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130 claim, though scarcely to modify the imperiousness of her tone. To this intervening period belong the settlement at Astoria of the Pacific Fur Company in 1811, the exploration of the Upper Columbia the same year by David Thompson, an agent of the Northwest Company, with a view to the extension of the posts of his company far to the westward; the purchase two years later by the Northwest Company of the establishment of the Pacific Fur Company at Astoria, and its transfer a few days later to the British flag with the change of name to Fort George; the surrender of the fort in 1818 in accordance with the terms of the treaty of Ghent; the extension westward of the Hudson's Bay Company into this region, and its union in 1821 with its rival, the Northwest Company; and finally the extension over the settlements of the united companies, by an act of parliament in the same year, of the jurisdiction of the courts of Upper Canada.

These events had so changed the aspect of affairs on the Columbia at the time of the Russian Emperor's decree in 1821 as to leave him no alternative but to resort to the middle line, and drawing a line midway between the Anglo-American settlement at the mouth of the Columbia and the southernmost Russian settlement to the north of that river, to stand for a southern boundary for his possessions at the fifty-first parallel.

This decree, though it withdrew the line of territory claimed thus far northward, was yet offensive in tone and arbitrary in many of the regulations it sought to enforce against the citizens of other nations. Besides, it still encroached upon territory claimed by both Britain and the United States. Both England and America protested, and opened, each in her own behalf, negotiations with Russia which resulted in establishing in 1824 the line of 54° 40´ as the boundary between the territories