gon or inspired enthusiasm are equally without foundation. No doubt he could contribute some facts of interest, but the widely circulated Travels of Farnham were in the field;[1] Greenhow's exhaustive history was being distributed as a public document; Fremont was under commission to explore the Rockies; the Wilkes Exploring Expedition had explored the Columbia River and Puget Sound Regions two years earlier, and Sub-Indian Agent White was writing frequent reports to his superiors at Washington. The ignorance and indifference of the government and the public are fictions of a later day.
In such investigation of the newspapers as I have been able to make I have found just one news item about Whitman's journey east, outside of the missionary intelligence of two or three religious papers which refer to his visit to Boston. Whitman called on Horace Greeley in the last part of March and gave him some account of the conditions in Oregon and of his journey. There is not a word in the interview that indicates that there was any crisis in Oregon affairs, that he had a political errand, or wished to stir up public sentiment on Oregon.[2] Here was a unique opportu-
- ↑ Travels in the Great Western Prairies, the Anahuac and Rocky Mountains and in the Oregon Territory, by T. J. Farnham, New York, 1843. Besides Farnham's Travels there were Samuel Parker's Journal of an Exploring Tour beyond the Rocky Mountains, of which 15,000 copies were sold in a few years after its publication in 1838. Wyeth's Memoir, included in Cushing's Report, in 1839, of which 10,000 extra copies were printed, and J. K. Townsend's Narrative of a Journey across the Rocky Mountains, 1839. On the general question of the amount of public information on Oregon, see Bancroft's Oregon, 1, 349–383, and Greenhow, Oregon, 356–389.
- ↑ This interesting description of Whitman's appearance and travels is too long to quote in full. He impressed Greeley as a "noble pioneer, … a man fitted to be a chief in rearing a moral Empire among the wild men of the wilderness. … He brings information that the settlers in the Willamette are doing well, that the Americans are building a town at the falls of the Willamette." Then follows an item in regard to members of Farnham's party and Whitman's itinerary. "We give the hardy and self-denying pioneer a hearty welcome to his native land." N. Y. Weekly Tribune, Mar. 30, 1843. This item was copied into the Cleveland Herald of April 6. In the same issue appeared three columns of extracts from the N. Y. Tribune's cheap edition of Farnham's Travels. Any one can draw correct conclusions as to the relative strength of these two influences in arousing public interest.
