Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 20.pdf/260

This page has been validated.
244
Katharine B. Judson

more than doubtful. She made the application. however, through the correct channels, and permission was received "as requested." But on searching the volumes through the 1840s, she found that in the San Juan controversy, many papers belonging to the Treaty of 1846 had been taken out of their proper volumes and used as enclosures in later ones. Many important records were missing upon reaching the end of the 1846 records. She, therefore, in trepidation, asked permission of the official in charge of this special "government room,"—not the usual Round Room—if the permission from the Foreign Office would allow her to look through later volumes for the missing papers of the 1840s. He answered "No," very courteously, but very positively, adding he would look up the permit. With an amazed face he then returned and reported that the Foreign Office had failed to set a date of limitation upon the permit and therefore I was free to search to present date if I chose. He added that it was the first time he had ever known the Foreign Office to make such a mistake—but Oregon history will profit by it.

In addition to these unusual privileges. the writer had the permission of the late Lord Strathcona, Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, to search the archives of the Hudson's Bay Company, and many a day she spent in His Lordship's unoccupied office in Lime Street. searching through the records, journals, reports and correspondence, of the famous old English company. The results given here are rather more as an advance paper upon the history now being written by her, than as a final settlement of the whole question.

It must be remembered, in all Oregon history, that the bitterness of America towards Great Britain was intense. Not only was the Revolution fought on American soil, with suffering unknown to the English people, many of whom did not approve of this war by their foreign king, but the hatred following that had not died out before the War of 1812 was on, and in this war, as in the other, the Indians had joined the more tactful British rather than the aggressive Americans