Documents.
313
tains, which run through it; a sandy, rocky tract not capable of supporting- a stationary agricultural population, and only to be safely traversed by persons in considerable numbers. Of the validity of our claims for this territory, I have not carefully informed myself, but all past history gives its testimony against the probable success of any attempt to combine into one political whole two great members thus disjoined. Nature interposes her veto by rearing her rocky walls and spreading out her dreary wastes of separation. She forbids the bans of such a union, and in this point of view alone I should hold our claim upon Oregon to be dearly maintained at the cost of one dollar of treasure or one drop of blood.
