mise. This award was protested against by the United States, was not looked upon as very satisfactory by Great Britain, and by joint consent was repudiated in 1829. Further geographical explorations by Col. Mudge and Mr. Featherstonhaugh, in 1841, went far to prove the highlands claimed by the British to be entirely consistent with the definition in the Treaty, whilst the imaginary highlands claimed by the United States were found to be in a low marshy plain. Meantime, however, the American settlers were pushing their way North, the Maine people were bent upon conquest and occupation; and Lord Ashburton, an eminent London merchant, who had been a few years previously raised to the peerage by his friend Sir Robert Peel, was sent out to settle the affair as well as total inexperience (which, perhaps, under the circumstances, was an advantage) would allow him; but to settle it somehow. His Lordship well understood the purport of his mission, which was not to haggle about such trivial matters as territorial rights and nationalities, but to get rid of an embarrassing dispute. The consequence was that, finding the Americans very obstinate, and using very "tall language" about war, which they know is always a "settler" for the Britisher, he incontinently conceded all they demanded, which fixed the 49th parallel as the line of boundary, and signed the Treaty of Washington, May, 1842, which at the time was justly described as "a capitulation." What exasperates the feeling of annoy. ance and indignity occasioned by this Diplomatic fiasco, is the fact, which oozed out afterwards, that,

at the time, there actually existed in the Foreign Office at Paris a map of North America which had been referred to by Franklin, the negociator on the part of the United States of the Treaty of Versailles, as containing "a strong red line" marking the boundary, and which proved to be identical with the very line which we had claimed. Of this map it is more creditable to the 'cuteness than the honesty of the United States, to know that there were some who were engaged in the negociations. with Lord Ashburton who were aware of its existence and its import.

As we have already intimated, a very considerable portion of the boundary agreed upon by the Ashburton Treaty, namely, all that portion running westward from the Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains, remains to this day unsurveyed. It was amongst the instructions to the British Commissioners to endeavour to have this matter arranged; but when they mentioned it at one of the conferences, the American Commissioners replied that it "was a matter for administrative action, and did not require to be dealt with by a treaty provision."

The question of the Boundary on the East of the Rocky Mountains, so disastrously dealt with by Lord Ashburton, has no legitimate connection with the the question of the North-Western Boundary, now in litigation, further than in the fact that in the course of negociations on the latter subject, the fatal 49th parallel has been extended into it. At the time of the Treaty of Versailles, the United States had no possessions west of

the Rocky Mountains, nor laid claim to any;-the Rocky Mountains being the boundary, running north and south, which limited the States on the western side. It was not until thirty years afterwards, namely, about the period of the Congress at Ghent, that any pretensions of the kind were put forward; and then upon the distinct, and somewhat inconsistent grounds,-first, of discovery and occupation, and secondly, of treaty concessions from France in 1803, and Spain in 1819. To go at any length into the controversies which have taken place under these heads, as bearing upon an abstract title, would not be of any use in regard to our present purpose, which has to deal with the actual position of the dispute, as affected by treaty arrangements made within the last sixty years. A brief statement of the pretensions on either side, will, however, be admissible, as tending to show the general bearings of the case, and the inducements to the arrangements made from time to time.

The claims of Great Britain to the large tract of territory on the western coast of North America, extending from California on the south to the Russian settlements on the north, date from the operations of Sir Francis Drake, who, in 1579, discovered the land in or about the 48th parallel, and coasted down to about the 30th parallel, when, as is recorded, he formally accepted the sovereignty from the natives, for the use of the Queen of England, and erected a pillar bearing an inscription commemorative of the act of cession. He gave the territory the name of New Albion, by which it con

tinued to be called till about the year 1832, when it was called Oregon, after a supposed ancient name of the Columbia river, which traversed part of it. Very little attention, however, was paid to these possessions during the two centuries which elapsed till 1792, when Vancouver surveyed the coast, and took possession of the whole country, in the name of the King of Great Britain, on the 4th June, being the anniversary of His Majesty's birthday.

The United States' claim by occupancy, which is that upon which they chiefly rely, and for all practical purposes the only one which we need notice, is based upon the voyage of one Gray, who, on the 11th May, 1792, forced the passage of the river, in a merchant ship called the Columbia, after which he called the river, and sailed up it fifteen miles, when he could get no further, having missed the main channel. He then bent his way back, and on the 20th of the same month crossed the bar and regained the Pacific. It is on this small incident that the Americans have pretended to claim the River Columbia, and all the tract of country watered by it on either side. In opposition to this pretension it is held, first, that a private vessel cannot claim newly discovered territories in the name of a Sovereign State; and, secondly, that although by the Law of Nations the discovery and occupancy of a territory gives also a property in the rivers and waters within it, the converse position, that the discovery and occupancy of a river gives a title to the country drained by it, is not true. On the whole, so far as discovery and occupancy of this river itself goes, the

facts would seem to be in favour of the British claim, -inasmuch as Lord Broughton, who served under Vancouver's command, entered the mouth of the river on the 20th October, 1792, and in boats made his way up twenty miles further than Gray had gone, and took possession in the name of the King of Great Britain.

An irregular joint occupancy of the territory, known as New Albion, continued till the year 1818, though Great Britain never by any act surrendered her sovereignty over the whole, such as it had existed from the time of Drake. In that year, the subject having been under discussion ever since the meeting of the Congress of Ghent, conferences were held in London between the representatives of the two Governments, in the course of which the American Plenipotentary admitted "that the United States did not claim a perfect right to any portion of the territory west of the Rocky Mountains," and the British Plenipotentiary professed that his Government did not pretend to any exclusive right. In the result a convention was signed, the third Article of which provided as follows:-"That any country that may be claimed by either party on the northwest coast of America, westward of the Rocky Mountains, shall, together with its harbours, bays, creeks, and the navigation of all the rivers within the same, be free and open for the term of ten years from the date of the present convention, to the vessels, citizens and subjects of the two powers; it being well understood that this agreement is not to be construed to the prejudice of any claim which either