By the Treaty of Utrecht, the British possessions to the north-west of Canada were acknowledged to extend to the head-waters of the rivers emptying themselves into the bay of Hudson: by the Treaty of Paris, they were united to the British possessions on the Atlantic by the cession of Canada and all her dependencies; and France contracted her dominions within the right bank of the Mississippi. That France did not retain any territory after this treaty to the north-west of the sources of the Mississippi, will be obvious, when it is kept in mind that the sources of the Mississippi are in 47° 35', whilst the sources of the Red River, which flows through Lake Winnipeg, and ultimately finds its way by the Nelson River into the bay of Hudson, are in Lake Travers, in about 45° 40'.
Some writers are disposed to consider that the limits of New France extended westwardly across the entire continent to the Pacific Ocean, but no authoritative document has been cited to show that the French Crown ever claimed such an extent of unknown territory, or that its claim was ever admitted. Escarbot's description, in 1617, of New France, which, however, is of no authority, embraces within its limits almost the entire continent of North America, as may be seen from the extract from his "Histoire de la Nouvelle France," which M. Duflot de Mofras gives: "Ainsi nostre Nouvelle France a pour limites du côté d'ouest les terres jusqu'à la mer dite Pacifique en deça du tropique du Cancer; au midi, les côtes de la mer Atlantique du côté de Cube et de l'Isle Hespagnole; au levant, la mer du Nord qui baigne la Nouvelle France; et au septentrion, cette terre qui est dite inconnue, vers la mer glacée jusqu'au pole arctique."
The same author cites a map of the year 1757, as confirmatory of this view, in which a great river is exhibited in 45°, on the north-west coast of America, the direction of which is exactly that of the Columbia; but Mr. Greenhow, in the new edition of his work, p. 159, states, that this map was drawn and presented by the French commissaries appointed under the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, to expose the extravagant pretensions of the British in North America, and that it does not contain the word _Canada_, or _Nouvelle France_, or any other sign of French dominion, the whole division of the continent, between 48° and 31° north latitude, being represented by strong lines and express notes, as included in the limits of the British provinces; nor does it show any large river falling into the Pacific north of the peninsula of California, nor any river entering that ocean north of 36°. A map perhaps better authenticated than this may be referred to in the History of the French Dominions in America, by Jefferys, the geographer to the King of England, in 1760, which does not, indeed, extend New France to the Pacific: on the contrary, whilst it exhibits the River of the West flowing in a course not unlike that of the Columbia, it does not include the Pacific Ocean at all in its limits, but leaves the west coast of the continent in its real obscurity.