[Untitled]
I have been considering the subject on which I had the honor of con versing with your lordship on Saturday last, [May 16, 1846,] and feeling that, in the multiplicity of business which comes before your lordship, some parts may have been overlooked, or that I may not have been sufficiently explicit, I have thought it advisable to trouble you with a few lines.The Hudson’s Bay Company suggest to Lord Aberdeen to draw the boundary line through the channel used by Vancouver.
In the first place, I assume that the forty-ninth degree of latitude, from its present terminus, will be continued across the continent to the waters known as the Gulf of Georgia, and be the line of demarkation of the continent between Great Britain and the United States.
The next question on which the government of the two countries will have to decide will be as to the islands abutting on and in the Gulf of Georgia, viz, one, Vancouver Island, intersected by the parallel of 49°, and others which are wholly on the south of that parallel. With respect to the former, I think upon the principle of mutual convenience, (and which I think should form the foundation of the treaty,) Great Britain is entitled to the harbor on its southeast end, being the only good one, those in Puget Sound being given up to the United States; that with respect to the other islands, the water demarkation line should be from the center of the water in the Gulf of Georgia in the forty-ninth degree along the line colored red, as navigable in the chart made by Vancouver, till it reaches a line drawn through the center of the Straits of Juan de Fuca.