430 THE ALASKAN BOUNDARY 



interests were involved were, on the British side, the Hudson's 

 Bay Company, which was pushing its posts across the Rocky 

 mountains towards the coast, and the Russian American Com- 

 pany, which was in possession of the islands and maintaining a 

 profitable trade with the natives on the mainland, and that un- 

 less the latter was protected by a strip of the coast on the main- 

 land, that company would be without. a support [point d'appui], 

 and would be exposed to the competition of establisbments on 

 the mainland which it was their purpose to exclude.* The 

 motive of the Russian negotiators in insisting upon a strip of 

 the coast is also shown in the report of M. Poletica, one of the 

 Russian plenipotentiaries, to the ministry for foreign affairs of 

 the earliest conferences with Mr Bagot, in which he said the Rus- 

 sian American Company "had mainly in view the establish- 

 ment of a barrier at which would be stopped, once for all, to 

 the north and to the west of the coast allotted to our Amer- 

 ican company, the encroachments of the English agents of 

 the . . . Hudson's Bay Company " (M. Poletica to Count 

 Nesselrode, November 3, 1823). 



On the other hand, the main purpose of the British plenipo- 

 tentiary in the particular negotiation above referred to was to 

 secure for British traders a foothold on the Pacific ocean as far 

 above the latitude of 54° 40' as possible. In reporting the re- 

 sult of his conferences to the British foreign office, he says : 

 " Our chief objects were to secure . . . the embouchures 

 of such rivers as might afford an outlet for our fur trade into the 

 Pacific. "t He further states that his object in presenting the 

 line of Clarence strait was to " preserve uninterrupted our access 

 to the Pacific ocean," and he adds that the line of the Portland 

 channel " would deprive His Britannic Majesty of sovereignty 

 over all the inlets and small bays lying between latitude 5.6° 

 and 54° 45', ... of essential importance to its [Hudson 

 Bay's] commerce." t 



The negotiators were brought face to face with their conflicting 

 claims, the one side insisting that it must have a strip of territory 

 on the mainland in order to keep the Hudson's Bay Company 

 from the ocean opposite their islands, and the other insisting 

 that the Hudson's Bay Company must have possession of such 

 part of that territory and the inlets as would afford it access to 

 the ocean. Mr Bagot informed the Russian negotiators that he 

 had made his " ultimate proposition," and, being told by them 



* lb., 428, 430. f lb., 424. J lb., 425, 429. 



