Page:Whitman's Ride through Savage Lands.djvu/187

Rh for authority of Congress, raised the American flag, organized a territorial government, elected officials to make and execute laws, and from 1843 to 1848, without the aid of Congress, by a single official act, they carried on the government as becomes good citizens of the Republic. True, there were murmurings in Congress as of old, but they were only half-hearted, and half in earnest. The final signing of the treaty in 1846 was the doom, however, of the regime of England in Oregon.

She did not wait for signatures to the treaty to set on foot an inquiry, as to the loss of Oregon, or who was responsible for it, and how this great immigration from the states had originated. The English company forthwith sent a commission, made up of Messrs. Peel, Park, and Wavaseur, to Oregon, to learn all the facts. When they reached there they had an easy task, for both Englishmen and Americans understood the matter.

When Whitman and Spalding, with their wives, caught up with the convoy of fur-traders, in that memorable journey in 1836, one of the old voyageurs who had felt the iron hand of the Hudson Bay Company, sententiously remarked, as he pointed his finger at the two American women, "There is something the royal Hudson Bay