Such

grassy valleys, snow capped mountains, clear streams and fountains, coves and parks, hot and warm springs, mineral waters of many varieties, salt in the solid and fluid state, salt lakes and even hot salt springs, wood, coal and iron. are the Rocky Mountains in the long and broad section from the head of the Rio Grande del Norte of the sunny South to the head of the Athabasca of the Frozen ocean. This ample, rich and elevated mountain region is deemed by those unacquainted with the Farthest West, to be, and to be for ever, the desolate and frozen dominion of the wild beast and the savage. On the contrary, I view it as the future seat of population and power, where man is to appear in all the moral, intellectual and physical endowments which ennoble the mountain race, and where liberty, independence, and love of virtue are to make their last stand on earth.

Thus, agriculturally, and as producing the means of human subsistence, as sustaining a population, and supplying the elements of wealth and power, as derived from the surface and the bowels of the earth, I look upon the region drained by the waters

of the Columbia as one of the valuable divisions of the North American continent.

Commercially, the advantages of Oregon will be great―far greater than any equal portion of the Atlantic States. The eastern Asiatics, who will be their chief customers, are more numerous than our customers in western Europe, more profitable to trade with, and less dangerous to quarrel with. Their articles of commerce are richer than those of Europe; they want what the Oregons will have to spare, bread and provisions, and have no systems of policy to prevent them from purchasing these necessaries of life from those who can supply them. The sea which washes their shores is every way a better sea than the Atlantic; richer in its whale and other fisheries; in the fur regions which enclose it to the north; more fortunate in the tranquillity of its character, in its freedom from storms, gulf streams and icebergs; in its perfect adaptation to steam navigation; in its intermediate or half way islands and its myriad of rich islands on its further side; in its freedom from maritime Powers on its coasts, except the American which is to grow up at the mouth of the Columbia. As

a people to trade with, as a sea to navigate, the Mongolian race of eastern Asia, and the North Pacific ocean, are far preferable to the Europeans and the Atlantic.

The effect of the arrival of the Caucasian, or White race, on the western coast of America, opposite the eastern coast of Asia, remains to be mentioned among the benefits which the settlement of the Columbia will produce; and that a benefit, not local to us, but general and universal to the human race. Since the dispersion of man upon earth, I know of no human event, past or present, which promises a greater and more beneficent change upon earth than the arrival of the van of the Caucasian race (the Celtic-Anglo-Saxon division) upon the border of the sea which washes the shore of the eastern Asia. The Mongolian, or Yellow race, is there, four hundred millions in number, spreading almost to Europe; a race once the foremost of the human family in the arts of civilization, but torpid and stationary for thousands of years. It is a race far above the Ethio

pian, or Black; above the Malay, or Brown, (if

we must admit five races,) and above the American Indian, or Red: it is a race far above all these, but still far below the White; and, like all the rest, must receive an impression from the superior race whenever they come in contact. It would seem

that the White race alone received the divine command to subdue and replenish the earth! for it is the only race that has obeyed it—the only one that hunts out new and distant lands, and even a New World, to subdue and replenish. Starting from western Asia, taking Europe for their field, and the Sun for their guide, and leaving the Mongolians behind, they arrived, after many ages, on the shores of the Atlantic, which they lit up with the lights of science and religion, and adorned with the useful and the elegant arts. Three and a half centuries ago, this race, in obedience to the great command, arrived in the New World, and found new lands to subdue and replenish. For a long time it was confined to the border of the new field (I now mean the CelticAnglo-Saxon division); and even fourscore years ago the philosophic Burke was considered a rash man because he said the English colonists would

top the Alleganies, and descend into the valley of the Mississippi, and occupy without parchment if the Crown refused to make grants of land. What was considered a rash declaration eighty years ago is old history, in our young country, at this day. Thirty years ago I said the same thing of the Rocky Mountains and the Columbia: it was ridiculed then; it is becoming history to-day. The venerable Mr. Macon has often told me that he remembered a line low down in North Carolina, fixed by a royal governor as a boundary between the Whites and the Indians: where is that boundary now? The van of the Caucasian race now top the Rocky Mountains, and spread down to the shores of the Pacific. In a few years a great population will grow up there, luminous with the accumulated lights of European and American civilization. Their presence in such a position cannot be without its influence upon eastern Asia. The sun of civilization must shine across the sea: socially and commercially the van of the Caucasians and the rear of the Mongolians must intermix. They must talk together, and trade together, and marry together. Commerce is