Page:The Round Hand of George B. Roberts.djvu/12

 States. Among the ironies of the meeting was the proof of the country's 'Eden-like' richness provided by the thriving farms and flocks of the British companies to the early American missionaries, official visitors and settlers, and the subsequent rejection or eradication of the PSA Company's advanced English farming techniques and large-scale operations by determined American exploitive settlers and individual frontier opportunists. The frontier settler's necessity of an immediate return, the need or hope that sometimes drove him to cross the Plains to improve his status, were foreign to a strong corporate British monopoly, even though it knew the profit motive. As Sir George Simpson wrote in 1852,

"The Hudson's Bay Company's trading posts were erected many years previous to the Oregon Treaty, at a time when they were the sole occupants of the country, the Sites being carefully selected as the most desirable for carrying on trade and maintaining their communications. The good judgment which was manifested in such selections is apparent from the fact that, now that the territory is becoming closely settled, those stations are considered the most desirable sites for towns, while the main highways of commerce are those which were established by the Company."

The less legal-minded American minority which moved onto the British claims was supported by the opinion of a large part of the American community, and by the actions of the U. S. Army in setting aside its own military reservations.