the equal right of her subjects to trade and make settlements in any part of the country north of California. (2) A willingness to agree on a division of the territory with the United States, then the only power aside from Britain which had real interests there, on "the joint principles of occupancy and reciprocal convenience." (3) Canning repelled the idea that Britain should give up the portion of the coast line containing Nootka Sound, since that place was the subject of dispute with Spain which led to the Nootka Convention of 1790, a great victory for British policy. (4) But he was still more determined not to give up the free use of the Columbia, "the only navigable communication, hitherto ascertained to exist, with the interior of that part of the country. The entrance to this river," he says, "was surveyed by British officers, at the expense of the British government, many years before any agents of the American government had visited its shores,[1] and the trading posts of the Hudson's Bay Company are now and have for some time been stationed on its waters." (5) The Americans, Canning points out, are claiming under a French title, a Spanish title, and an American title, and they are supplying the deficiencies of each one of these titles by arguments drawn from the others. This could not be permitted. They might select the title they deemed best, and stand
- ↑ Canning did not recognize Gray, the discoverer of the river, as an agent of the American government, so Lewis and Clark would be the first of those agents, arriving thirteen years after Vancouver.
