Had the United States, thought proper to issue, in 1790, by virtue of their national authority, a charter granting to Mr. Gray the whole extent of the country watered, directly or indirectly, by the River Columbia,[84] such a charter, would, no doubt, have been valid in Mr. Gray's favor, as against all other citizens of the United States. But can it be supposed that it would have been acquiesced in by either of the powers, Great Britain and Spain, which, in that same year, were preparing to contest by arms the possession of the very country which would have been the subject of such a grant? If the right of sovereignty over the territory in question accrues to the United States by Mr. Gray's discovery, how happens it that they never protested against the violence done to that right by the two powers, who, by the convention of 1790, regulated their respective rights in and over a district so belonging, as it is now asserted, to the United States? This claim of the United States to the territory drained by the Columbia and its tributary streams, on the ground of one of their citizens having been the first to discover the entrance of that river, has been here so far entered into, not because it is considered to be necessarily entitled to notice, since the whole country watered by the Columbia falls within the provisions of the convention of 1790, but because the doctrine above alluded to has been put forward so broadly, and with such confidence, by the United States, that Great Britain considered it equally due to herself and to other powers to enter her protest against it. The United States further pretend that their claim to the country in question is strengthened and confirmed by the discovery of the sources of the Columbia, and by the exploration of its course to the sea by Lewis and Clark, in 1805-6. In reply to this allegation, Great Britain affirms, and can distinctly prove, that, if not before, at least in the same and subsequent years, her North-Western Trading Company had, by means of their agent, Mr. Thomson, already established their posts among the Flathead and Kootanie tribes, on the headwaters of the northern or main branch of the Columbia, and were gradually extending them down the principal stream of that river; thus giving to Great Britain, in this particular, again, as in the discovery of the mouth of the river, a _title to parity_ at least, if not priority, of discovery, as opposed to the United States. It was from those posts, that, having heard of the American establishment forming in 1811, at the mouth of the river, Mr. Thomson hastened thither, descending the river, to ascertain the nature of that establishment.[85]