Great Britain contested the exclusive claim of Spain from the year 1778, the date of Cook's third voyage; and he was the first British navigator that had for more than two centuries appeared on those coasts. This doctrine she has maintained ever since. She did not resist the exclusive claim of Spain by virtue of the Nootka convention, but prior to it. It was on that ground that she imperiously demanded indemnity and restoration for the property and factory of one of her subjects, which had been forcibly taken by the Spanish Government. She even threatened war; and the Nootka convention was the result of those transactions. Whatever construction may at this time be given to that instrument, it is certain at least that Spain by it conceded a portion of the absolute and sovereign right she had till then asserted; that she yielded the right of trade with the natives on all that part of the coast lying north of her actual settlements; and that, by suffering the ultimate right of sovereignty to remain in abeyance, she made that pretension questionable which she had contended could not be called in question. With respect to the United States, without recurring to former negotiations which were not attended with any result, it is sufficient to advert to the convention between them and Great Britain of the year 1818, concluded prior to the date of the treaty by which they acquired the claims of Spain to the territory north of the 42d degree of north latitude. The United States at that time distinctly claimed, in their own right and independent of the Spanish claims, that the boundary along the 49th parallel, which had been agreed on as that between them and Great Britain, from the Lake of the Woods to the Stony Mountains, should be extended to the Pacific. To this division of territory Great Britain would not accede; and the provision for a joint occupancy during the next ensuing years was substituted. A clause was inserted that the agreement should not be taken to affect the claims of any other Power or State to any part of the country west of the Stony Mountains. This provision clearly referred to the claims of Russia and Spain. The northern and southern boundaries of the country, which the two contracting parties might claim, were left undefined: Great Britain probably thought herself bound by the Nootka convention to respect the Spanish claims to the extent provided by that instrument: the United States could not but recognize those derived from discovery, with which they were at that time but imperfectly acquainted, since their own claims were in a great degree derived from a similar source. But the convention decisively proves that the United States did not acquiesce in the antiquated claim of Spain to the absolute and exclusive sovereignty of the whole country; since, if they had recognized that prior claim to the whole, they could have had none whatever to any portion of it.