Page:The Whitman Controversy.pdf/32

 also when an express messenger arrived with the supposed news of the settlement of the Oregon question by the Ashburton treaty? Gray can, knowing all the circumstances; hence the truth of the chapter referred to. Prior to that time, in May, 1837, he was ridiculed for considering that any plan or power of the United States could get possession of Oregon. That it should be done as was stated to Dr. Whitman at Walla Walla (now Wallula) is not strange and improbable under the circumstances of a general drunk.

We will pass down the long column of that rubbish till she notices, in 1834, Hall J. Kelly's sad failure, Missionary Lee's and two years afterwards Whitman and his associates' arrival and settlement on the Upper Columbia, when she says of all Americans up to that time, "These were the first low wash of waves where soon should roll a human sea." We are not sufficiently posted in such "low wash" verses to give it a name, presuming the author culled it from her rat pile, to apply to Kelly's and the American missionaries on account of their failure in their objects. At No. 2 she notices Dr. E. White, but finds no letters from the Presbyterian missionaries, though W. H. Gray had crossed the Rocky Mountains three times, and in passing to his old home in New York, had met with large audiences to hear his report of the country and prospects, and had written to the A. B. C. F. M. in Boston a long letter, which was published by the Executive Board, who sent, under Gray's direction and guidance, eight persons to reinforce their missions in Oregon. Gray and wife visited Washington, were kindly treated by all, and received from the Secretary of War the passports then required to go into the Oregon country as teachers among the natives.

He did not find in Washington the wise men that Mrs. Victor claims to have been there; they only knew of Captain Gray's discovery of a river, which he called Columbia. "Was it in Oregon?"

We had the pleasure of seeing the great Daniel Webster and the great South Carolinian, Hayne, in the senate chamber, from the gallery of what is now the supreme court chamber and gallery. We were escorted to all the notable places in Washington by a New York member of Congress to whom we presented our letters of introduction; his name we have forgotten. In fact we did not think of boasting that we were in Washington, not even about our being there again in 1852, and being taken into the lower house by our delegate, the Hon. Joseph Lane, and receiving an intro-