that, practically, the modest British factory at Calcutta has gradually grown up into absolute and undisputed sovereignty over a population of eighty millions of people. The questions which, as it appears to me, may be allowed by the United States to be debatable, and therefore to make it questionable whether they have a complete right to the whole Oregon territory, are: 1st. The Nootka convention, which applies to the whole, and which, though not of primary importance, is nevertheless a fact, and the inferences drawn from it a matter of argument. 2dly. The discovery of the Straits of Fuca. 3dly. North of those straits; along the sea shores, the discoveries of the British contrasted with those of the American and Spanish navigators; in the interior, the question whether the discovery of the mouth and the navigation of one of its principal branches, from its source to the mouth of the river, implies without exception a complete right to the whole country drained by all the tributaries of such river; and also the British claim to the whole territory drained by Frazer's river--its sources having been discovered in 1792 by Sir Alexander Mackenzie, factories having been established upon it by the British as early as the year 1806, and the whole river thence to its mouth having been for a number of years exclusively navigated by British subjects. It appears to me sufficient generally to suggest the controverted points. That which relates to Fuca's Straits is the most important, and deserves particular consideration. If Fuca's voyage in 1592 could be proved to be an authentic document, this would settle at once the question in favor of the United States; but the voyage was denied in the introduction to the voyage of the Sutil and Mexicano. This was an official document, published under the auspices of the Spanish Government, and intended to vindicate Spain against the charges, that she had contributed nothing to the advancement of geography in those quarters. This negative evidence was confirmed by Humboldt, who says that no trace of such voyage can be found in the archives of Mexico. Unwilling to adduce any doubtful fact, I abstained from alluding to it in the statement of the American case in 1826. Later researches show that, although recorded evidences remain of the voyages of Gali from Macao to Acapulco in 1584, of the Santa Anna (on board of which was, as he says, Fuca himself) from Manilla to the coast of California, where she was captured in 1587 by Cavendish, and of Vizcaino in 1602-1603, and even of Maldonado's fictitious voyage in 1588, yet no trace has been found in Spain or Mexico of Fuca's, or any other similar voyage, in 1692, or thereabout.