This limit was in plain violation of the rules regulating all such events, and no country knew 19 it better than England. Besides, it was Captain Gray's discovery, told to the English commander Vancouver, which made him turn back on his course to rediscover the same river. The claim that the English made, that "Captain Gray made but a single step in the progress of discovery," in the light of these facts, marks their claims as remarkably weak. The right of discovery was then the first claim made by the United States upon Oregon.
The second was by the Louisiana purchase from France in 1803. This was the same territory ceded from France to Spain in 1762 and returned to France in 1800, and sold to the United States for $15,000,000 in 1803, "with all its rights and appurtenances, as fully and in the same manner as they were acquired by the French Republic."
There has always been a dispute as to how far into the region of the northwest this claim of the French extended. In the sale no parallels were given; but it was claimed that their rights reached to the Pacific Ocean. Dr. Barrows says, "If, however, the claims of France failed to reach the Pacific on the parallel of 49 degrees, it must have been because they encountered the old claims of Spain, that preceded the Nootka treaty and were tacitly conceded by
