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St. Lewis, heretofore called Mississippi, from the edge of the sea, as far as the Illinois, together with the river of St. Philip, heretofore called the Missourys, with all the countries, territories, lakes within land, and the rivers which fall directly or indirectly into that part of the river St. Lewis. 1. Our pleasure is that all the aforesaid lands, streams, rivers and islands, be and remain comprised under the name of the government of Louisiana, which shall be dependent upon the general government of New France,

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A map published about 1710 by Moll, the English geographer, represents Louisiana to be as Louis XIV describes it. To the east and along the Gulf coast the country containing the Carolinas is marked as British Empire. On the west, as a boundary, is New Mexico and Old Mexico, while on the north is New France, Lake Huron, and Upper Lake (Superior). A portion of the western boundary is shown as the "North River" (Del Norte river). The more northwestern boundaries are represented by the highlands at the sources of the Mississippi and the Missouri, marked on the map, respectively, as the rivers St. Louis and St. Philip. Nothing west of the Rocky Mountains is designated as Louisiana, and all north of California is marked as "Unknown Parts.”

In a later map, and before 1762, published by Thomas Bowen, entitled "An accurate map of North America from the best authorities," the country north of Cape Blanco (on the Oregon coast) is marked as "Unknown," while that east of the Rio del Norte and the Rocky Mountains, and the country drained by the waters of the Missouri and Mississippi and as far east as the "Apalachan Mountains" is marked as Louisiana, while Florida, Georgia, Carolina, Virginia and Pennsylvania, to the east of these mountains, are all excluded from the boundaries of Louisiana. This map will be found in Brooks's Gazetteer, 1st edition, 1762. As showing Jefferson's knowledge as to what constituted Louisiana, his letter to Mellish, the geographer, is submitted, as follows:

To Mr. MELlish.

MONTICELLO, December 31, 1816.

SIR,-Your favor of November 23d, after a very long passage, is received, and with it the map which you have been so kind as to send me, for which I return you many thanks. It is handsomely executed, and on a well chosen scale; giving a luminous view of the comparative possession of different powers in our America. It is on account of the value I set on it, that I will make some suggestions.

By the charter of Louis XIV. all the country comprehending the waters which flow into the Mississippi, was made a part of Louisiana. Consequently its northern boundary was the summit of the highlands in which its northern waters rise.

But by the Xth Art. of the Treaty of Utrecht, France and England agreed to appoint commissioners to settle the boundary between their possessions in that quarter, and those commissioners settled it at the 49th degree of latitude. See Hutchinson's Topographical Description of Louisiana, p. 7. This it was which induced the British Commissioners, in settling the boundary with us, to follow the northern water line to the Lake of the Woods, at the latitude of 49°, and then go off on that parallel. This, then, is the true northern boundary of Louisiana.

The western boundary of Louisiana is, rightfully, the Rio Bravo, (its main stream,) from its mouth to its source, and thence along the highlands and mountains dividing the waters of the Mississippi from those of the Pacific. The usurpations of Spain on the east side of that river, have induced geographers to suppose the Puerco or Salado to be the boundary. The line along the highlands stands on the charter of Louis XIV. that of the Rio Bravo, on the circumstance that, when La Salle

took possession of the Bay of St. Bernard, Panuco was the nearest possession of Spain, and the Rio Bravo the natural half way boundary between them.

On the waters of the Pacific, we can found no claim in right of Louisiana. If we claim that country at all, it must be on Astor's settlement near the mouth of the Columbia, and the principle of the jus gentium of America, that when a civilized nation takes possession of the mouth of a river in a new country, that possession is considered as including all its waters.

The line of latitude of the southern source of the Multnomat might be claimed as appurtenant to Astoria. For its northern boundary, I believe an understanding has been come to between our government and Russia, which might be known from some of its members. I do not know it.

Although the irksomeness of writing, which you may perceive from the present letter, and its labor, oblige me now to withdraw from letter writing, yet the wish that your map should set to rights the ideas of our own countrymen, as well as foreign nations, as to our correct boundaries, has induced me to make these suggestions, that you may bestow on them whatever inquiry they may merit.

I salute you with esteem and respect.

Perhaps the most noted map of this period is that by the French engineer, Louis Franquelin, previously mentioned herein, which was published as early as 1684, following the possession by France; and there is outlined on this map the boundaries of Louisiana nearly as claimed by Louis XIV, and these limits were justified by the recognized authority of those days, which gave to the discoverer of the mouth of a river the whole country drained by it.

Justin Winsor, in his Narrative and Critical History of America, in commenting on that law as applied to the discovery of the Mississippi, says:

By this the French claim was bounded by the Gulf of Mexico westward to the Rio Grande; thence northward to the rather vague watershed of what we now know as the Rocky Mountains, with an indefinite line along the source of the Upper Mississippi and its higher affluents, bounding on the height of land which shut off the valley of the Great Lakes until the Appalachians were reached. Following these mountains south, the line skirted the northern limits of Spanish Florida, and then turned to the Gulf. * At the north the head waters of the great river were still

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unknown, and long to remain so.

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The province which was granted to Crozat was by him surrendered back September 6, 1717, and his colony abandoned. The same year another grant was made to the Mississippi Commercial Company, under the regency of the Duke of Orleans. This was the celebrated John Law's Mississippi scheme. This charter was later on also surrendered. This, then, was the original and only Louisiana, and it is seen that no country is included west of the Rocky Mountains. France claimed nothing beyond, and the country known as Louisiana was recognized by the bounds already mentioned. For nearly eighty years following La Salle's discovery the country named by him as Louisiana remained intact as French possessions; but its dismemberment and change of sovereignty was near at hand. If this territory was Louisiana, as we thus far understood the boundaries, and such as France had claimed, could it not be contended to be the same Louisiana that was ceded to Spain? Was it not Spanish domain from the moment the cession was signed and ratified? A study of the treaties, however, which are to follow, will convey that territory to different sovereignties.

FRANCE CEDES TO SPAIN.

The treaty between France and Spain of November 3, 1762, was the first move in change of sovereignty. In that treaty the granting words are:

his Most Christian Majesty cedes in entire possession, purely and simply, without exception, to his Catholic Majesty and his successors in perpetuity, all the country known under the name of Louisiana, as well as New Orleans and the island in which that place stands.

This was made subject to the later approval and acceptance of the Spanish King. On the 13th of the same month the acceptance was made final.

This treaty between the two monarchs was never known publicly in the United States until seventy years after, and until published, in 1837, in the appendix to Gales & Seaton's Reports of Debates, Twenty-fourth Congress, second session, volume 13. This will account for the misunderstanding among so many of our public men in the time of Jefferson's administration as to the exact territory which belonged to either France or Spain.

The orders for the surrender of Louisiana, with New Orleans and the island, were not issued at Versailles until April 21, 1764.

By reference to the treaty it will be observed that the cession to Spain merely refers to the transfer as "the country known under the name of Louisiana, together with New Orleans and the island on which that city stands." There is no other description or designation. Whether Spain claimed Florida west to the Iberville, or how far north along the Mississippi, and north of the thirty-first degree of latitude, or how far France claimed for Louisiana east of the Iberville, or anything between the Mississippi and the Florida country-all these were matters of uncertainty and contention. By another move at the same time this uncertainty was attempted to be cleared. The cession to Spain of Louisiana was accompanied, or, it should more properly be said, was followed, by the adjustment and agreement known in history as the Treaty of Paris, which was concluded February 10, 1763, between Great Britain and Portugal on the one part, and Spain and France on the other, in which France ceded to Great Britain Nova Scotia (or Acadia), Canada with all its dependencies, the island of Cape Breton and also all the other islands and coasts on the Gulf and River St. Lawrence. The same treaty further fixed the boundary or confines between the British and French possessions by a "line drawn along the middle of the river Mississippi, from its source to the river Iberville, and from thence by a line drawn along the middle of this river, and the lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain, to the sea," and then the treaty makes to Great Britain still another cession: "the river and port of Mobile, and everything which he possesses, or ought to possess, on the left side of the river Mississippi, except the town of New Orleans and the island in which it is situated, which shall remain to France." There was an important clause in the treaty which later gave rise to much misunderstanding wherein it was "provided that the nav2239 2