1803.] WESTERN BOUNDARY OF LOUISIANA. 283 



cially at the present moment, to strengthen Spanish jealousies of 

 the United States, which it is probably an object with Great Britain 

 to excite, by the clause in question." The outrage committed by 

 the British upon the American frigate Chesapeake, together with the 

 change in the British ministry, prevented the ratification of this treaty; 

 and the discussion of boundaries was not renewed until 1814. 



How far Louisiana extended westward when it was ceded by 

 France to Spain, there are no means of determining. The question 

 has never been touched in treaties, nor even in negotiations, so far 

 as known. The French maps and histories are, in general, so en- 

 tirely erroneous as regards the geography of America, and always 

 so absurd in their statements as to the extent of the French domin- 

 ions, that they are of no value as evidence ; while the charters of 

 the British sovereigns appear, at present, scarcely less extravagant. 

 Those charters, embracing, together, the whole division of North 

 America between the 48th and the 31st parallels of latitude, were, 

 nevertheless, maintained by Great Britain until the peace of 1763, 

 when her government, by agreeing to admit the Mississippi as the 

 line of separation between her dominions and those of France on 

 the west, implicitly recognized the right of the latter power to the 

 whole territory beyond that river, between the same parallels ; and 

 Louisiana always embraced all the French possessions west of the 

 Mississippi. In the absence of more direct light on the subject 

 from history, we are forced to regard the boundaries indicated by 

 nature — namely, the highlands separating the waters of the Mis- 

 sissippi from those flowing into the Pacific or the Californian Gulf — 

 as the true western boundaries of the Louisiana ceded by France 

 to Spain in 1762, and retroceded to France in 1800, and trans- 

 ferred to the United States by France in 1803 : but then it must 

 also be admitted, for the same as well as for another and stronger 

 reason, that the British possessions farther north were bounded in 

 the west by the same chain of highlands ; for the charter of the 

 Hudson's Bay Company, on which the right to those possessions 

 was founded and maintained, expressly included only the countries 

 traversed by streams emptying into Hudson's Bay. 



Even before the transfer of Louisiana to the United States was 

 completed, the prompt and sagacious Jefferson, then president of 

 the republic, was preparing to have that part of the continent ex- 

 amined by American agents. In January, 1803, he addressed to 

 the Congress of the Union a confidential Message, recommending 

 that means should be taken for the purpose without delay ; and, 



