Morning journal and courier., 1892-06-01
The Struggle fer the West.

Professor John Bach NcMaster in Lippincott'sl
 And now occurred another of those ap- parently trifing incidents on which the history ot our country has so often turned. Four Indians begging for Bible brought Whitman to Oregon. A dinner at the English trading post, Fort Wslla- -Walls, sent him with all the speed he could back to Washington. The occasion of the din ner was the arrival st the fort of agents of the fur company with fifteen boats loaded with goods for the Indians on the Frazer river. Whitman was the sole representa- tive of the United States at the feast, which was scarcely begun when 6 messen- ger entered the fort with word that one hundred and forty English colonists had crossed the mountains, had entered Ore gon, and were even then st the Columbia river A great shout rose from the assem- bled company, and one of them, springing to his feet and waving his cap, cried out, 'Hurrah for Oregoni The Americans are too late. We have the country now"
 That moment the policy of the English government was made plain The traders that came up from St. Louis in the sum mer brought word that a treaty was soon to be made to put at rest the long-vered question of the boundary. Knowing this, Whitman thought England was attempting to settle Oregon and then hold it by the right of prior settlement, and, thinking SO, he determined that the government at Washington should know of it without delay. Not a moment was lost. He left the table instantly. galloped to his home at the mission station, and in twenty-fou hours was on his way to Washington with | two companions.
 A horseback ride of four thousand miles over the best of roads in the best of weath- II ta Ill discomfort. But he was to make 1t across a wilderness in the dead of winter. His route was southward across Idaho, across Utah, past Salt Lake, past the site soon to be occupied by the Mormon city, across New Mexico to Santa Fe. and on by the Santa Fe trail to St. Louis. On Iarch 8, 1s43, five months from the day he left the Columbia, he strode into the office of the Secretary of State st Washington
 He came in the very nick of time. The question then asked on every hand was, ''Is Oregon worth havingP for not one man east of the Missouri had any concep- ton of what Oregon was. The existence of a great American desert was firmly be- lieved, and part of this desert was Oregon. The mission of Whitm sn was to dispel this ignorance; and he did so. He de- stroyed the American desert of Mir. Nc Dufie. He told the President and the Sec l retary just was oregon was, and obtained from them the solemn promise that noth- ing should be done with regard to Oregon till he had led out & caravan of American settlers. Encouraged by the promise, he now turned west in search of emigrants, and so well did he succeed that in June e caravan of two hundred wagons moved out of Westport on the Missouri and headed for the northwest. As the news of the success of the expedition spread over the country a rage for emigration broke out in the west, and grew wilder and wilder each year till, in the summer of lS46, five hundred and fifty y-eight wagons crossed the Missouri river for Oregon, and
 raised the white population of that coun. try to twelve thousand souls