short route westward from Europe to the gems, the spices, and other riches of Asia. The maritime and overland expeditions when they are viewed as a whole are best conceived of as but the offshoots of that great tidal wave of westward movement which was led by the spirit of discovery at the close of the fifteenth century and the opening of the sixteenth round the world. Columbus received this spirit in largest measure and initiated the movement which Magellan completed in its central sweep. The influence that carried these was the predominant one of that age. It was the age of the Renaissance, and the "greatest fruit of Renaissance was America.' The desire for adventure as a phase of the Renaissance possessed many of the greatest men of the time. It had its culminating height in a few decades before and after the opening of the sixteenth century, but wave succeeding wave bore intrepid explorers into every recess of the North American continent, intent mainly on finding a passage through to make a short cut to Asia. When in the middle of this century Robert McClure's voyage relegated this idea of a northern passage to the limbo of the impracticable, the open polar sea slipped into its place as an object in the pursuit of which daring spirits could find a congenial sphere of action for a now inbred race trait. Andree is the present day representative hero in this line of exploits. The discovery and the exploration of the Oregon country was but the last phase of the discovery of America. By the voyages of Perez, Heceta and Bodega, of Cook and Vancouver, of Kendrick and Gray, all revealing features of the North Pacific coast, the discovery of America was fairly complete.

So far the exploration of the Oregon Country has been connected with that grand display of activity in adventure during the period of the Renaissance, Suppose we trace this phase of Oregon History just one step farther into still wider relations. America was reached independently along three different highways. The Northmen from their training courses on the Baltic and North Seas by easy advances reached the Faroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland, when they were taken in tow by the Arctic Current and brought down the eastern shore of this continent. Cabral in 1500 following along the route of south-westward exploration off the coast of Africa was carried by the Equatorial current and the hurricanes along its track to the shores of Brazil. Columbus, too, had a natural highway westward in the trade

winds, but his voyage was not a mere experimental adventure nor an accident. It was based upon a line of geographical speculation which the desire for direct trade with India brought to a test. This speculation which was transformed into a fixed idea in the mind of Columbus had its inception in general inquiries into the geographical relations of western Europe to eastern Asia. These inquiries followed as a matter of course upon the great Greek discovery of the sphericity of the earth. They arose in the time of Pythagoras; received new stimulus under the Roman empire; were little considered in the Middle Ages; but when in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the attention of Europe, because of commercial interests, became strongly directed towards India these inquiries were renewed with new vigor and were in the air during the youth of Columbus.

These three independent lines of exploration westward to America, one followed by the Northmen, one by Columbus, and one by Cabral were but radiating branches of a more primal westward movement. In the eastern end of the Mediterranean basin European civilization had its beginning. The Archipelago of this basin gave man his first important lessons in navigation. He became trained in the use of wings on the sea, while his power of locomotion on land was yet for a long time to remain in a rudimentary condition.

The expanding desires of the Phoenicians and Greeks led them on beyond their horizon. It was into the west, across the great sea, that the merchant was free to push his ventures and the colony to found its new city state. This first phase of the primal westward movement was exploration in a field to them vast and romantic. It gave them experience in navigation and hope of discoveries. From these earliest times human activity has been stimulated by westward adventure. Westward movement became an instinctive trait with daring and dauntless Europeans. The conditions of nature have thus drawn the European towards the setting sun as the needle is drawn towards the pole.

The logical faculty of the Greeks reinforced experimental adventure in developing this westward impulse. Having once conceived of the earth as a sphere in space, it was inevitable that the principle of symmetry with them should lead to the conjecture of a plurality of habitable continents. Aristotle was appar

ently the first to construct a geographical theory involving the possible existence of America. He surmised that the Old World might be only one of several greater or lesser continents emerging from the ocean. One of his geographical phantoms in the shape of a gigantic Antarctic continent remained on the maps in various forms until the navigator, James Cook, in the last quarter of the last century reduced it and established it as a certainty.

Aristotle, notwithstanding his conjecture to the contrary, leaned to the idea that there was only one continent in the northern hemisphere, and did not disapprove of the notion that India could be reached by sailing west from Spain. Thus early was the Columbian hypothesis broached.

The ancients had no accurate knowledge either of the extent of the circumference of the earth or of the size of the eastern land hemisphere. Under the influence of the growing desire to reach Asia by sailing west and of an increasing knowledge of Asia, they naturally extended the continent to the east, in their minds, and thus brought it round to within hailing distance of Spain on the west. To make a voyage west to Asia still more feasible they dotted the Atlantic with islands as convenient stepping stones.

Many influences combined to urge Europe westward in search of a new route to India. Marco Polo kindled a flame of desire for its wealth. This was not allowed to expire. As the Europeans of the fifteenth century were obliged to trade for Indian goods through the mediation of the Turks, who drove hard bargains, it required a regular shipment of three hundred thousand ducats in coin to settle the adverse balance of trade. Europe was being drained of her money. Politically also Europe was ripe for great enterprise. All the nations of western Europe were ruled by sagacious, ambitious and powerful sovereigns. Each was jealous of the advantage gained by the other.

The impulse behind the voyage of Columbus was the demand that arose out of these special economic and political conditions, and out of a general awakened state of the European mind. It was not like the last step in the discovery of America by the Northmen, an easy transit from one shore to next close by to which the restlessness of ignorant seamen alone urged.

The nascent forces of Europe that the landfall of Columbus set free could not spend themselves until all geographical mysteries had been dispelled from the surface of the earth. By the voy

age of Columbus the Europeans were precipitated upon the continent of America as upon a great barrier. They could not and would not believe that it was a barrier without one or more passages through it. Geographers for two thousand years had suggested only islands as stepping stones in the regions of the newly found lands. And moreover, with all the bays and inlets of the North American continent it was hard to prove that their traditional geography was wrong. With the South American continent the matter stood differently. Its almost unbroken outline made it easy to prove the non-existence of a passage. As South America did not stand in their way for a short direct route to India in the higher northern latitude it was easy to concede its integrity. Not so with North America. It stood directly in their way. For nearly three hundred years did they search for a passage through it. And still longer were attempts made to find a feasible route round it on the north.

One of their leading motives in searching for a short cut to India had been to share in its abundance of gold and silver. The large sums of treasure so easily obtained in Mexico and Peru only strengthened the desire and fired the imagination so that the temptation connected with a possible find of gold ruined many expeditions for a hundred years.

Antilia, the largest and most famous of the fabulous islands with which the medieval maps swarmed, was otherwise called the Island of Seven Cities. Cities had been found in Mexico and Peru. Vague and exaggerated rumors, with Zuni pueblos as a basis, led to many a wild goose search for the treasures of the Seven Cities.

It was while prosecuting maritime and overland expeditions in search of a northwest passage, or for stores of gold and silver to match those of Peru, or for the cities of Quivira that the outlines of the North American continent were developed. The Pacific Northwest was, with the exception of the extreme northern portion of the continent, the last to be explored. Under the impulses given by these three motives, either acting separately or combined in various proportions, expeditions were projected along converging lines towards the Oregon Country. Not until near the close of the eighteenth century was there any large admixture of the purely scientific spirit of geographical discovery. Commerce in the line of fur trade was not an object until 1785.

The courses taken in the explorations and the different rates of progress along each line are to be explained as in the first trans-Atlantic passages by references to the physical conditions that constituted facilitating means of approach. The sea and inland water ways were alone the natural highways. The lines of access to this region must follow them.

The North American continent thus stood in the way of navigators who were under the influence of a fixed idea that it was a string of islands. They would not recognize it as a continent.

The great central westward moving tidal wave of discovery was passed by Columbus and Magellan round the world. For three hundred years off-shoots from it break upon the North American continent. As a wave strikes a bold headland, buttressed with rocks and indented by recesses, it breaks around the rocks and currents follow up the length of the recesses; in that way waves following in the wake of the great discoveries of the Columbian era break upon this continent.

We see one line of advance leaping the barrier in Mexico and turned and carried by Cortes himself up the shores of Lower California. It had its impetus from the energy and ambition of Spain. When that is paralyzed we see the advance along this line weaken and recede. The presence of Sir Francis Drake near San Francisco bay indicates that England is feeling the stir of might. In her mortal rivalry with Spain she is being led on to a career of world colonization. Another head of an advancing column comes up toward Oregon by tracing the routes of Cabeza De Vaca, De Soto and Coronado; with these the spur is gold and treasure cities. Through the Hudson strait and bay Frobisher, Davis, Hudson, Baffin and the agents of the Hudson's Bay Company come on. The St. Lawrence River and the great Lakes lead Champlain, La Salle and Verendrye. The last reaches the base of the Rocky Mountains. The representatives of the British nation, agents of the Northwest Fur Company, are barely beaten by the Americans down the Columbia River route. Meanwhile Peter the Great and Catherine of Russia had through valiant representatives turned the north of Europe, and traversed Siberia. Led on by Behring they approach Oregon from the north.

Oregon history furnishes a fine vantage-ground for tracing the progress of this great westward world movement. It affords