ponsibility of the British Government
having been established. The subjects of her Majesty presented 478
claims which, with interest reckoned by the rule allowed by the
Commission, amounted to $96,000,000. Of this number 181 awards were
made in favor of the claimants, amounting in the aggregate to
$1,929,819, or only two per cent of the amount claimed. The amount
awarded was appropriated by Congress and paid by the United States to
the British Government. All claims accruing between 1861 and 1865 for
injuries resulting in any way from the war were thereafter barred.(7)

The subject of the north-western boundary line, commonly known as the
San Juan question, was one of very considerable importance, over which
there had been long contention between the two Governments. The treaty
of Independence in 1783 was followed by a series of disputes relating
to the boundary between the United States and British America. It was
inevitable that a tortuous line, drawn from the north-western angle of
Nova Scotia to the Lake of the Woods and thence (as the treaty
erroneously described it) due west to the Mississippi River, would
give occasion for honest difference of opinion and very frequent
opportunity for technical disputes. The face of the country was
imperfectly known in 1783, and the highlands and water-courses by which
the line was to be determined could not at that time be laid down with
accuracy.

Beyond the Mississippi (then an unknown country) territorial disputes
grew up between Spain and Great Britain. By the purchase of Louisiana
in 1803, and by the subsequently acquired claim to the Oregon country,
the sovereignty of the Republic was extended to the Pacific; Great
Britain claiming to be co-terminous for the entire distance. By the
treaty of 1818 the forty-ninth parallel was agreed upon as the
boundary from the line of the Lake of the Woods to the "Stony
Mountains." The boundary from the Stony Mountains to the Pacific was
left for subsequent settlement, and was finally adjusted (as already
narrated in these pages) by the treaty of 1846. By that treaty the
two governments agreed to continue the forty-ninth parallel as the
boundary from the Stony Mountains "westward to the middle of the
channel which separates the continent from Vancouver's Island, and
thence southerly through the middle of said channel and of Fuca Straits
to the Pacific Ocean."

The Commissioners appointed by the two Governments to run the lin