The Oregon Territory, Its History and Discovery. Travers Twiss
he would most probably have adopted a different arrangement in his review of the several negotiations, so as to avoid an appearance of needless repetition. His manuscript, however, with the exception of the two last chapters, was completed before the President’s message reached this country. As the earlier sheets, however, were passing through the press, one or two remarks have been inserted which have a bearing on the recent correspondence; but it should be observed, that a separate review of each negotiation was designedly adopted, for the purpose of enabling the reader to appreciate more readily the variety of phases, which the claims of the United States have assumed in the course of them.
Some observations have been made in Chapter XII. and other places, upon the general futility of the argument from maps in the case of disputed territory. The late negotiations at Washington have furnished an apposite illustration of the truth of the author’s remarks. Mr. Buchanan, towards the conclusion of his last letter to Mr. Pakenham, addressed an argument to the British Minister, of the kind known to logicians as the argumentum ad verecundiam:—“Even British geographers have not doubted our title to the territory in dispute. There is a large and splendid globe now in the Department of the State, recently received from London, and published by Maltby & Co., manufacturers and publishers to ‘The Society for the Diffusion of Useful knowledge,’ which assigns this territory to the United States.” The history, however, of this globe is rather curious. It was ordered of Mr. Malby (not Maltby) for the Department of State at Washington, before Mr. Everett quitted his post of Minister of the United States in this country. It no doubt deserves the commendation bestowed upon it by Mr. Buchanan, for Mr. Malby manufactures excellent globes; but the globe sent to Washington was not made from the plates used on the globes published under the sanction of “The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge,” though this is not said by way of disparagement to it. The Society, in its maps, has carried the boundary line west of the Rocky Mountains, along the 49th parallel to the Columbia River, and thence along that river to the sea; but in its globes the line is not marked beyond the Rocky Mountains. Mr. Malby, knowing that the globe ordered of him was intended for the Department of State at Washington, was led to suppose that it would be more satisfactorily completed, as it was an American order, if he coloured in, for it is not engraved, the boundary line proposed by the Commissioners of the United States. The author would apologise for discussing so trifling a circumstance, had not the authorities of the United States considered the fact of sufficient importance to ground a serious argument upon it.
In conclusion, the Author must beg pardon of the distinguished diplomatists in the late negotiations at Washington, whose arguments he has subjected to criticism, if he has omitted to notice several portions of their statements, to which they may justly attribute great weight. It is not from any want of respect that he has neglected them, but the limits of his work precluded a fuller consideration of the subject.
London, Jan. 22, 1846.
THE OREGON QUESTION.
CHAPTER I.
THE OREGON TERRITORY.
North-west America.—Plateau of Anahuac.—Rocky Mountains.—New-Albion.—New Caledonia.—Oregon, or Oregan, the River of the West.—The Columbia River.—Extent of the Oregon Territory.—The Country of the Columbia.—Opening of the Fur Trade in 1786.—Vancouver.—Straits of Anian.—Straits of Juan de Fuca.—Barclay.—Meares.—The American sloop Washington.—Galiano and Valdés.—Journey of Mackenzie in 1793.—The Tacoutche-Tesse, now Frazer’s River.—North-west Company in 1805.—The Hudson’s Bay Company in 1670.—The First Settlement of the North-west Company across the Rocky Mountains in 1806, at Frazer’s Lake.—Journey of Mr. Thomson, the Astronomer of the North-west Company, down the North Branch of the Columbia River, in 1811.—Expedition of Lewis and Clarke, in 1805.—The Missouri Fur Company, in 1808.—Their First Settlement on the West of the Rocky Mountains.—The Pacific Fur Company, in 1810.—John Jacob Astor, the Representative of it.—Astoria, established in 1811.—Dissolution of the Pacific Fur Company, in July, 1813.—Transfer of Astoria to the North-west Company, by Purchase, in October, 1813.—Subsequent Arrival of the British Sloop-of-War, the Racoon.—Name of Astoria changed to Fort George.
North-Western America is divided from the other portions of the continent by a chain of lofty mountains, which extend throughout its entire length in a north-westerly direction, in continuation of the Mexican Andes, to the shores of the Arctic Ocean. The southern part of this chain, immediately below the parallel of 42° north latitude, is known to the Spaniards by the name of the Sierra Verde, and the central ridge, in continuation of this, as the Sierra de las Grullas; and by these names they are distinguished by Humboldt in his account of New Spain, (Essai Politique sur la Nouvelle Espagne, l. i., c. 3,) as well as in a copy of Mitchell’s Map of North America, published in 1834. Mr. Greenhow, in his History of Oregon and California, states that the Anahuac Mountains is “the appellation most commonly applied to this part of the dividing chain extending south of the 40th degree of latitude to Mexico,” but when and on what grounds that name has come to be so applied, he does not explain. Anahuac was the denomination before the Spanish conquest of that portion of America which lies between the 14th and 21st degrees of north latitude, whereas the Cordillera of the Mexican Andes takes the name of the Sierra Madre a little north of the parallel of 19°, and the Sierra Madre in its turn is connected with the Sierra de las Grullas by an intermediate range, commencing near the parallel of 30°, termed La Sierra de los Mimbres. The application, indeed, of the name Anahuac to the entire portion of the chain which lies south of 40°, may have originated with those writers who have confounded Anahuac with New Spain; but as the use of the word in this sense is incorrect, it hardly seems desirable to adopt an appellation which is calculated to produce confusion, whilst it perpetuates an error, especially as there appear to be no reasonable grounds for discarding the established Spanish names. The plateau of Anahuac, in the proper sense of the word, comprises the entire territory from the Isthmus of Panama to the 21st parallel of north latitude, so that the name of Anahuac Mountains would, with more propriety, be confined to the portion of the Cordillera south of 21°. If this view be correct, the name of the Sierra Verde may be continued for that portion of the central range which separates the head waters of the Rio Bravo del Norte, which flows into the Gulf of Mexico, and forms the south-western boundary of Texas, from those of the Rio Colorado, (del Occidente,) which empties itself into the Gulf of California.
The Rocky Mountains, then, or, as they are frequently called, the Stony Mountains, will be the distinctive appellation of the portion of the great central chain which lies north of the parallel of 42°; and if a general term should be required for the entire chain to the south of this parallel, it may be convenient to speak of it as the Mexican Cordillera, since it is co-extensive with the present territory of the United States of Mexico, or else as the Mexican Andes, since the range is, both in a geographical and a geological point of view, a continuation of the South American Andes.
Between this great chain of mountains and the Pacific Ocean a most ample territory extends, which may be regarded as divided into three great districts. The most southerly of these, of which the northern boundary line was drawn along the parallel of 42°, by the Treaty of Washington in 1819, belong to the United States of Mexico. The most northerly, commencing at Behring’s Straits, and of which the extreme southern limit was fixed at the southernmost point of Prince of Wales’s Island in the parallel of 54° 40′ north, by treaties concluded between Russia and the United States of America in 1824, and between Russia and Great Britain in 1825, forms a part of the dominions of Russia; whilst the intermediate country is not as yet under the acknowledged sovereignty of any power.
To this intermediate territory different names have been assigned. To the portion of the coast between the parallels of 43° and 48°, the British have applied the name of New Albion, since the expedition of Sir Francis Drake in 1578–80, and the British Government, in the instructions furnished by the Lords of the Admiralty, in 1776, to Captain Cook, directed him “to proceed to the coast of New Albion, endeavouring to fall in with it in the latitude of 45°.” (Introduction