Before this time there had arisen a cry, sedulously seconded by the Company's enemies, that the Red River region belonged to the United States. Nothing can be clearer than that it was never for a moment contemplated either by the British or American Government, that any of the Hudson's Bay lands, or any of the waters running into Hudson's Bay, would be included in the lines assigned as the boundaries between the possessions of Great Britain and those of the States. It is sufficiently demonstrated by the treaty concluded with America in 1794 that such an idea never existed in the minds of the negotiators. By the third article of that treaty, which permits the most perfect freedom of communication and intercourse between the subjects of both nations throughout their respective dominions, an exception is made of the country within the limits of the Hudson's Bay Company, to be ascertained, of course, in conformity to their charter from which the Americans are expressly excluded. The terms of the treaty concluded in 1783 with the United States show the express intentions of both nations to have been that the northern boundary of the United States should not, in any part, extend farther north than the River St. Lawrence, or the lakes and streams which feed or fall into it. The unhappy feature of the matter was that a great part of the second article of the treaty of 1783 was drawn up in complete ignorance of the geography of the country. It is so full of contradictions that it became impossible afterwards to lay down a line which should follow that article literally. In this dilemma the only fair method of solving the difficulty was to return to the principles which governed the framing of the article. [Illustration: RED RIVER CART.] [Sidenote: The Treaty of 1783.]