1804.] NORTHERN BOUNDARY OF LOUISIANA. 231 



territories drained by the Mississippi ; the Sabine River being, by 

 tacit consent, regarded as the dividing line between Louisiana 

 and the Mexican provinces. 



A negotiation was at the same time in progress, between the 

 government of the United States and that of Great Britain, re- 

 specting the northern boundary of Louisiana, for which the Amer- 

 icans claimed a line running along the 49th parallel of latitude, 

 upon the grounds that this parallel had been adopted and definitive- 

 ly settled, by commissaries appointed agreeably to the tenth article 

 of the treaty concluded at Utrecht, in 1713, as the dividing line 

 between the French possessions of Western Canada and Louisiana on 

 the south, and the British territories of Hudson's Bay on the north ; 

 and that, this treaty having been specially confirmed in the treaty 

 of 1763, by which Canada and the part of Louisiana east of the 

 Mississippi and Iberville were ceded to Great Britain, the remainder 

 of Louisiana continued, as before, bounded on the north by the 49th 

 parallel. 



This conclusion would be undeniable, if the premises on which 

 it is founded were correct. The tenth article of the treaty of 

 Utrecht does certainly stipulate that commissaries should be ap- 

 pointed by the governments of Great Britain and France respec- 

 tively, to determine the line of separation between their possessions 

 in the northern part of America above specified ; and there is 

 reason to believe that persons were commissioned for that object : 

 but there is no evidence ivhich can be admitted as establishing the fact 

 that a line running along the 49th parallel of latitude, or any other 

 line, was ever adopted, or even proposed, by those commissaries, or by 

 their governments, as the limit of any part of the French possessions 

 on the north, and of the British Hudson's Bay territories on the 

 south. 



It is true that, on some maps of Northern America, published in 

 the middle of the last century, a line drawn along the 49th parallel 

 does appear as a part of the boundary between the French posses- 

 sions and the Hudson's Bay territories, as settled according to the 

 treaty of Utrecht : but, on other maps, which are deservedly held 

 in higher estimation, a different line, following the course of the 

 highlands encircling Hudson's Bay, is presented as the limit of the 

 Hudson's Bay territory, agreeably to the same treaty ; and, in other 

 maps again, enjoying equal, if not greater, consideration, as having 

 been published under the immediate direction of the British gov- 

 36 



