438 PROOFS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. [F. 



as they are ordinarily made by persons wholly unacquainted with political 

 affairs. Of this, numerous examples may be cited from works of authors 

 the most highly esteemed as geographers, even at the present day.* 



No allusion whatsoever to the settlement of any boundary line between 

 the Hudson's Bay territories and the French dominions, by commissaries 

 appointed agreeably to the treaty of Utrecht, is to be found in any of the 

 following works, which have been carefully examined with reference to 

 this question : viz. — Actes, Memoires, &c, concernant la Paix d'U trecht, 

 a voluminous work, published in 1716 — Actes, Negotiations, &c, depuis 

 la Paix d'Utrecht, 1745 — the collections of treaties and state papers by 

 Dumont, Boyer, Martens, Jenkinson, and Herstlet — Collection des Edits, 

 Ordonnances, &c, concernant le Canada — the histories of, and memoirs 

 on, Louisiana, by Dumont, Le Page Dupratz, Vergennes, Marbois, and 

 others — Memoires des Commissaires Francais et Anglais, sur les Pos- 

 sessions, &c, des deux Couronnes en Amerique, 1754 — the works of 

 Swift and of Bolingbroke — the Parliamentary History of England — and 

 the Histories of England by Tindal, Smollet, Belsham, Mahon, or Wade. 



This is strong negative evidence. Anderson, in his elaborate History 

 of Commerce, (vol. iii. p. 267,) thus pointedly denies that any such set- 

 tlement of limits was effected agreeably to the provisions of the treaty of 

 Utrecht : " Though the French king yielded to the queen of Great 

 Britain, to be possessed by her, in full right, forever, the Bay and Straits 

 of Hudson, and all parts thereof, and within the same then possessed by 

 France, yet leaving the boundaries between Hudson's Bay and the north 

 parts of Canada belonging to France to be determined by commissaries 

 within a year, was, in effect, the same thing as giving up the point alto- 

 gether ; it being well known, to all Europe, that France never permits 

 her commissaries to determine matters referred to such, unless it can be 

 done with great advantage to her. Those boundaries, therefore, have 

 never yet been settled, though the British and French subjects are, by 

 that article, expressly debarred from passing over the same, or thereby to 

 go to each other, by sea or land. These commissaries were likewise to 

 settle the boundaries between the other British and French colonies on 



* In a large and beautifully-engraved map of the United States, published at Phila- 

 delphia, in 1821, "from the most undoubted authorities, by , geographer and 



draughtsman," the northern boundary of the United States west of the Mississippi is 

 represented by a line drawn westward from the sources of that river, nearly under the 

 latitude of 47 degrees and 40 minutes ; the country north of this line being stated to 

 be " in dispute between Spain and Great Britain." Now, three years before this map 

 appeared, the boundary between the United States and the British possessions in that 

 part of America had been fixed by treaty, according to which, the dividing line fol- 

 lowed the course of the 49th parallel ; and, two years before the date of the map, 

 Spain had also, by treaty, ceded to the United States her rights to all territories in 

 America north of the 42d parallel. These treaties had been published; and it is 

 scarcely credible that they should have been unknown to an American geographer 

 engaged in preparing a map of the United States. Mistakes of the same kind, equally 

 great, are, however, committed in Europe. In the Encyclopaedia of Geography, 

 published at Edinburgh, in 1834, by Hugh Murray, and other scientific persons, we 

 find it stated, (p. 1374,) that " the whole region west of the Rocky Mountains, ex- 

 tending between the 42d and the 49th parallels of latitude, has, by discovery and 

 treaty, been assigned to the United States;'" and a statement to the same effect may be 

 found in the London Quarterly Review for January, 1822. These mistakes evidently 

 arose from ignorance ■ but the same defence cannot be pleaded in all cases ; for maps 

 have been drawn, and engraved, and colored, with a full knowledge of their falsehood, 

 in order to forward the ends of governments or of individuals. 



