which was published in London in 1844, but before news of the success of the migration reached that country, contained the following passages:

"Though several parties have penetrated into the Oregon territory from the United States, through the marshes and over the towering heights of the Rocky Mountains, yet it may be safely asserted, from the concurrent testimony of traders, trappers, and settlers, who have themselves passed those mighty barriers, that the difficulties are so numerous and formidable, and the time necessary for the passage so long, that there is no secure, expeditious, or continuous track, which can ever be used as a highway, so as to afford facilities for an influx of emigrants overland.

"Several routes have been tried of late, and each differs only from the other in the privations which the passengers undergo. None but the wild and fearless fur trapper can clamber over those precipices, and tread those deserts with security, and even these are quitting them as haunts, and using them only as unavoidable tracks. It is true, there have been published more favorable accounts within the last year or two, by parties who have made the journey safely, and who encourage others to make a similar experiment. But these accounts are in such a spirit of bravado, and accompanied with expressions of thankfulness of parties. for their own success, that they are indirect evidence of the difficulty and danger of the undertaking, and of the utter hopelessness of such a route for general purposes."1

American authorities no less distinguished made similar declarations. In speaking of those who had joined the migration of 1843 Horace Greely said:

"For what do they brave the desert, the wilderness, the savage, the snowy precipices of the Rocky Mountains, the weary summer march, the storm-drenched bivouac and the gnawings of famine? . . . This migration of more than a thousand persons in one body to Oregon wears an aspect of insanity." 2

There was to come a time when Greeley spoke in another vein. He was not one of the few men of his generation who saw these events with the inward vision. of a prophet, and beheld the results that were to follow from them. But by and by, when the hardest of the

1 Dunn's "History of the Oregon Territory, Etc." London, 1844: pp. 345-6. New York "Tribune," July 22, 1843.

pioneer work was finished, he himself went out to the Pacific coast in the footsteps of the men whose reason he had challenged, and looked with his physical eyes on the things they had accomplished. And born of his later journey was that utterance of his which will live longer than any other words he spoke. For he said, "Go West, young man."

But by that time the "young man" was already in the West. As it had been in the past, so it was once again. An obscure trapper named Pilcher had proved himself to be the statesman, and the nameless thousands had justified the wisdom of his estimate. They had completed their work, leaving only its ratification to be brought about by stage-coach and locomotive. Then it was that the mighty ones arose in the majesty of their abounding fame and advised the performance of what had already been done.

The party of Oregon emigrants which started from western Missouri in 1844 was even larger than that of 1843 and numbered about fourteen hundred souls. It was delayed on the way by inclement weather and encountered numerous hardships. In 1845 almost three thousand people similarly departed for the Northwest, although they did not move in one compact body as had been the case during the two preceding summers. They travelled in groups containing from fifty to one hundred and fifty wagons each. Some of these parties of 1845 combined at a point westward of Fort Boise, and unwisely sought to reach their destination by an untried route. They wandered in the wilderness for forty days, suffering much from hunger and thirst, and about seventy-five of the six or eight hundred involved perished.'

1 According to Schafer, in his "History of the Pacific Northwest," p. 210.

HER

360.-St. Paul, as the settlement appeared before an overwhelming population movement invaded the upper Mississippi valley and the Minnesota and Dakota regions. During the first years of the filling-up process in the West nearly all the moving host swept onward to the Pacific coast.

By this time there were some six thousand Americans in the northwestern country, and a few of them had penetrated north of the Columbia River and settled in the Puget Sound district.' They already had a typical American government, although located more than two thousand miles from the nearest similar community that lay within close reach of the Federal power. Their first political organization had been effected in 1843, while the "Great Migration" was still on its march, a code of laws having been adopted by the people on July 5 of that year. The declaration of the settlers began:

"We, the people of Oregon Territory, for purposes of mutual protection, and to secure peace and prosperity among ourselves, agree to adopt the following laws and regulations until such time as the United States of America extend their jurisdiction over us."

In taking this step the few hundred emigrants who so acted followed the example of the little Wautaga republic which was set up amid the forests of eastern Tennessee just before the first invasion of the Kentucky country by the hill people of the Carolinas and Virginia. Each of those groups of pioneers was temporarily lost in a wilderness, was out of touch with any source of higher authority, and wholly dependent upon itself for the creation of such regulations as would constitute an organic basis of society.

The arrival of the companies of 1844 and 1845 brought about a number of changes in the political organization of the northwestern pioneers, and the simultaneous action of the Hudson's Bay Company in placing itself under the jurisdiction of the provisional government established by

1 This was in opposition to the desire and advice of the Hudson's Bay Fur Company, but the local officers of that powerful body did not go beyond the point of verbal remonstrance. They had treated American arrivals on the Columbia with consideration and had even given much needed aid to some of them.

2 Known as the First Organic Law; quoted in full in Strong and Schafer's "Government of the American People," Oregon edition, Boston, 1901; Appendix.

361.-The "Rubber Stamp" map of the Northwest. Published by D. D. Merrill, of St. Paul, in 1864, to show a new overland route from St. Paul, and the latest territorial lines and settlements in the northwestern country. When the map was being made Idaho embraced all the region between Nebraska and Dakota on the east, Colorado on the south and Oregon and Washington in the west, and was so defined on the printed sheet. But the map as printed was out of date before it was ready for sale. The boundary of the new-shaped Idaho was therefore drawn by hand with a brush, Montana was similarly corrected, and both territories had to be properly labeled by means of rubber stamps, while Wyoming was left as a blank space and the erroneous name "Idaho" had to remain as originally printed. Helena, Silverbow City and other towns were added by pen and ink, and the map was then offered to the public. It never caught up with shifting conditions.