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 of at once taking the ground that the whole body of water was
really in question, the English government claimed another channel,
Rosario Strait, inferior in some respects, but the one most generally,
and indeed only, used at the time by their vessels. The importance of
this difference of opinion lay chiefly in the fact, that the Haro gave
San Juan and other small islands, valuable for defensive purposes, to
the United States, while the Rosario left them to England. Then, after
much corresponde