Page:Henry Adams' History of the United States Vol. 2.djvu/318

1804. fixed by treaty at the Iberville and the Mississippi rivers, the French minister instructed the Spanish government as follows: —


 * "The western limit of Louisiana not having been fixed in a manner equally precise by the treaties which preceded that of March 21, 1801, nor by that treaty itself, the uncertainty which prevailed in regard to the direction of its frontiers has necessarily continued since the cession made to the United States. France could not even take upon herself to indicate to the United States what ought to be that precise limit, for fear of wounding on this point the pretensions of one or the other Power directly interested in this question.  It would have become the object of negotiation between his Imperial and his Catholic Majesties.  To-day it can be treated only between Spain and the United States.  Nevertheless, as the Americans derive their rights from France, I have been enabled to express to his Imperial Majesty's minister plenipotentiary near the United States the chief bases on which the Emperor would have planted himself in the demand for a demarcation of boundaries.  Starting from the Gulf of Mexico, we should have sought to distinguish between settlements that belong to the kingdom of Mexico, and settlements that had been formed by the French or by those who succeeded them in this colony.  This distinction between settlements formed by the French or by the Spaniards would have been made equally in ascending northwards.  All those which are of French foundation would have belonged to Louisiana; and since European settlements in the interior are rare and scattered,