208 THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON. 
On the South, Spain shut us up on the side of the 
Gulf of Mexico. 
It was impossible in dis state of things that the 
United States could attain the development to which, 
in other respects, they had the right to aspire, by rea- 
son of the fertility of their soil, their numerous rivers, 
and their commanding position in the temperate zone 
of America. 
But the cession of Louisiana to five United States 
by the voluntary act of France—the most splendid 
concession ever made by one nation to another,—pro- 
duced a revolution in the condition of America. We 
thus acquired territory of indefinite limits westward, 
with such limits on the south as the pretensions of 
Spain would allow, and with limits north only where 
superior claim of right on the part of Great Britain 
intervened, namely, the parallel of forty-nine degrees 
established between France and Great Britain by the 
Treaty of Utrecht. 
President Jefferson lost no time in asserting the 
rights of the United States in the interior of the 
Union, and at the same time acquiring knowledge of 
the country by means of the celebrated expedition of 
Lewis and Clark. Theretofore the only knowledge 
we possessed of the great chain of the Rocky Mount. 
ains, and of the country or even the name of the coun- 
try of Oregon beyond, was founded on the narration 
of Jonathan Carver, or other information derived 
from the Indians. — 
We were thus enabled to comprehend the relation 
of Louisiana to the shores of the Pacific, and to see 
