BAKER.] 
HISTORY OF THE SURVEY. 13 
also talked on this subject with Mr. J. V. Wurdemann, now employed 
in the Library of Congress, who participated in the survey and with 
Dr. Theodore Gill, who prepared a report on the fishes collected by the 
survey. To the courtesy of these gentlemen as also to that of Prof. 
C. L. Doolittlc, to the Smithsonian Institution, to the Coast Survey, 
and to the General Land Office I am indebted for bits of information 
used in preparing this report. 
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE LINE. 
The present boundary line between British Columbia on the north 
and Washington, Idaho, and Montana on the south was established in 
1846. Prior to that date the boundary was in dispute between the 
United States and Great Britain and the Oregon question was a burn- 
ing one. Great Britain claimed as far south as forty-two degrees 
north latitude, the northern limit of California to-day. The United 
States claimed as far north as 54° 40', the present southern boundary 
of Alaska. The slogan of the day was "Fifty-four forty or fight." 
But there was no fight and no fifty -four forty. A treaty was arranged 
by which the disputed tract was divided between the claimants. The 
boundary line adopted was the present line along the forty-ninth par- 
ellel from the summit of the Rocky Mountains to the middle of the 
channel between Vancouver Island and the continent and thence south- 
ward along the main channel and Juan do Fuca Strait to the Pacific. 
The diplomatic agents who drew this treaty were, on the part of the 
United States, James Buchanan, then Secretary of State, and on the 
part of Great Britain, the then British minister, Richard Pakenham. 
The treaty was signed at Washington June 15, 1846, ratifications 
exchanged at London July 17, and proclaimed August 5, 1846. 1 
The first article of the treaty describes the boundary in the following 
words : 
From the point on the 49th parallel of north latitude, where the boundary laid 
down in existing treaties and conventions between the United States and Great 
Britain terminates, the line of boundary between the Territories of the United States 
and those of Her Britannic Majesty shall be continued westward along the said 
49th parallel of north latitude, to the middle of the channel which separates the 
continent from Vancouver's Island and thence southerly through the middle of the 
said channel, and of Fuca's £Juan de Fuca] Straits, to the Pacific Ocean. 
HISTORY OF THE SURVEY. 
On August 11, 1856, almost exactly ten years after the proclaiming 
of the treaty of limits, which for brevity may be called the Buchanan- 
Pakenham treaty, Congress passed an act to carry its first article into 
effect. This act provided for the appointment of a commissioner and a 
chief astronomer and surveyor on the part of the United States to unite 
i Stat. L., vol. 9, pp. 8G9-870; vol. 11, p. 42. 
