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 RESTORATION OF ASTORIA

313

Upper and Lower Canada, and Vice Admiral, asserting their rights to the North West Coast, stating that the Ontario "is bound for the North West Coast of America, with intentions hostile to the trade and establishments of the North West Company in that quarter." She was going to Fort George, yet that was a "place not having been taken possession of by right of conquest but by a right founded on the just claims of discovery and previous possession of the country by His

Majesty's subjects."

On November

24th, Sir Charles wrote to

Lord Castlereagh,

in cipher: 26

"My

Lord,

"I have been this day informed by Mr.

Adams,

in

answer

thought my duty to make upon the States sloop Ontario, of United the of destination the subject commanded by Captain Biddle, and rated at eighteen guns to

an inquiry which

which

sailed

I

it

from New York the 4th of last month [October] had been ordered to proceed to the mouth of the

that that vessel

Columbia River, for the purpose of establishing the settlement of which the United States were dispossessed during the late war. "I have thought it proper to lose Lordship this information. "I shall write

more

fully

no time

in giving

by the packet which

Your

will sail in

a few days. "I have the honour to be with great truth and respect, "Your Lordship's most humble, obedient servant,

CHARLES BAGOT."

Two

days

later,

November

John Quincy Adams

26th, 1817,

27

Sir Charles wrote

was not captured, but abanthus appears that no claim for

that the post

doned by agreement, and "as

it

the restitution of the post can be grounded upon the 1st article of the Treaty of Ghent, and as the territory itself was early O. 27 F. O.

5,

5,

Vol. 123. Vol. 123.