Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/295

Rh his possession, except of the portion sold or granted by him within the limits of the Oregon City claim.

As to the limits of the Hudson's Bay Company's claim in the territory, it was the opinion of chief factor John Ballenden, he said, that no one could state the nature or define the limits of that claim. He called the attention of the general land commissioner, and through him of the government, to the fact that settlers were claiming valuable tracts of land included within the limits of that claimed by the Hudson's Bay and Puget Sound companies, and controversies had arisen not only as to the boundaries, but as to the rights of the companies under the treaty of 1846; and declared that it was extremely desirable that the nature of these rights should be decided upon. To decide upon them himself was something beyond his power, and he recommended, as the legislative assembly, the military commander, and the superintendent of Indian affairs had done, that the rights, whatever they were, of these companies, should be purchased. To this advice, as we know, congress turned a deaf ear, until squatters had left no land to quarrel over. The people knew nothing and cared less about the rights of aliens to the soil of the United States. In the mean time the delay multiplied the evils complained of. Let us take the site of Vancouver as an example. Either it did or it did not belong to the Hudson's Bay Company by the terms of the treaty of 1846. If it did, then it was in the nature of a grant to the company, from the fact that the donation law admitted the right of British subjects to claim under the treaty, by confining them to a single grant of land, and leaving it optional with them whether it should