound about the same time the Ewing reached the Columbia River in the spring of 1850, and remaining in the sound until July. The commissioners reported in favor of light-houses at New Dungeness and Cape Flattery, or Tatooch Island, informing the government that traffic had much increased in Oregon, and on the sound, it being their opinion that no spot on the globe offered equal facilities for the lumber trade. Shoalwater Bay was examined by Lieutenant Leadbetter, who gave his name to the southern side of the entrance, which is called Leadbetter Point. The Massachusetts visited the Columbia, and recommended Cape Disappointment on which to place a light-house. After this superficial reconnoissancereconnaissance [sic], which terminated in July, the commissioners returned to California.

The length of time elapsing from the sailing of the commission from New York to its arrival on the Northwest Coast, with the complaints of the Oregon delegate, caused the secretary of the treasury to request Professor A. D. Bache, superintendent of coast surveys, to hasten operations in that quarter as much as possible; a request which led the latter to despatch a third party, in the spring of 1850, under Professor George Davidson, which arrived in California in June,