Another boundary question was the subject of much heated controversy between England and the United States for more than a quarter of a century, and in 1845 brought the two countries very close to war.  In 1819 the United States obtained from Spain a cession of all her rights and claims north of latitude forty-two, or the southern boundary of the present state of Oregon.  By that time the ambition of the United States was not content with the Mississippi valley, of which she had obtained full control by the cession of the Spanish claims and by the Louisiana purchase of 1803, but looked to the Pacific coast, where she made pretensions to a territory stretching from 42 deg. to 54 deg. 40’ north latitude, or a territory four times the area of Great Britain and Ireland, or of the present province of Ontario.  The claims of the two nations to this vast region rested on very contradictory statements with respect to priority of discovery, and that occupation and settlement which should, within reasonable limits, follow discovery; and as the whole question was one of great perplexity, it should have been settled, as suggested by England, on principles of compromise.  But the people of the United States, conscious at last of the importance of the territory, began to bring their influence to bear on the politicians, until by 1845 the Democratic party declared ‘for 54 deg. 40’ or fight,’ Mr. Crittenden announced that “war might now be looked upon as almost inevitable.”  Happily President Polk and congress came to more pacific conclusions after a good deal of warlike talk; and the result was a treaty (1846) by which England accepted the line 49 degrees to the Pacific coast, and obtained the whole of Vancouver Island, which for a while seemed likely to be divided with the United States.  But Vancouver Island was by no means a compensation for what England gave up, for, on the continent, she yielded all she had contended for since 1824, when she first proposed the Columbia River as a basis of division.

But even then the question of boundary was not finally settled by this great victory which had been won for the United States by the persistency of her statesmen.  The treaty of 1846 continued the line of boundary westward along “the 49th parallel of north latitude to the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver Island, and thence southerly through the middle of the said channel and of Fuca’s straits to the Pacific Ocean” Anyone reading this clause for the first time, without reference to the contentions that were raised afterwards, would certainly interpret it to mean the whole body of water that separates the continent from Vancouver,—­such a channel, in fact, as divides England from France; but it appears there are a number of small channels separating the islands which lie in the great channel in question, and the clever diplomatists at Washington immediately claimed the Canal de Haro, the widest and deepest, as the canal of the treaty.  Instead