tained what was advertised at Ottawa as an "important surrender to the United States of what is here held to be indisputably Canadian territory." The moment I saw this statement in a Canadian official press dispatch, March 7, 1897, I knew instinctively that we were being plucked. I managed to get a copy of the treaty, and then exposed its aim to Senator Foraker, just in time, for it would have been ratified the next day had he not stopped it.

In the light of the foregoing outlines of a most unfortunate mistake in the State Department, whereby we admitted to Canada, August 26, 1892, that we ourselves did not know exactly where our own Alaskan border was defined, and then were willing, January 30, 1897, to shift it here or there as a joint commission might agree is it not plain that the Canadians in this matter have secured the same advantage which they took in 1854-1871 over our claim to San Juan Island, Puget sound? Indeed, they have secured more, in the pending contention, because during the entire period of the San Juan dispute we never admitted the shadow of a doubt as to the exact line of our claim!

Let me recite a few salient points, briefly, of this San Juan difficulty, which we said, for fifteen long years, we never would submit to arbitration. Yet, nevertheless, on May 8, 1871, we entered into a convention here, at Washington, which submitted the controversy to the result of arbitration. Curiously enough, this San Juan dispute was strangely similar in claim of indefinite treaty terms of boundary limitation to the pending Alaskan boundary question.

The terms of the treaty of Washington, June 15, 1846, were indefinite with especial regard to the line of demarcation between Vancouver Island and Washington territory for the extension of the 49th parallel from Point Roberts. They were made in the following vague words: From Point Roberts the boundary went "to the middle of the channel which separates Vancouver Island from the continent, and thence southerly through the middle of said channel and of Inca straits to the Pacific ocean.'

The first clash over this did not spring up until 1854. Then some sheep were taken across from Victoria to San Juan Island by the H. B. Co.'s people. The United States collector of customs of Washington territory levied a duty upon them. The Canadians objected, and put up an armed resistance; British and American troops were called out by both parties to the contest; the British established an armed camp on the north end of the island; hoisted their colors, beat their drums, and we did likewise on the south end of the same island-the two camps were not more than five miles apart, and in plain sight of each other. An indiscreet officer at any time between 1854-1871 could have plunged both nations into war! I saw these camps in 1865-67, and I can testify to the intense, bitter feeling that ran high among our own people, and among theirs; it was far more intense than the feeling at Skagway is at this hour.

The British insisted that the "channel" referred to in the treaty of 1846 was "Rosario straits;" the Americans insisted that this "channel" was the "Canal de Hors." After fifteen years of heated argument

and reiterated declaration on both sides that it would never be submitted to arbitration-that they would and we would fight first-we sent the question to a court of arbitration, with the German emperor as the arbitrator, as above stated. He decided, October 8, 1872, in our favor, and the "fighting" troops of Canada evacuated the island November 22, following.

Sooner or later this Alaskan boundary question must be settled; no titles to undeveloped land or mining claims over which there is a shadow of doubt can command capital for their exploration and working; and since we have by mistaken steps of our own official agents in 1892 and 1897 admitted the CanaIdian contention of doubt as to the fixed line of our possessions and we are today resting on a modus vivendi over the line on the pass above Skagway, how are we going to undo what we have inherited from 1892?

The conclusion in any judicial mind is that we will follow the course and precedent of the San Juan dispute; we have a much better case than we had then; the record of Russian ownership of the "thirty-mile strip" is cemented by the British record of leasing it, for a limited period (in 1839-1856), as Russian territory; and this act .of leasing was approved by a select committee of the British parliament, during 1857, after examining into its terms, and by the Russian government in 1854-'56.

We can win our Alaskan claim easily before any tribunal of our peers if we put it into the hands of intelligent and capable agents.

HENRY W. ELLIOTT.

THE ALASKO-CANADIAN FRONTIER."

The Ledger is in receipt of a monograph on "The Alasko-Canadian Frontier," by Thomas Willing Balch, Esq., of this city, in which the claim of the United States, that it is entitled to a strip of territory on the Alaskan mainland, "from the Portland Canal, in the south, up to Mount Saint Elias, in the north, so as to cut off absolutely the British possessions from access to the sea above the point of fifty-four degrees forty minutes," is presented, we think, with conclusive force. The paper was read originally at the annual meeting of the Franklin Institute, January 15, 1902 It buttresses the American contention with an array of proofs which it is confidently believed would sway the judgment of any impartial judicial tribunal. Mr. Balch finds the American case to be so unassailable that Canada has no ground for the demand that the boundary question shall be submitted to arbitration.

"Whether the frontier shall pass over a certain mountain top or through a given gorge is a proper subject for settlement by a mutual survey. But by no possibility has Canada any right to territory touching tidewater above fifty-four degrees forty minutes. The United States should never consent to refer such a proposition to arbitration."

Mr. Balch notes that for more than fifty years the British Empire did not challenge the interpretation placed upon the Anglo-Russian treaty of 1825 by Russia, and later by the United States, that Russia, and, after the cession of Alaska in 1867, the United

'Editorial from the Public Ledger, Philadelphia, April 4, 1902.

States, became entitled to a strip of mainland, following the indentations or sinuosities of the coast, from the Portland channel northward to Mount Saint Elias, "so as to cut off absolutely the British possessions from access to the sea above the point of fifty-four degrees forty minutes."

This was the status until August, 1898, when England claimed, at the Quebec Conference, that the Anglo-Russian treaty of 1825 gave to Canada the upper portion of nearly all the estuaries between Portland Canal and Mount Saint Elias. The British claim made in 1898 was that the Alaskan boundary from the top of Portland Canal should run directly to the coast, "and then along the mountains on the mainland nearest the shore and across all sinuosities of the sea that advance into the continent up to Mount Saint Elias."

Mr. Balch traces the important negotiations leading up to the signing of the Anglo-Russian treaty of 1825. He shows that England wished to obtain from Russia a disclaimer of the ukase of 1821, that Bering Sea and certain portions of the Pacific were to be held as Russian waters exclusively. Russia would not yield until the boundary line was so fixed as to give Russia the unbroken strip along the coast from Portland Canal to Mount Saint Elias, "and on this last point England, after a long and stubborn resistance, finally yielded." With respect to the eastern boundary of this strip Mr. Balch recalls that England insisted that, should the mountain summits prove to be at any point more than ten marine leagues from the shore, "the line of demarcation should be drawn parallel to the sinuosities of the shore at a distance of ten marine