It is not clear to what specific documents Pratt referred. Pratt was in Washington DC in the spring of 1844 to present a petition to Congress, and he likely heard and read much of what members of Congress discussed in relation to Oregon. In the mid-1840s there was a plethora of commentary about Oregon, both pessimistic and positive, in Congress and in the press. Some writers discussed the difficulties of navigating Oregon’s coast and river systems, while others described the Oregon country as inaccessible from land and sea. The British press, likely in efforts to dissuade American settlement in Oregon, and American journalists such as Horace Greeley often commented on the difficulties of overland travel, the presence of “savage Indian tribes,” and the poor climate and agricultural lands. The “good harbor” likely refers to Puget Sound and other areas within the Strait of Juan de Fuca. (Letters from Orson Hyde, 25 and 26 Apr. 1844; Council of Fifty, “Record,” 13 May 1844; Unruh, Plains Across, 4–6, 10–14; Speech of Mr. Linn, of Missouri, 9–11; see also, for example, Washington Irving, The Rocky Mountains; or, Scenes, Incidents, and Adventures in the Far West; Digested from the Journal of Captain B. L. E. Bonneville, of the Army of the United States, and Illustrated from Various Other Sources, 2 vols. [Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1843]; Thomas J. Farnham, Travels in the Great Western Prairies, the Anahuac and Rocky Mountains, and in the Oregon Territory, 2 vols. [London: Richard Bentley, 1843]; and Thomas J. Farnham, History of Oregon Territory, It Being a Demonstration of the Title of These United States of North America to the Same [New York: J. Winchester, New World Press, 1844].)

Unruh, John D., Jr. The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840–60. Paperback ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982.

Speech of Mr. Linn, of Missouri, in Reply to Mr. McDuffie, on the Oregon Bill: Delivered in the Senate of the United States, January 26, 1843. Washington DC: Globe, 1843.