Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/343

 And to show that Spain never intended to surrender the sovereignty of the country, the reader has only to follow the history of that treaty and see how its provisions were carried out.

The British government appointed Captain George Vancouver commissioner to receive the personal property seized by the Spaniards, and carry out the provisions of the treaty on the part of England; and Spain appointed as Spanish commissioner Senor Bodega y Cuadra and the two representatives of their respective countries met at Nootka Sound on August 28, 1792. After haggling and negotiating over the matter for two weeks, the Spaniard refused absolutely to deliver possession of any land except the. ground on which the British house had been erected, probably about an acre. The ships and personal property had been returned to the Englishmen more than a year before, and the Spanish commissioner now refused to give up more land than what was used with the one temporary house, and would not permit the English commissioner to raise the British flag over even that. This, the English commissioner refused, and sailed away. The English were never put in possession of a foot of the Pacific coast by Spain, and its territory was never surrendered to England in any manner whatever.

There was. after the disagreements of Cuadra and Vancouver a subsequent effort to settle the matter at Nootka, in which, according to the British version. General Alva, on the part of Spain surrendered the ground on which the British buildings stood to Lieut. Pierce of the British navy. But the English never took possession or occupied the place. And commenting on these facts, the British historian, William Belsham, says:

"But though England, at the expense of three millions, extorted from the Spaniards a promise of restoration and reparation, it is well ascertained — First, that the settlement in question was never restored by Spain, nor the Spanish flag at Nootka ever struck; and, secondly—that no settlement had been subsequently attempted by England on the Oregon coast. The claim of right set up by the court of London, it is therefore plain, has been virtually abandoned."

Spain's title to Old Oregon by the right of prior discovery, whatever that amounts to, and continuous possession and assertion of that right, as against England, is therefore found to be perfect and indefeasible.

But this was not all of Spain's title. In the year 1763, thirteen years before the American colonies threw off their allegiance to Great Britain, England entered into a treaty with Spain, defining the boundaries of the respective territorial rights and possessions in North America. And by that treaty, the Mississippi river, flowing from north to south in a direct course for fifteen hundred miles, was declared to be the perpetual boundary between the possession of Spain, and the possessions of Great Britain in America; and the entire country west of that river was declared to be the territory of Spain.

And now having set out the historical facts which conclusively show that Spain had, according to the law of nations, a good and sufficient title to the whole of Oregon, from Mexico clear up to the Russian possessions of Alaska, at fifty-four degrees and forty minutes north latitude, we will give the record showing Spain's transfer of that title to the United States.

On February 22, 1819, the United States made a treaty of a