the letter of the Hudson's Bay Company to Mr. Canning, in which Mr. Pelly says that he is at a loss to understand "why Great Britain should cede to Russia the exclusive right to the islands and the coast from latitude 54° 40′ northward to Mount Elias" (B. C., App., p. 81). An arrangement under which substantially all the harbours and ports for trade on the coast were retained by Great Britain certainly would not be a cession of the exclusive right to the coast. If Great Britain was retaining the most valuable part of the coast it was unknown to the Hudson's Bay Company, upon whose settlements Great Britain based all her claims to territory, which was conducting all the trade that Great Britain was endeavouring to protect, which was most familiar with the country to which the Treaty related, most interested in the result, and which was consulted at every step of the negotiations. If Mr. Canning had considered that such was the effect of the proposed arrangement, a prompt explanation of his advisers' mistake would have followed, and a modification of the terms of the Treaty in such a way as to make it clear that he was not ceding an exclusive right to the whole coast.

In the face of this clear statement by the Hudson's Bay Company of their understanding that the effect of drawing a line either along the mountains or at 10 marine leagues from the shore would be to "cede to Russia the exclusive right to the islands and the coast, from latitude 54° 40′ northward to Mount Elias," the absence of any single word in the Treaty, or any draft of it, or in any of the negotiations, referring in any way whatever to Great Britain's having the heads of the bays and inlets, or the territory about them, has a special significance, and indicates most clearly that no such idea was entertained by the British negotiators.

It is argued by Counsel for Great Britain that Article VII of the Treaty, which gives to the vessels of the two Powers reciprocal rights to frequent the inland seas, gulfs, havens, and creeks on the coast mentioned in Article III, shows that Great Britain was the possessor of inland seas, gulfs, havens, and creeks on the coast along which the lisière ran, that is, between latitude 54° 40′ and latitude 60°. The argument is that Article VII applies exclusively to that part of the coast, and it is to be inferred, therefore, that the reciprocal rights which were granted on the part of Great Britain in that Article were rights to inlets, &c., which she had under the Treaty in that part of the coast.

But the coast mentioned in Article III is the "coast of the continent." It is true the same Article describes the boundary of the lisière as being parallel to the coast, but there is no warrant whatever for limiting the reference of Article VII to anything less than the possessions of the two parties upon the coast of the continent-the entire coast mentioned in Article III. If Great Britain had no other possessions upon the coast of the continent in which she could give reciprocal rights to Russia, there would be some force in the argument, but by the terms of this very Treaty the coast from the head of the Portland Canal to the southern limits of the Russian claims, viz., latitude 51°, was assigned to Great Britain, and upon that stretch of coast, a part of the coast mentioned in Article III, there were numerous gulfs, havens, and creeks. The terms of Article VII are, therefore, entirely satisfied, without assigning the rights granted by Great Britain to any part of the coast north of the head of the Portland Canal.

The view that the grant by Great Britain in Article VII was intended to apply, not to the lisière, but to the coast to the south of it, is supported by the fact that by the terms of the Treaty of 1818 between the United States and Great Britain, those countries acknowledged equal rights, each in the other, to the coast south of 54° 40′, and that Article VII of the Treaty now under consideration was taken bodily from the Treaty of the 5th April, 1824, between Russia and the United States, which, in the same words, granted reciprocal rights in the possessions of the two parties on "the north-west coast of America." The provision of the American Treaty could not have been intended to confer upon Russia any rights except below 54° 40', for America had none. The natural inference from the incorporation of this same provision into the British Treaty would be that it was intended to give Russia the same rights from the co-tenant of the same coast.

A further examination of the history of Article VII leaves no doubt that instead of the grant of rights by Great Britain to Russia in that Article being intended to apply exclusively to the coast of the lisière, it was intended to apply exclusively to the coast below the lisière; for the first appearance of the Article was in the draft Treaty prepared by Mr. Canning, and inclosed by him in his letter to Sir Charles Bagot of the 12th July, 1824. In that draft Mr. Canning proposed, in Article III, a provision, not that there should be reciprocal rights in regard to the lisière, but that Russia should

grant to British subjects a perpetual right to navigate and trade along the coast of the lisière; while the reciprocal provision for ten years, which now constitutes Article VII, was proposed as Article V of the draft, "with regard to the other parts of the north-west coast of America" (B. C., App., p. 87). This was after the American Treaty of 1824, and Article V of Mr. Canning's draft, providing for reciprocal relations in the other parts of the north-west coast, copied the language of the American Treaty. As England had unquestionably no interests in the parts of the north-west coast other than the lisière, except south of the lisière, the reciprocal provision proposed by Mr. Canning in Article V of his draft applied, so far as it involved a grant of right by Great Britain, solely to the same coast which was affected by the American grant in the Treaty of 1824.

Russia refused to grant to British subjects the perpetual right to trade in the lisièr, but expressed a willingness to give such a right for ten years, and she carried into the Treaty of 1825, now under consideration, the reciprocal provision which Mr. Canning proposed as to the other parts of the north-west coast, unchanged, except that the words "other parts" were stricken out; so that the reciprocal clause operated not only to accomplish the original effect of a British grant of rights to Russia below the lisière for ten years, but also of a Russian grant to British subjects of rights in the lisière for ten years.

There is absolutely no ground for claimant that, in broadening the scope of Mr. Canning's original reciprocal provision so that it would include a grant by Russia in the lisière, it was intended to exclude the other parts of the coast, to which solely the provision originally applied.

The maps which we have said furnished an interpretation of the Treaty by the parties includes;

The Russian Admiralty Chart of 1826 (U. S. Atlas, No. 11); the Russian Admiralty Chart of 1844 (U. S. Atlas, No. 22, British Atlas, No. 15); Atlas sent by Sir J. H. Pelly, the Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, 13th September, 1849, to Earl Grey, as part of a statement of the rights as to territory, trade, taxation, and government, claimed and exercised by the Hudson's Bay Company, and printed in the Parliamentary Papers of the House of Commons, 11th July, 1850 (U. S. C.-C., p. 253; British Atlas, No. 19); map produced by Sir

George Simpson, Governor of the Hudson's Bay territories, before a Select Committee of the House of Commons on the affairs of the Hudson's Bay Company, as showing the territory leased by that Company from the Russian American Company, and published by order of the House of Commons in 1857 (U. S. C.-C., App., pp. 38, 39; British Atlas, No. 21); British Colonial Office manuscript map of 1831 (British Atlas, No. 13); British Admiralty Chart of 1856, corrected 1861, 1862, and 1864 (U. S. Atlas, No. 23); British Admiralty Chart of 1876. (U. S. Atlas, No. 38); official map of the Dominion of Canada, show'ng the extent and situation of its public lands, published by the Canadian Department of the Interior in 1878 (U. S. Atlas, No. 39) map published by the Canadian Department of Railways, 1883 (U. S., Atlas, No. 43); official map of Province of British Columbia published by the Commissioner of Lands and Works, Victoria, 1884 (British, Atlas, No. 31); map of the Dominion of Canada, published in 1884 by the Director of the Canadian Geological Survey from surveys made by the Geological Corps, 1842 to 1882 (British Atlas, No. 32); the map published by the United States' Coast Survey in 1867, compiled for the Department of State at the time of the purchase of Alaska by the United States (U. S. Atlas, No. 24).

In all of these maps the boundary line is drawn around the heads of the inlets. It is not contended that this boundary line was an accurate location of the true boundary. In the absence of knowledge as to the mountains, it appears to have been drawn on the 10-marineleague line, measuring from the heads of the bays and inlets. It precludes no one from saying that the occurrence of a mountain crest within 10 marine leagues of the coast would call for a change of the position of the line. But it is manifest that in every case the line was drawn in accordance with the American theory of what constituted the coast, and not in accordance with the theory now maintained by the Counsel for Great Britain as to what constitutes the coast. According to the construction of the Treaty claimed by the British Case, the 10-marine-league line should have been drawn across the Lynn Canal 34 miles from its mouth. In all those maps it is drawn 90 miles away from that point, 344 miles above the head of the Lynn Canal. It is not contended that the action of any one of the officials making these maps worked an estoppel against his Government, but the uniform and continuous adoption and promulgation for sixty years, by all these officers, of the view that the line went around the

head of the Lynn Canal, without a single map, or paper, or act, or word indicating the existence of any differing view on the part of their Governments, certainly does lead to a strong inference that their Governments understood the Treaty consistently with the maps, and not inconsistently with them.

It would be a strange thing if, six years after the Treaty was made, the British Colonial Office recorded the limits of the British possessions in North-west America inconsistently with the views of the British Government; that for fifty years after the making of this Treaty of 1825, the British Admiralty should issue the charts which constituted the guide for the vessels of the British Navy, putting down upon them the heads of the bays and inlets in Southern Alaska as being Russian waters, if the British Government regarded them as British waters; that the Government of British Columbia, the Canadian Department of the Interior, Department of Railroads and Geological Survey, should all be mistaken regarding the construction which the British Government put upon this Treaty. It would be a still stranger thing if Mr. Pelly, Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, who was Mr. Canning's adviser throughout the negotiations of the Treaty, and Sir George Simpson, who was the Resident Governor in America, both at the time the Treaty was made and at the time the Hudson's Bay Company leased the property from the Russian American Company, both were ignorant of the construction put upon the Treaty by the British Government, and, being in charge of the great interests directly affected by that construction, continued the rest of their lives in that ignorance.

It is impossible to resist the conclusion that the construction of the Treaty now contended for by Great Britain is an after-thought, never entertained by any officer of the British Government during the lifetime of the makers of the Treaty, and originated at least sixty years after the Treaty was signed.

The principal feature of Russia's occupation of Alaska was that in 1839 the Russian American Company, with the express assent of the Russian Government, leased to the Hudson's Bay Company the mainland coast from Cape Spencer to the Portland Canal, and that this lease was renewed from time to time until the American purchase. The terms of the lease were apt to describe the entire coast, and the maps showing the leased territory, which were furnished to the British Government by Sir J. H. Pelly in 1849 and Sir George