Disagreement as to The commissioners held six formal meetings, the last of which was on December 3, 1857, when they finally disagreed. The British commissioner proposed to refer their differences to the two governments for adjustment. Mr. Campbell declined to join in such a reference, saying that each commissioner would of course make a report to his own government. er's Views. While their conferences were in progress the British Commission- commissioners discussed their differences in a formal correspondence, which disclosed the points at issue and the various arguments by which each side supported its claim-the United States to the Canal de Haro and Great Britain to Rosario Strait. The argument of the British commissioner was that there was but one navigable channel between the continent and Vancouver's Island at the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude, namely, the Gulf of Georgia, and that in its waters would be found the initial point of boundary. Carrying this line to the south to about 48° 45', the waters were studded with islands, through which it was generally admitted that two navigable passages were to be found. One, designated the Rosario Strait, was situated near the continent. The other, called Canal de Arro, was found 66 nearer to Vancouver's Island." The wording of the treaty provided that the channel forming the boundary line should possess three characteristics: (1) It should separate the continent from Vancouver's Island; (2) it should admit of the boundary line being carried through it in a southerly direction; (3) it should be a navigable channel. The British commissioner admitted that the Canal de Haro answered to the third requirement, though, from the rapidity and variableness of its current and its lack of anchorages, it would, he maintained, generally be avoided by sailing vessels, which would prefer the Rosario Strait, which had, he said, been used by the vessels of the Hudson's Bay Company since 1825. But the Canal de Haro did not, he argued, meet the other two requirements of the treaty. It did not separate the continent from Vancouver's Island, the continent having already been separated from that island by another navigable channel, the Rosario Strait. Further, he argued, a line drawn through the Canal de Haro must proceed for some distance in a westerly direction, while the treaty required that the line should run in a southerly direction. He also maintained that, although there were islands east of the Rosario Strait, yet between them and the continent there was no navigable channel. American Commissioner's Views. The argument of the American commissioner was that, although there were several navigable channels connecting the Gulf of Georgia with the Straits of Fuca, the Canal de Haro was preeminent in width, depth, and volume of water, and was the one usually designated on the maps in use at the time the treaty was under consideration. Other navigable channels merely separated groups of islands from each other; the Canal de Haro, since it washed the shores of Vancouver's Island, was the only one that separated the continent from that island. The objection that the Canal de Haro would not at some places carry the boundary line southerly was declared to be groundless. It was maintained that the word "southerly" was not used in a strict nautical sense, but as opposed to northerly, and it was pointed out that the word "southerly" was applied in the treaty to the Straits of Fuca as well as to the unnamed channel. Passing from the geographical question to the intention of the treaty, Mr. Campbell argued that it was conclusively shown by contemporary evidence that the Canal de Haro was the channel proposed by Great Britain and accepted by the United States; and in this relation he referred to the report of Mr. McLane to Mr. Buchanan, of May 18, 1846, to the submission of this report by President Polk with the treaty to the Senate, and to Mr. Benton's speech. The only claim, said Mr. Campbell, that he had been able to find on the part of the British Government that Rosario Strait was the channel was in the note of Mr. Crampton to Mr. Buchanan, of January 13, 1848, in which it was suggested that the channel intended by the treaty was the nameless channel marked on the chart of Vancouver. In making this suggestion, Mr. Crampton had observed that, as it was believed that this channel was the only one in that part of the gulf that had been surveyed and used, it "seemed natural to suppose" that the negotiators of the Oregon convention, in employing the word "channel," had that particular channel in view. Mr. Crampton did not attempt to assert that the Rosario Strait was the channel intended in the treaty, or that the "peculiar wording" of the treaty required, as the British commissioner had contended, the adoption of that channel. Moreover, the claim that it was the only channel that had been surveyed and used was obviously erroneous, since the Canal de Haro had been surveyed and used by the Spanish Government as well as by the Government of the United States. As to the intention of the treaty, the British British Commissioncommissioner replied that Mr. McLane and Mr. er's Reply. Benton were not the actual negotiators of the treaty; that Mr. McLane merely said that the proposition which he described would "most probably" be made; that, in reality, it was not made, and that the fact that no channel was named in the treaty was evidence that the Canal de Haro was not intended. To show that the Canal de Haro could not have been the only channel considered in the United States as the true channel at and after the making of the treaty, the British commissioner cited a map of Oregon and Upper California (published in the city of Washington in 1848) "drawn by Charles Preuss, under the order of the Senate of the United States," in which the boundary line ran through the Rosario Strait; also "a diagram of a portion of Oregon Territory," by the surveyor general of Oregon, dated October 21, 1852, in which the same line was laid down. The British commissioner further said that his own opinion as to the true line had been confirmed by his having been officially informed "by high and competent authority" that Rosario Strait was the channel contemplated by the British Government in the treaty. The "authority" referred to, as was finally disclosed, was the Earl of Clarendon, the British foreign secretary. American Commissioner's Answer. As The American commissioner answered that Preuss's map was inaccurate, and was not made with reference to the boundary ques tion, and that while it did not draw the line through the Canal de Haro, neither did it draw it through the Rosario Strait. to the map of the surveyor-general of Oregon, it bore no official relation to the boundary question. The American commissioner referred to a map published by Arrowsmith in London in 1849, in which the Canal de Haro was given as the boundary. The American commissioner also adverted to the fact that the statement of the Earl of Clarendon, adduced by the British commissioner, did not disclose the authority on which it was based. mise. The British commissioner finally offered to Rejection of Compro- treat the Gulf of Georgia as one channel, and all the channels between the islands lying between that gulf and the Straits of Fuca as one channel, and to make the boundary run through the middle of it, so far as the islands would permit, so as to give the island of San Juan |