‘thence, according to existing treaties, due South to its intersection with the 49th parallel of North latitude, and along that parallel to the Rocky Mountains’.
The 49th parallel runs through the Lake of the Woods, but the anterior provision that the boundary line should be carried to the North-Westernmost point of the lake, coupled with the fact that that point had been already determined, necessitated an unnatural and inconvenient diversion of the frontier line first to the North-West and then due South again, thereby including in American territory a small corner of land which should clearly have been assigned to Canada. For The Ashburton Treaty finally determined the points arising out of the wording of the Treaty of 1783. this result Lord Ashburton has been blamed, as he was blamed in the matter of the Maine boundary, but in either case his hands were tied by previous negotiations and the wording of existing treaties. A fair review of the whole subject leads to the conclusion that the Treaty of Washington in 1842 was a not inadequate compromise of the almost insuperable difficulties which the wording of the original Treaty of 1783 had left outstanding.
Later boundary questions.
In tracing the evolution of the boundary between Canada and the United States we have now reached the point where the 1783 Treaty ceased to operate, and have seen that the negotiations connected with the interpretation of the Treaty resulted in the line of demarcation being carried far beyond that point, viz., the head of the Mississippi, up to the range of the Rocky Mountains. Meanwhile the Pacific Coast had begun to attract attention, and a new crop of international questions had come into existence.
The Oregon boundary dispute.
The Western territory in dispute between the two nations was known as the Oregon or Columbia territory, and it lay between the 42nd degree of North latitude and the Russian line in 54° 40′ North latitude. The Columbia river took its name from the fact that it had been entered in May, 1792, by an American ship from Boston named the Columbia, commanded by Captain Gray, who thus claimed to be the discoverer of the river. In 1805 Lewis and Clark, the first Americans to cross the continent, reached its head waters and followed the river down to the sea. In 1811 an American trading settlement was planted at Astoria near its mouth. This settlement was voluntarily surrendered to Great Britain in the war which followed shortly afterwards, but was restored, without prejudice, to the United States under the general restitution article of the Treaty of Ghent. The Third Article of the subsequent Treaty of October 20th, 1818, provided that
‘any country that may be claimed by either party on the North-West coast of America, Westward of the Stony Mountains, shall, together with its harbours, bays, and creeks and the navigation of all rivers within the same, be free and open for the term of 10 years’
to both Powers, without prejudice to the claims either of themselves or of foreign Powers; and this Article was, by a Convention of 6th of August, 1827, indefinitely prolonged—subject to one year’s notice on either side—all claims being, as before, reserved. This last Convention was concluded, as its terms specified, in order to prevent all hazard of misunderstanding and to give time for maturing measures for a more definite settlement.
The position in 1842.