266 AMERICAN COMMERCE IN THE PACIFIC. [1796 1814. 



belonging to the Union, by the treaty of 1783. At length, by the 

 treaty of November 19, 1794, between Great Britain and the 

 United States, it was agreed that these posts should be given up 

 to the Americans, and that the people of both nations, and the 

 Indians " dwelling on either side of the boundary line, should have 

 liberty freely to pass and repass, by land or inland navigation, into 

 the respective territories of the two parties, on the continent of 

 America, (the country within the limits of the Hudson's Bay only 

 excepted,) and to navigate all the lakes, rivers, and waters thereof, 

 and freely to carry on trade with each other." The surrender of 

 these posts, especially of Detroit and Michilimackinac, was very 

 inconvenient to the North- West Company, whilst the trade of the 

 Americans with the central regions was thereby increased ; and 

 large quantities of furs were annually transported to the Atlantic 

 cities, principally to New York, from which place they were dis- 

 tributed throughout the United States, or shipped for London or 

 Canton. 



On the North Pacific, the direct trade between the American 

 coasts and China remained, from 1796 to 1814, almost entirely, as 

 Mackenzie said, in the hands of the citizens of the United States : 

 the British merchants were restrained from engaging in it by the 

 opposition of their East India Company ; the Russians were not 

 admitted into Chinese ports ; and few ships of any other nation 

 were seen in that part of the ocean. That these American 

 " adventurers acted without regularity or capital, or the desire of 

 conciliating future confidence, and looking only to the interest of the 

 moment" was also, to a certain extent, true ; though the facts can 

 scarcely be considered discreditable to them, as Mackenzie insinu- 

 ated, even supposing their operations to have been conducted in 

 the manner represented by a British writer, whose hostility to the 

 United States and their citizens was even more violent than that of 

 Vancouver. 



"These adventurers," says the writer above mentioned,* "set 

 out on the voyage with a few trinkets of very little value. In the 

 Southern Pacific, they pick up some seal-skins, and perhaps a few 

 butts of oil ; at the Gallipagos, they lay in turtle, of which they 



* Review of "A Voyage around the World, from 1806 to 1812, by Archibald 

 Campbell," in the London Quarterly Review for October, 1816, written in a spirit of 

 the most deadly hatred towards the United States, and filled with assertions most 

 impudently false. 



