stations may
be established." And he informed the Spanish captain, Martinez, that he should take possession of Nootka Sound in the name of Great Britain and hoist the British flag. The Spaniard repHed that possession had already been taken in the name of Spain, and that he would resist any attempts to take possession in the name of Great Britain. The Englishman inquired if the Spaniard would object to building a house; the Spaniard said, "Certain, I will object; you can erect a tent to get wood and water, but no house." The Englishman re- plied that he would build a block house ; whereupon the Spaniard arrested the British captain and all his crew, and seized the ships — Princess Royal and Ar- gonaut — and sent them down to San Bias, Mexico as prizes.
Here, then, was a veritable "tempest in a teapot." Consider, for a moment, the surroundings of these men and the future weight given to their acts. Here they were in a little pocket of a bay on Vancouver island; the Americans twenty thousand miles from their home port; the English-Portuguese merchant adventurers no better than pirates, as they were sailing under false colors, six thousand miles from their base of operations, and the Spaniard three thousand miles from his governor; with an onlooking audience of hundreds of savages, and not a single civilized man within thousands of miles. The Spaniard bravely asserts the rights and authority of his king, and the bluffing British captain tamely submits to arrest.
It was ten months after the capture of the British ships before the news reached Europe; whereupon England demanded of Spain immediate reparation for the insult to her flag, and thus assuming responsibility for all the crooked- ness which had set afloat the so-called Portuguese merchant fur trading ships. To the outburst of England the king of Spain issued a proclamation to all other nations on June 4, 1790, temperately reciting the rights of Spain to the conti- nents and islands of the South Sea, concluding with : "Although Spain may not have establishments or colonies planted upon the coasts or in the ports in dispute, it does not follow that such coast or port does not belong to her. If this rule were to be followed, one nation might establish colonies on the coast of another nation — in America, Asia, Africa and Europe — by which means there would be no fixed boundaries — a circumstance evidently absurd." Such were the hard facts of the case down to the beginning of the dispute between Spain and England, as to the title of old Oregon.
And now we reach the chapter of diplomatic negotiations between these two nations to settle that dispute. Spain opened the negotiations with a proposition to refer the dispute about the insult to the British flag to the sovereign of some European nation, and England declined the proposition. Then Spain appealed to France for assistance in resisting the power of England should war ensue out of these matters. But France declined to commit her government to any assistance. Down to this period, England had not set up any claim to or ownership of Vancouver Island covering the spot where Captain Martinez seized the ships. Hope of assistance from France being abandoned, Spain was forced into a treaty with England, October 28, 1790, whereby the buildings and tracts of land on the northwest coast of America, of which British subjects had been dispossessed in 1789 by Martinez, were to be restored to the British subjects; and the ships and other property of British subjects were to be re- turned with compensation for any losses sustained by reason of the acts of the Spanish officer. In addition to these provisions, a right in common with Spain was to be enjoyed by the subjects of both Spain and England to navigate the Pacific ocean and the South Seas ; and to land on places on the coast thereof not already occupied; to carry on commerce with the natives, and to make set- tlements with the following restrictions: "The king of Great Britain agreed to prevent navigation or fishery in those seas being made the pretext for unlawful trade with the Spanish settlements. No British subject was to navigate or carry on a fishery in said oceans within ten leagues of any part of the coast
