GEORGE H. HIMES, CITY HALL, PORTLAND, OREGON. _Assistant Secretary_. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ VOLUME I] SEPTEMBER, 1900 [NUMBER 3 THE QUARTERLY OF THE OREGON HISTORICAL SOCIETY. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE OREGON QUESTION. II. The conventions of 1824 and 1825 marked the formal and final withdrawal of Russia as claimant to the sovereignty of the Oregon country, or of any part of it. The convention of the former year pledged her withdrawal as claimant against the United States, that of the latter year as claimant against Great Britain. The boundaries of the territories in question were thus finally determined, and the parties to the dispute were reduced to the two nations by whom the question at issue was ultimately to be decided. It was a great step taken toward settlement when the claims of all nations but Great Britain and the United States were eliminated from the question. But elimination of claims was not the only respect in which progress towards settlement had been made during the period which closed with the convention between Great Britain and Russia. The ten years between the treaty of Ghent and this convention show a substantial approach to agreement between Great Britain and America. The events of the year 1818 in particular mark this approach. This year, so important in the history of the relations between Great Britain and America, opened with the issue of the order of January 26 by the British government for the restitution of Fort George, the post at the mouth of the Columbia, which, under the name of Astoria, had been taken possession of by the British early in the late war. This order, which was formally carried out in October of that year, gains in significance the more closely the whole history of the case is examined. Astoria, it will be remembered, was the name of the trading post established in 1811 by the Pacific Fur Company, of which John Jacob Astor, of New York, was founder and chief stockholder. It was nominally an American company, and was established under the American flag; but of the party of thirty-three that landed April 12, 1811, to form the settlement, all except three are said to have been British subjects. On the twelfth day of November, 1813, in the absence of Mr. Astor’s agent, who was an American, Mr. McDougall, his sub-agent, a British subject, representing himself and the other partners present, likewise British subjects, signed the bills of sale, and delivered up Astoria to the Northwest Company, a British company. One month later, Captain Black, of the British navy, in the sloop-of-war, Racoon, arrived in the Columbia, and