confusion, and no progress had been made towards settling it. The water-
line through the St. Lawrence and the Lakes was still unadjusted. It was
found that the headwaters of the Mississippi lay to the south of the Lake
of the Woods, so that there was a gap on the northwest. On the south Spain
disputed the right of Great Britain to establish the boundary, insisted
that her own undoubted settlements lay within the territory claimed by the
United States, and declined to grant the free navigation of the lower
Mississippi to the sea. Still more humiliating was the presence of British
garrisons at Fort Niagara, Detroit, and other points within the undisputed
boundaries of the United States.

[Sidenote: Interior boundaries.]

The interior boundaries of the country were in a like unsettled condition.
Neither North Carolina nor Georgia had yielded up their western claims
(sec. 52). Vermont had not yet been recognized by New York as outside of
her jurisdiction, and the Western Reserve lay along the southern shore of
Lake Erie as an outlying part of Connecticut. No territorial government
had been established for the Northwest territory, although settlement had
begun to pour in. The southern territory was in complete confusion:
Kentucky and the Tennessee valley were practically independent
communities; and Georgia claimed the whole region south of them.


71. THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES IN 1789.


[Sidenote: Population.]

A census taken in 1790 gives us the number of inhabitants as a little