McDougall has been roundly denounced for selling out in this manner. Astor himself considered it disgraceful. But it is probable that in the end, this procedure was the best, and there is nothing to indicate that McDougall acted in bad faith. The Astoria enterprise was ended. It had been well planned, but circumstances were against it. It did not expire in a blaze of glory to make the close romantic, but merged into the North-west Company as one day melts into another, and for years thereafter this company was the dominant power of the whole region. But while the scheme as a fur-trading venture had failed, as a part of the history of breaking the Wilderness it takes a front place. Had those in authority then fully appreciated the importance of the proceedings of the Pacific Fur Company to the future of the United States, they would have bent their energies to its successful promotion instead of taking but a languid interest. Nevertheless the bearing of the disastrous operations of the Pacific Fur Company on the boundary of Louisiana and the claims of the United States in the Oregon country was of the first importance. When the treaty concluding the war was signed, December 24, 1814, it stipulated that all territory and all places taken from either party, with a few exceptions, were to be restored, and on this basis, though the Oregon country was not mentioned, the United States claimed Astoria. But the British, while finally agreeing to yield the post, although they claimed it had never been booty of war, refused to allow any right of possession of the region to go with it, asserting that Astoria had merely been established in British territory. Captain Biddle in the United States ship _Ontario_ took formal possession August 9, 1818, and somewhat later J. B. Prevost went there on the British ship _Blossom_ and received the actual transfer as agent for the United States. Great Britain was firm in its claim for the mouth of the Columbia and as no settlement could be reached it was agreed, October 20, 1818, that for a period of ten years the whole region eastward to the Rocky Mountains should remain free and open to both nations. East of the Rocky Mountains the forty-ninth parallel was at the same time adopted as the division between Louisiana and British territory, an adjustment which had nearly been arrived at eleven years earlier. [Illustration: An Arizona Thistle. Photograph by F. S. Dellenbaugh.]