then, following the course of the Rio Roxo westward, to the degree of longitude 100 west from London and 23 from Washington; then, crossing said Red River, and running thence, by a line due north, to the River Arkansas; thence, following the course of the southern bank of the Arkansas, to its source in latitude 42 north; and thence, by that parallel of latitude, to the South Sea."
Other particulars are added in the article quoted, the meaning of which is the same as the foregoing: intended to fix the western boundary of the United States, as regarded the Spanish possessions, and the eastern and northern boundaries of the Spanish possessions, as regarded the United States.
Spain had never withdrawn her pretensions to the northwest coast; but, being unable to colonize this distant territory, and still less able to hold it by garrisons in forts, she tacitly relinquished her claim to the United States, by making the forty-second parallel the northern limit of her possessions on the Pacific. The United States were then at liberty to take possession of that which Spain relinquished in their favor; in fact, had the same right to this remote territory that they had to the Florida and Louisiana territories, which were obtained by treaty from nations claiming them by the right of discovery.
But the claims of the United States to the so-called Oregon territory had even better foundations than this, if it be considered that Spain had actually abandoned her possessions in the northwest; for, in that case, the Oregon territory was theirs by the right of discovery and actual occupation, as well as by contiguity, by treaty, etc. At the time that Gray discovered and named Columbia's River, important as the discovery was, it awakened but little thought in the American mind; because, as yet, we had not acquired Louisiana, stretching to the Rocky Mountains, nor even secured the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, which was much more of an object, at that time, than the coast of the Pacific. However, when Louisiana became ours, the national mind awoke to the splendid possibilities of the nation's future. It was not for naught that a company of Boston merchants had opened a trade between China and the northwest coast; albeit, their captains gathered up trinkets of all sorts to add to their stock in trade, should furs fall short of the
