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124 the Northwest Coast of America, Spain had, within a few years previous to the Nootka Convention, given orders that the coasts of Spanish America should be more frequently navigated and explored, and, in view of the recent encroachment of navigators and traders of other nations in those parts, her "general orders and instructions were, not to permit any settlements to be made by other nations on the continent of Spanish America." It was in carrying out these orders that the Spanish Commandant Martinez, in the summer of 1789, finding two British vessels in Nootka Sound, attempting a settlement there, captured the vessels and broke up the settlement.

In the course of the negotiations that followed on this act of Spain's, the full extent of the Spanish claims appeared. As given by Count Nunyez, Spanish Ambassador at Paris, to M. de Montmorin, Secretary of the Foreign Department of France, June 1, 1790, it was claimed, "that, by treaties, demarkations, taking of possessions, and the most decided acts of sovereignty exercised by the Spaniards in those stations from the reign of Charles II, and authorized by that monarch in 1692, all the coast to the north of Western America, on the side of the South Sea, as far as beyond what is called Prince William's Sound, which is in the sixty-first degree, is acknowledged to belong exclusively to Spain." Not feeling sufficiently strong in herself to enforce this claim, and unable to secure the support of allies, Spain yielded this pretension so far as to make, July 24, 1790, a declaration to Great Britain in which the King of Spain engaged to make full restitution of all British vessels which were captured at Nootka, and to indemnify the parties interested in those vessels for the losses which they should be found to have sustained. "It being understood," the declaration con-