No. 2

I had the honor on the 12th of November last, in my despatch
No 47 of acknowledging the receipt of your Confidential
Despatch of the 21st of August, requesting me to furnish a
report as early as practicable on the subject of the disputed
line of Water Boundary between Vancouver's Island and the
American Territory on the main land, and I now beg to submit the
few fresh ideas that have since occurred to me on a question
which has before been so closely investigated.

2. I had the honor of addressing His Grace the Duke of
Newcastle, and of submitting the opinion which I entertained on
that subject in the several Despatches of the numbers and dates
noted in the margin.

*

3. In those Despatches I stated the reasons which induced me to
assume that the Islands of San Juan, Lopez and Orcas, to which
the United States have set up a claim did of right belong to Her
Majesty the Queen, and come within the jurisdiction of the
Government of Vancouver's Island, or in other words that
"Vancouver's Strait" now more generally known as "Rosario
Strait" is the true channel through which the line of Water
Boundary was intended to be carried.

4. That conclusion was founded in the first place on a fair
construction of the language of the 1st Article of the Treaty
of the 15th June 1846. Secondly—on the common opinion of the
day. Thirdly—On the Maps published in both countries carrying
the line of Boundary through the middle of Vancouver's Straits.

5. My opinion in reference to the true line of Water Boundary
remains unaltered, or is rather confirmed by a circumstance not
alluded to in my former reports on the subject. I mean the
intention of the negociators of the Treaty, as may be inferred
from the manner in which the Coasts of Vancouver's Island, and
the Continent on the 49th Parallel of Latitude were represented
in the best published Charts of the period when the Treaty was
concluded.

6. I transmit herewith a section taken from Vancouver's Chart,
showing the Coast Lines in the Gulf of Georgia on the 49th
Parallel and embracing all the information on the subject
which Mr Buchanan and Mr Pakenham could possibly have had
access to, in fixing and describing the line of Water Boundary.

7. It will thereby be observed that the line of Coast on the
west side of the Gulf of Georgia, directly opposite Point Roberts, and where the Point is intersected by the 49th
Parallel of North Latitude—now known to be a group of
Islands—was then supposed to be and represented in the Charts
of the day, as the East Coast of Vancouver's Island.

8. It is therefore reasonable to infer that the intention of
the negociators must have been to carry on the line of Boundary
along the 49th Parallel to the middle of the channel which
separates the land of Point Roberts from the land shewn in the
charts of that day as the East Coast of Vancouver's Island.

9. That point of the Boundary line being fixed as so described,
in the middle of that channel the Treaty goes on to say that it
is to be carried thence southerly through the middle of the said
channel and of Fuca Straits to the Pacific Ocean.

10. The only channel to which that description can really apply
is the channel followed by "Vancouver," with his two ships, by
Strawberry Bay, as traced upon the accompanying section of his
chart, before referred to.

11. That it was the intention of the negociators to carry the
Boundary through that channel, is thus I think distinctly shewn,
and I have heard no cause assigned on the part of the United
States Boundary Commissioners why that simple and obvious
rendering of the Treaty should not be adopted as its true sense
and meaning.

12. It would certainly not be advisable for Her Majesty's
Government to adopt any other, than the above rendering of the
Treaty, without very careful consideration of the effect of any
new arrangement; lest we be thereby debarred from the use of a
safe and accessible Ship channel to the British Possessions in
the Gulf of Georgia.

13. The American Coasts on the Gulf of Georgia, being
accessible by a good Ship channel, even though the Islands of San Juan, Lopez and Orcas are confirmed to Great Britain; the
acquisition of those Islands may be considered as a question of
secondary importance to the United States; while to us their
acquisition is of vital consequence, for securing a Ship
communication with the most valuable and extensive portion of
British Columbia.

14. That remark is especially meant to apply to a proposal
which is said to have been made here, of treating the whole
space between the continent and Vancouver's Island as one channel
and running the Boundary line through the middle of that space
without reference to any navigable channel, an arrangement which
unless the position of the Islands be greatly misunderstood,
would it appears to me, leave on the British side of the line,
no navigable communication with the Gulf of Georgia.