220 ANDREW FISH
the Canal de Haro and the Straits of Fuca. President Polk, writing on the very day the draft was presented, observed to McLane :
"Neither does it provide that the line shall pass through the Canal de Arro, as stated in your dispatch. This would probably be a fair construction." A week later Buchanan used these words :
"Thence along the middle of this channel and the Strait of Fuca, so as to render the whole of that island to Great Britain." The island, of course, was Vancouver.
To permit Great Britain to retain the whole of Vancouver
Island was in fact the only reason for deflecting the line at all from parallel forty-nine. Senator Benton in the Senate definitely mentioned the Haro Channel, showing clearly how he understood the arrangement. Aberdeen in his instructions to Pakenham did not, it is true, mention any definite channel, but he said nothing about any islands except that of Vancouver "thus giving us the whole of Vancouver's Island and its harbors." The same general understanding on the part of Sir Robert Peel is plain enough "but that the middle of the channel shall be the future boundary, thus leaving us in pos- session of the whole of Vancouver's Island, with equal rights to navigation of the straits." Nevertheless, the Canal de Haro is not "the middle of the channel" constituted by the Gulf of Georgia. From something that happened, George Bancroft when minister of London, got suspicious that there might be difficulties of interpretation and asked for some charts to be sent to him charts which he had caused to be prepared when he was at the Navy Department. Benton had said that the islands were of no value, but Bancroft knew better. He (Blancroft) asked permission to claim the Haro Strait if a dispute arose; Buchanan, however, thought it im- probable that Great Britain would seriously make a claim for anything east of the Haro Channel. Bancroft thought this was true of the ministry but said he had reason to think that
