206 Mackenzie’s Voyages

transference of their merchandise from the ship Tonquin to
their warehouse. Alexander Mackay, by the way, who had
been Mackenzie’s foreman, was one of the partners in the
American company and had sailed north on the ill-fated
Tonquin, 5 June. Mackay was the first to fall under the
war-clubs of the attackers when the ship was captured by the
Indians in Clayoquot Sound.

It is not necessary to mention in detail the establishment
of all the forts and communities in the territory west of the
Rockies and north of the Columbia over an area close on to
half a million square miles, between the years 1793 and
1846 when the Oregon Treaty finally settled the boundary
between the United States and the British possessions.

With the acquisition from France in 1803 of the Louisiana
territory extending from the Mississippi to the Pacific and
from New Spain indefinitely northward, the United States
had acquired not only a way to the Pacific, but a problem as
well, that culminated in the famous agitation which had
for its slogan “Fifty-Four-Forty-or-Fight.” Before the
Louisiana Purchase the United States was debarred by half
a continent from access to the Pacific.

Russia, it will be recalled, had sent out Bering to explore
the American coast, and his southern landfall seems to
have become the limit of Russia’s advance, though in
the course of certain negotiations with the United States
she actually laid claim to all the coast as far down as the
Columbia River. However, her southern boundary was
fixed at 54° 40’ north, in a treaty with the United States in
1824, and a similar treaty with Britain named the same
boundary as that which separates Alaska from Canada to-
day, beginning at 54° 4.0’ north.

Before the Oregon dispute arose, Russia had been
eliminated by the above treaty, and Spain by the Florida