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British Case, pp. 11, 32.

writes De Eliza, "we could not find bottom with a line of forty fathoms." "Proximo á las islas, no se encuentra fondo con 40 brazas.” The British Case assigns in like manner an undue prominence to the trade in the Vancouver waters prior to the treaty of 1846. As to general commerce, there was none. As to settlements, properly so called, there could be none; for under the British treaty with Spain, and the treaty of non-occupation between the United States and Great Britain, impliedly at least, there could be no grants or holdings of territory by individuals or companies of either party. The American voyages on the northwest coast were entirely broken up by the maritime orders and acts of England which preceded the war of 1812; and the American fur-trade never recovered from the effects of that war. The trade became a monopoly of the Hudson's Bay Company, and that company boasted officially that "they compelled the Americans one by one to withdraw from the contest." The United States acknowledge that the boast was true. At rare intervals of years, Americans may have entered Fuca's Straits, but a careful search fails to discover proof that even one single United States vessel

Appendix No. 67, pp. 104, 105.

sailed into those waters between the year 1810 and the [9] * arrival of the American Exploring Expedition under Wilkes in 1841. A monopoly of the trade was maintained by the Hudson's Bay Company, not against Americans only, but against all ships but their own. What then becomes of the British argument, that tradingvessels of other nations were in all that time not known to pass through the Canal de Haro?

Appendix No. 53, p. 66, l. 15.

Appendix, p. 66, 1.

18-21: No. 56, pp. 69, 73,1-27, No. 39, P.

70, p. 72. 1. 20-40, p.

The Hudson's Bay Company was once a company of commercial importance, as well as of political influence, But the hunting ground over which it ranged was enormously wide, stretching from Labrador to California and to the Russian settlements in northwestern America. They could spare very little of their limited resources for the waters around San Juan Island. Their leading settlement in the West, until 1843, was at Fort Vancouver on Columbia River. Of shipping in their employ, nothing is heard for many years, except of one small steamer, the Beaver, and of one small schooner, the Cadboro. Wilkes in 1841 met only the Beaver. These vessels were accustomed twice a year to make the trip from. Fort Vancouver to the various posts, to distribute supplies and to collect furs. If in these trips they chose to pass through the Fidalgo-Rosario channel, rather than the Canal de Haro, the British Case has omitted to state the reason of the choice. In the semi-annual trip from Fort Vancouver to the trading posts, the first one that was visited British Case, p 51, Was Nisqually, at the head of Puget Sound. A vessel sailing from that part of the United States to Fraser's River / would naturally pass through the Fidalgo-Rosario channel. To have taken any other would have been circuitous. A geographical sketch is annexed, from which the reason will appear why the vessels on these trips passed through the so-called Rosario Straits; not because it was the great channel from the Straits of Juan de Fuca to the north, but because it was the shortest passage between Nisqually in Puget Sound and Fort Langley on Fraser's River. The return voyage, when there was no need of touching at Nisqually, was sometimes made by the Channel of Haro.

76.

p. 48.

Map N.

Appendix No. 53, p. 66.

*

[10] "There were no vessels engaged in those waters, writes Rear-Admiral Wilkes of his visit to them in 1841, "except the small and very inefficient steamer, called the Beaver, commanded by Captain McNeill, who spoke of it [the Strait of Haro]

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to me as the best passage, although he was obliged to pass through the

Rosario passage."

British Case, p. 19.

Again, in narrating the survey of the Haro channel by the United States exploring expedition, in 1841, the British Case shapes the narrative so as to give the impression that the American expedition regarded the so-called straits of Rosario as superior to the Haro, while the opposite is the truth. Commodore Wilkes, who commanded the expedition, detached a subordinate officer in the Vincennes to survey the channels among the islands of the archipelago; he reserved for himself the more important but less difficult office of surveying the channel of Haro.

British Case, p. 26.

On the 26th page of the British Case it is asserted that the late Mr. Daniel Webster stated in the Senate of the United States that the great aim of the United States in 1846 was to establish the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude as the line of boundary on the western side of the Rocky Mountains, "not to be departed from for any line further south on the continent."

The inference drawn from this is, that Mr. Webster demanded the line of the parallel of 49° for "the continent" only, and was indifferent as to "the islands."

Mr. Webster was not at that time a member of the Government of the United States, but the leader of the political minority in the Senate, which opposed the administration of that day. The United States, therefore, may, without questioning the great authority of his name, deny that he is to be received as an interpreter of the views of the cabinet which negotiated the treaty of 1846. It may, however, surprise the Imperial Arbitrator to learn that Mr. Webster not only did not entertain the opinions attributed to him, but expressed himself in a sense exactly the reverse.

[11] *Some members of the Senate insisted on the parallel of 54° 40′ as the American boundary; Mr. Webster declared himself content with the parallel of 49. But his words were absolute. The British Case puts words into his mouth which he never uttered. What Mr. Webster said was, that the line of 49° was "not to be departed from for any line further south." The words "on the continent" are an interpolation made by the British Case. In the same debate and on the same day Mr. Webster, to guard against misrepresentation, observed with great solemnity: "The Senate will do me the justice to allow, that I said as plainly as I could speak, or put down Appendix No. 65, words in writing, that England must not expect anything PP. 102, 103. south of forty-nine degrees.”

pp.

British Case.

Map No. 5.

The Government of Her Britannic Majesty includes in the charts annexed to its Case a map of Oregon and Upper California drawn by one Preuss, and yet in its printed Case there is not one single word explaining why the map has been produced. The United States know only that on a former occasion Captain, now Admiral Prevost, the British Boundary Commissioner, wrote of it," Appendix No. 70, in his official character, to the American Boundary Commis- P. 109, L. 1-4. sioner: "I beg you to understand that I do not bring this map forward as any authority for the line of boundary."

Forty years ago the mountain ranges and upland plains from which the water flows to the Gulf of California, or is lost in inland seas, still remained as little known as the head springs of the Congo and of the Nile. Frémont had thrice penetrated those regions, once or more with Preuss in his service as draughtsman. On the return of Frémont from his third expedition, the Senate of the United States, although he was

not then in the public service, instead of leaving him to seek a publisher, on the 5th and 15th of June, 1848, at the instance of Mr. Ben

ton, voted to print his geographical memoir on Upper California, [12] and the map of Oregon and California, "according to the pro

jection to be furnished by the said J. C. Frémont."

Senate Miscellane

ous Documents No,

148, 30th Congress, 1st session.

In representative governments, each branch of the legislature may order printed what it will; but the order gives no sanction to what is printed. Last winter, for example, the German Diet printed at the public cost, that the German constitution is not worth the paper it is written on. Neither Frémont nor Preuss had ever been within many hundred miles of the straits of Fuca, and Frémont himself says, "The part of the map which exhibits Oregon is chiefly copied from the works of others." The Senate never saw the map as delivered to the lithographer. The work was printed, not under the revision of officers of the Senate, but solely "subject to the revision of its author." Except for the regions which he had himself explored, Frémont abandoned the drawing of the map to Preuss, Appendix No. 51, who followed "other authorities." While Mr. Preuss was compiling his map, Mr. Bancroft, the representative of his country in London, with full authority from the President and Secretary of State of the United States, delivered to the British Government in the clearest words the declaration of his own Government that the boundary line passes through the middle of the Haro channel. Any error of Mr. Preuss was therefore perfectly harmless.

p. 62, 1, 5, 6, p. 63, 1. 9, 10.

And under any circumstances what authority could attach to a draught by Mr. Preuss? He was one of the many adventurers who throng to the United States, a mechanic, possessing no scientific culture, and holding his talent as a draughtsman at the command of any who would employ him.

The United States are unable to inform the Imperial Arbitrator what authority served as a guide to Mr. Preuss when he drew the Oregon boundary to suit British pretensions. Not Mr. Benton; his opinion was well known. Not the Senate, which is the only permanent body under our Constitution, and which, in the twenty-five years since the treaty was made, has inflexibly maintained the right of the United [13] States to the *Haro boundary. Not Mr. Buchanan, the Secretary of State, whose instructions on the Haro as the boundary, sanetioned by the President and his cabinet, date from the year in which the treaty was made. Neither could Preuss have copied the line from printed materials. No such printed materials existed at that time. A wish expressed by the British minister at Washington slumbered in the Department of State, and was known only to the President and his cabinet.

Mr. Preuss is no longer living to explain by whom he was misled. Mr. Frémont remembers that Mr. Preuss had among his materials a copy of a manuscript map of the northwest territory by the Hudson's Bay Company, received from one of its officers. Be this as it may, it is enough for the United States to have shown that the map never had the sanction of any branch of their Government.

Analogous mistakes have been made in Great Britain, and under weightier authority. Pending the discussion between the two countries, Messrs. Malby & Co. of London, "manufacturers and publishers to the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge," sent out a large and splendid globe, on which they assigned to the United States by line and color the whole northwestern territory up to the latitude of 54° 40′.

To treat mistakes like these as important is unsuited to negotiations

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