In June, 1762, James Murray, then military governor of the district of Quebec, and subsequently the first civil governor of the province, wrote that it was impossible to ascertain exactly what part of North America the French styled Canada. In the previous March General Gage, then military governor of Montreal, had written that he could not discover ‘that the limits betwixt Louisiana and Canada were distinctly described, so as to be publicly known’, but that from the trade which Canadians had carried on under the authority of their governors, he judged ‘not only the lakes, which are indisputable, but the whole course of the Mississippi from its heads to its junction with the Illinois, to have been comprehended by the French in the government of Canada’. In June, 1763, the Lords of Trade, when in obedience to the Royal commands they were considering the terms and the scope of the coming proclamation, reported that ‘Canada, as possessed and claimed by the French, consisted of an immense tract of country including as well the whole lands to the westward indefinitely which was the subject of their Indian trade, as all that country from the southern bank of the river St. Lawrence, where they carried on their encroachments’. After the Peace of Paris had been signed, the King, through Lord Egremont, who had succeeded Chatham as Secretary of State for the southern department, referred the whole subject of his new colonial possessions to the Lords of Trade. In doing so he called special attention to the necessity of keeping peace among the North American Indians--a subject which was shortly to be illustrated by Pontiac’s war--and to this end he laid stress upon the desirability of protecting their persons, their property, and their privileges, and ‘most cautiously guarding against any invasion or occupation of their hunting lands, the possession of which is to be acquired by fair purchase only’. The Lords of Trade recommended adoption of ‘the general proposition of leaving a large tract of country round the Great Lakes as an Indian country, open to trade, but not to grants and settlements; the limits of such territory will be sufficiently ascertained by the bounds to be given to the governors of Canada and Florida on the north and south, and the Mississippi on the west; and by the strict directions to be given to Your Majesty’s several governors of your ancient colonies for preventing their making any new grants of lands beyond certain fixed limits to be laid down in the instructions for that purpose’. Egremont answered that the King demurred to leaving so large a tract of land without a civil jurisdiction and open, as being derelict, to possible foreign intrusion; and that, in His opinion, the commission of the Governor of Canada should include ‘all the lakes, viz. Ontario, Erie, Huron, Michigan, and Superior’, and ‘all the country as far north and west as the limits of the Hudson’s Bay Company and the Mississippi’. At the same time He cordially