to run the boundary line through one of the channels between the Canal de Haro and Rosario Straits, dividing the islands so as to give San Juan to Great Britain and the other islands of the group to the United States. Being fully satisfied that the Canal de Haro was the channel' intended by the treaty, I declined to entertain the proposal. Captain Prevost then proposed a reference of the whole matter to our respective Governments. As I did not consider the circumstances such as to justify him in making such a proposal, I did not concur in it. I therefore reported the proceedings of the Joint Commission to the department, and Captain Prevost, upon his own responsibility, referred the question to his Government, and has not yet received any further instructions for his guidance on the subject.

"When the British Government consider the evidence brought to light, showing the intentions of the two Governments in relation to the meaning of the language of the treaty defining the boundary line between the continent and Vancouver's Island, it is but fair to presume they will direct their commissioner to adopt the Canal de Haro as the boundary channel; and in consideration of the importance of a speedy settlement of the question, it is to be hoped that they will take early action on the subject. There is no part of the boundary between the two countries, from the Pacific Ocean to the Rocky Mountains, where a demarcation of the line is more to be desired. "I have the honour to be, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

"ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL,

"Commissioner North-west Boundary Survey."

This was followed by another from the same to the same, dated " Camp Simiahmoo, Dec. 1, 1858," and enclosing the copy of a letter from the Hon. George Bancroft, in reply to inquiries as to the interpretation which was placed upon the first article of the treaty of 1846, in relation to the water boundary, by

the British Government, at the time he was Minister to London. Mr. Bancroft's letter was as follows :(1)—

"New York, June 15, 1858.

"SIR,- Your letter of May 27 has but just reached me, in consequence of my absence from home on a long journey.

"I was in the administration of Mr. Polk at the time when Mr. Buchanan perfected the treaty for settling the boundary of Oregon. The basis of the settlement was the parallel of fortynine degrees, with the concession to Britain of that part of Vancouver's Island which lies south of forty-nine degrees. The United States held that both parties had a right to the free navigation of the waters round Vancouver's Island, and therefore consented that the British boundary should extend to the centre of the Channel of Haro. Such was the understanding of everybody at the time of consummating the treaty in England and at Washington. The Hudson's Bay Company may naturally enough covet the group of islands east of that channel, but the desire, which never can amount to a claim, should not be listened to for a moment.

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"While I was in England no minister was preposterous enough to lend the authority of the British Government to the cupidity of the Hudson's Bay Company in this particular. I think you must find in the Department of State a copy of a short letter of mine to Lord Palmerston, enclosing him a chart of those waters as drawn by our own Coast Survey.(2) I think in that letter I mentioned the centre of the Straits of Haro as the boundary. That chart would show by the depths of the soundings that the Straits of Haro are the channel intended in the treaty, even if there had not been a distinct understanding on the part of the British Government, as well as the American, at the time of the signing of the treaty. Lord Palmerston, in his reply acknowledging the receipt of the chart, made no pretence of adopting the wishes of the Hudson's Bay Company, and he never did so, even in conversation. I never had occasion in England to make any peremptory state(2) Wilkes's chart.

(1) American State Papers, p. 53.

ment on the subject, because nothing was ever said or hinted there which required it; but always, whenever conversation turned upon the subject, whether with Lord Palmerston or with the Under-Secretary of the Colonial Office, I always spoke of the Strait of Haro as undeniably the channel of the treaty, and no member of the British Government ever took issue with me. In running the line through the centre of the Straits of Haro, there may be one or two small islands about which a question might be raised, but as to the important group that the Hudson's Bay Company covet, the demand, if made, should be met at the outset as one too preposterous to be entertained as a question. "Yours sincerely,

"GEORGE BANCROFT.

"Archibald Campbell, Esq., Commissioner, &c."

"Correspondence referred to by Mr. Bancroft will be found accompanying Mr. Campbell's letter, January 20, 1859."

On the 1st of December, 1858, Mr. Campbell wrote to Mr. Cass, United States Secretary of State, and communicated to him the inferences which he (Mr. Campbell) had drawn from the tenacity with which Captain Prevost held to the opinions which he had formed on first approaching the consideration of the boundary question. (1)

Mr. Cass thereupon wrote, on the 17th January, 1859, to Mr. Dallas, United States Minister at the Court of St. James, requesting him to obtain a copy of the instructions which had been given to Captain Prevost by Her Majesty's Government. (2)

Lord Malmesbury was then at the Foreign Office, and on being applied to he immediately forwarded to Mr. Dallas copies respectively of the commission and

(1) American State Papers, p. 92.

(2) Idem, p. 102; Mr. Cass to Mr. Dallas.

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instructions, and further instructions which had been furnished to Captain Prevost, and which have been already above set out. (1)

On the 20th January, 1859, Mr. Campbell wrote as follows to Mr. Cass :(2)—

"Camp Simiahmoo, January 20, 1859.

"SIR, I have the honour to request that the accompanying copy of a correspondence of Mr. Boyd, Chargé d'Affaires ad interim, and Mr. Bancroft, Minister to London, with the Department of State, be filed with the papers I have already transmitted to the department in relation to the water boundary.

"In connection with the various documents I have heretofore laid before you on the same subject, they expose the cautious and steady policy with which the British Government have been advancing, step by step, in their pretensions to the group of islands east of the Canal de Haro, in violation of the letter and spirit of the treaty of 1846, from its ratification to the present time.

"Mr. Bancroft's connection with Mr. Polk's administration, during the negotiation and ratification of the treaty, gave him the best means of knowing with certainty the views of the contracting powers, and particularly those of his own Government, in regard to the boundary line agreed upon between the United States and British possessions; and from his position as head of the Navy Department, he took particular interest in the water boundary, as is shown by his causing to be prepared, in advance of its publication, a tracing of Captain Wilkes's chart of the space between the continent and Vancouver's Island, with soundings, showing the Canal de Haro to be the nearest channel to Vancouver's Island, as well as the main channel. His position at London as United States Minister, almost immediately after the ratification of the treaty, gave him good opportunity of ascertaining the views of the British Government in regard to the boundary channel at that early day. Until October, 1848, he appears to have

(1) American State Papers, p. 103; Lord Malmesbury to Mr. Dallas. (2) Idem, p. 54.

been under the impression that the Hudson's Bay Company alone coveted the possession of the valuable group of islands east of the Canal de Haro, and that the British Ministry did not favour their pretensions. His intercourse and correspondence with Lord Palmerston on the subject naturally led him to that conclusion. He openly declared, both verbally and by letter, the Canal de Haro to be the treaty' channel,' without any objection or denial on the part of Lord Palmerston, who, on the contrary, although studiously avoiding the mention of the Canal de Haro by name, virtually admits it when he says the soundings will be of great service to the commissioners in determining where the boundary line ought to run.

"By instructions from Lord Palmerston, Mr. Crampton, in his letter to Mr. Buchanan of January 13, 1848, proposed to the United States to appoint a joint commission for the purpose of marking out the water boundary; the commissioners to be sent out with joint instructions to carry the line down the channel through which Vancouver sailed (now called Rosario Straits), on the pretence that it was the only channel that hitherto had been surveyed and used, and that it was therefore natural to suppose that the negotiators of the Oregon treaty in employing the word channel' had that particular channel in view. To this communication no answer from Mr. Buchanan is found on the records of the department. But Mr. Crampton's letter to Mr. Marcy dated February 9, 1856, purports to give the reply of Mr. Buchanan to this proposition, without indicating, however, whether it was written or verbal. Mr. Buchanan is represented as entirely concurring in the expediency of losing no time in determining that portion of the boundary line; [he] nevertheless felt some objection to adopting the channel marked by Vancouver as the channel' designated by the treaty, in the absence of more accurate geographical information; and he suggested that the joint commissioners, when appointed, should be in the first place instructed to survey the region in question for the purpose of ascertaining whether the channel marked by Vancouver, or some other channel, as yet unexplored, between the numerous islands of the Gulf of Georgia, should be adopted

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