XXX
A PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT
1843
CAPTAIN COUCH, sent out by the Cushings of Newburyport, opened trade with the Sandwich Islands and sailed his brig up the Willamette. American sentiment began to crystallize. The handful of settlers had long looked with jealous eye on the commercial aristocracy of the Columbia. Now, hither into their midst came the democratic corner grocery, with its tea and flour and Yankee notions, with its free discussions, long-spun yarns, and political caucus.
The immigrants of 1842, winding over the pack-trails of Mt. Hood, were soon ensconced on the dry-goods box and nail-keg. "Is not the country ours?" they said. "Did not an American discover the river? Did not Lewis and Clark explore it? Did not John Jacob Astor found Astoria at the mouth of the river? Did not England admit all this when she restored Astoria after the war?" So they argued.
As early as 1829 Dr. McLoughlin had taken a claim at the Falls of the Willamette, the town-site of the future Oregon City. "I may want it for a home in my old age," he said, thinking of that future far-away time when he might be too old to serve the Hudson's Bay Company. Already some adventurous American had jumped his claim to a mill-site on an island at the Falls. Now the immigrants had come, the doctor sur-
