nery. But the English
claimed the country. In June, 1812, war broke out with England, and
Astoria became threatened with capture by the English. It was decided by
Astor's agent to abandon the post; but Astoria had taught the United
States the value of Oregon.

The Oregon trail from St. Louis, by the way of the great rivers, the
Missouri, the Yellowstone, and the Columbia, followed the fall of Astoria,
and began the highway of emigration to the Pacific coast and to Asia. Over
it the trapper and the missionary began to go. The Methodist missionaries,
under the leadership of Revs. Jason and Daniel Lee, were among the first
in the field, and laid the foundations of the early cities of Oregon. One
of their stations was at the Dalles of the Columbia. In 1835 the great
missionary, Marcus Whitman, of the Congregationalist Board, established
the mission at Walla Walla. Yet up to the year 1841, just fifty years ago,
only about one hundred and fifty Americans, in all, had permanently
settled in Oregon and Washington.

Senator Benton desired the survey of a route to Oregon, to aid emigration
to the Columbia basin. He engaged for this service a young, handsome,
gallant, and chivalrous officer, Lieutenant John C. Fremont, who, with
Nicollet, a French naturalist, had been surveying the upper Mississippi,
and opening emigration to Minnesota.

Fremont espoused not only the cause of Oregon, but also Senator Benton's
young daughter Jessie, who later rendered great personal services to her
husband's expedition in the Northwest.

Kit Carson was the guide of this famous expedition. The South Pass was
explored, and the flag planted on what is now known as Fremont's Peak, and
the country was found to be not the Great American Desert of the maps, but
a land of wonderful beauty and fertility. In 1843 Fremont made a second
expedition; this time from the South Pass to the Columbia country. After
he was well on his way, the War Department recalled him; but Mrs. Fremont
suppressed the order, in the interest of the expedition, until it was too
late to reach him.

Fremont went by the way of Salt Lake, struck the Oregon trail, and finally
came to the mission that Dr. Whitman had founded among the Nez-Perces
(pierced noses) at Walla Walla. This mission then consisted of a single
adobe house.

The British claimants of the territory, finding that American immigration
was increasing, began to bring settlers from the Red River of the North. A
struggl