Brooks: Diplomacy and the Borderkmds


State, contain a mass of information on the subject which could
have been obtained only in the perusal of countless pages of earlier
correspondence and reports. And their very number is impressive,
particularly the high-water mark of fifty-five letters of instruc-
tion sent to Onis in the month of July,.1817, all concerning details
aside from the lengthy statements of general policy governing the
negotiation.'
 Special reports, and innumerable accounts from colonial officials
of frontier claims and disputes, were sent in to the foreign office.
One of especial interest, which it is reasonably certain was used by
Heredia, is the famous report on the limits of Louisiana and Texas
prepared by Father Jos6 Antonio Pichardo. In the archives at
Sevilla is a letter from the viceroy of Mexico, dated March 15, 1813,
in which he said that the copy of Pichardo's historical memoir
could not yet be sent to Spain, as only 1,969 of its 5,127 pages had
been copied.' Another, dated September 30, 1816, announced that
the copy of the report, which had just been completed, was being
sent in two boxes containing thirty-one volumes. But it was ex-
plained that the plans which were to accompany it had not been
completed, because of the illness of the man who was preparing
them, the same Gonzalo L6pez de Haro who in 1789 had piloted a
vessel to Nootka Sound. On the margin of this letter is a notation
made by the secretario do estado, requesting that the report be
placed at the disposition of three department officials, among them
Heredia.
 Little was done to further the negotiation for some time after
Pizarro's appointment. It will be remembered that Erving, in his
despatch quoted above, complained that Pizarro had not men-
tioned the affair at any time between September 30 and Decem-
ber 15.
 Meanwhile, the policy to be followed was outlined in a Bosquejo
 (sketch) of relations with the United States, submitted to the King
on November 6, 1816." This paper, unsigned but clearly originat-
ing in the foreign office, was prefaced by a castigation of the United
States as being ungrateful in view of Spain's aid in her revolution
against England, and as being "always anxious to promote rebel-
lion and perfidy." There followed a lament'over the sale of Louisi-
ana, allowed by the "perfidy" of France, and the "weakness and
stupidity" of Spain. The North American republic was accused of