So the time passed until the fall of 1842, when Elijah White, an Indian agent for the Government in the Northwest, brought a party of Americans, men, women and children, numbering one hundred and twenty, safely through to Waiilatpui. In this company was a more than usually intelligent, well-informed Christian gentleman, destined to fill an important place in our story, General Amos L. Lovejoy. He was thoroughly posted in national affairs, and gave Dr. Whitman his first intimation of the probability that the Ashburton Treaty would likely come to a crisis before Congress adjourned in March, 1843. This related, as it was supposed, to the entire boundary between the United States and the English possessions. The question had been raised in 1794, "Where is 'the angle of Nova Scotia,' and where are the 'highlands between the angle and the northwest head of the Connecticut River?'" Time and again it had been before commissioners, and diplomats had many times grown eloquent in explaining, but heretofore nothing had come of it. Much was made of it, and yet it was only a dispute as to who owned some twelve thousand and twenty acres of land, much of which was of little value. Looking back now one wonders at the shortsightedness of statesmen who quarreled for forty-eight years over this garden patch of rocky land in Maine, when three great states were quietly slipping away with scarcely a protest. But this arrival of recruits, and this knowledge of the political situation revealed by General Lovejoy, at once settled Dr. Whitman upon his line of duty. To Mrs. Whitman he at once explained the situation, and said he felt impelled to go to Washington. She was a missionary's wife, a courageous, true-hearted, patriotic woman, who loved and believed in her husband, and at once consented. Under the rules the local members of the Mission had to be consulted, and runners were at once dispatched to the several stations, and all responded promptly, as the demand was for their immediate presence. There was a second rule governing such cases of leave of absence, and that was the sanction, from headquarters, of the American Board in Boston. But in this emergency Dr. Whitman preferred to take all the responsibility and cut the red tape. Dr. Eells, one of the noblest of the old Missionaries, writes an account of that conference, and it is all the more valuable from the fact that he was opposed to the enterprise. Dr. Eells says: "The purpose of Dr. Whitman was fixed. In his estimation the saving of Oregon to the United Spates was of paramount importance, and he would make the attempt to do so, even if he had to withdraw from the Mission in order to accomplish his purpose. In reply to considerations intended to hold Dr. Whitman to his assigned work, he said: 'I am not expatriated by becoming a missionary.' "The idea of his withdrawal could not be entertained. Therefore, to retain him in the Mission, a vote to approve of his making this perilous endeavor prevailed."