capture fur seal pups each season, and keep them as pets around the camps. It is impossible that these pups may have come from Behring's Sea at that age, as Mr. Elliott states they do not leave the islands before the month of November, and those that Mr. Swan speaks of are caught early in the spring. The majority of our hunters contend that there are over 7 per cent. of pups in the entire catch of fur seals on the coast; while in Behring's Sea the catch does not exceed 1 per cent. But they cannot deny the fact that over 60 per cent. of the entire catch of Behring's Sea is made up of female seals.

My Lord,

No. 199.

Sir J. Pauncefote to the Marquis of Salisbury.-(Received June 3.)

Washington, May 24, 1889.

I HAVE the honour to inform your Lordship that the steamer "Rush," of the United States' Revenue Service, has been ordered to Behring's Sea in order to protect the fur-bearing animals in the territory of Alaska or in the waters thereof, in accordance with section 1956 of the Revised Statutes.

The Revenue steamer " Bear," now fitting at San Francisco, will shortly follow the "Rush," in order to assist her in this work.

Extract from the "Washington Post" of May 24, 1889.

THE ALASKAN SEAL FISHERIES.-Secretary Windom yesterday signed the sailing orders of the Revenue-steamer "Rush," directing that she sail immediately upon receipt of her instructions to Ounalaska, and then to cruize diligently in Behring's Sea for the purpose of "warning all persons against entering such waters for the purpose of violating section 1956 of the Revised Statutes, and arresting all persons, and seizing all vessels, found to be, or to have been, engaged in any violation of the laws of the United States therein."

Section 1956, Revised Statutes, referred to above, provides that "no person shall kill any otter, mink, marten, sable, or fur-seal, or other fur-bearing animal within the limits of Alaska territory, or in the waters thereof; and every person guilty thereof shall, for each offence, be fined not less than 200 dollars nor more than 1,000 dollars, or imprisoned not more than six months, or both, and all vessels, their tackle, apparel, furniture, and cargo, found engaged in violation of this section shall be forfeited; but the Secretary of the Treasury shall have power to authorize the killing of any such mink, marten, sable, or orther fur-bearing animal, except fur-seal, under such regulations as he may prescribe, and it shall be the duty of the Secretary to prevent the killing of any fur-seal, and to provide for the execution of the provisions of this section until it is otherwise provided by law, nor shall he grant any special privileges under this section."

The Commanding Officer of the "Rush" is also furnished with copies of the Act of the 2nd March, 1889, and the President's Proclamation of the 21st March, 1889, regarding the protection of the seal and salmon fisheries of Alaska, and instructed to enforce their provisions. The "Rush" is now at San Francisco ready for sea, and will sail immediately upon receipt of the orders, which were mailed at Washington yesterday afternoon. The Revenue-steamer "Bear," which is now fitting out at San Francisco for an expedition to Point Barrow, Alaska, has also been designated to assist in the protection of the Alaskan fisheries, and will follow the "Rush" in a short time. Her orders are now being prepared at the Treasury Department.

My Lord,

No. 200.

Consul-General Booker to the Marquis of Salisbury.-(Received July 8.)

New York, June 28, 1889. I HAVE the honour to inclose extracts, for your Lordship's perusal, from the New York "Evening Post" of yesterday, containing an interesting letter on the Behring's Sea question.

1 have, &c.

(Signed) WM. LANE BOOKER.

Sir,

Inclosure in No. 200.

Extract from the New York" Evening Post" of June 27, 1889.

THE BEHRING'S SEA QUESTION.

To the Editor of the "Evening Post."

Salem, Massachusetts, June 21, 1889. SINCE the rejection of the Treaty of February 1888 with Great Britain, the public has heard very little of fishery troubles on the old debatable ground of the north-west Atlantic, but there is every prospect that the absence-obviously a merely temporary absence-from public discussion of the well-gnawed bone of contention will, in a measure, be made good by taking up as a topic the analogous question pending between the United States and Great Britain concerning the seal fisheries in the north Pacific, or, as our statesmen and writers prefer, for a very shrewd reason, to say, in "Behring's Sea."

Several British vessels were seized in 1886 and 1887 by United States' Revenuecruizers for sealing in Behring's Sea (a part of the Pacific Ocean, as I shall show presently), far outside of the 3-mile shore belt, and these vessels were condemned by the United States' District Court at Sitka. So far as I am aware, there is no official publication showing the position taken by our Government in this matter, so that we must fall back on statements in the press.

The "New York Herald" of the 13th October, 1887, published what purported to be a verbatim copy of the "brief understood to have been prepared at Washington and recently filed in the Court at Sitka by Mr. A. K. Delaney as counsel for the United States' Government." The defendant's name is not given there, but obviously it is the brief against one of the British vessels seized in 1887, and probably substantially the same brief was used against all of them. In a leader in the same issue the "Herald" refers to this brief as that against certain British vessels charged with violating our rights. There is no reason to doubt the genuineness of this paper, and in the absence of other evidence, we may take it as a trustworthy guide to the position taken by our Government. It is there stated that the case is based on section 1956 of the Revised Statutes of the United States, providing that "no person shall kill any otter, &c., or other fur-bearing animal, within the limits of Alaska Territory or in the waters thereof;" that the offence is charged tohavebeen committed "130 miles north of the Island of Ounalaska, and, therefore, in the main waters of that part of the Behring's Sea ceded by Russia to the United States."

It is further stated that the defendants demur on the ground that the Court has no jurisdiction, as the alleged offence was committed beyond the limit of a marine league from the shores of Alaska, and that the Act under which the defendants were arrested is unconstitutional in so far as it restricts the free navigation of the Behring's Sea for fishing and sealing purposes beyond the limits of a marine league from shore; that the demurrer presents squarely the questions :

1. The jurisdiction of the United States over Behring's Sea.

2. The power of Congress to legislate concerning those waters.

Then follows the argument, opening as follows:

"The fate of the second of these propositions depends largely upon that of the first, for if the jurisdiction and dominion of the United States as to these waters be not sustained, the restrictive acts of Congress must fall .

This argument offers great temptation to submit it to criticism in detail, but I shall confine myself to the main issue.

It states that international law recognizes seas and waters of a certain kind as "landlocked or inland," and accords dominion and jurisdiction over them to individual nations. Quotations from the text-books are then given to define the physical conditions required by international law to constitute such landlocked or inland sea. These conditions may be summed up in Vattel's axiom: "It must be entirely surrounded by the territory of the nation claiming jurisdiction, and must have no other communication with the ocean than by a channel of which that nation may take possession."

All perfectly true. The trouble is merely in the " application on 't" to the case in point. The boundaries of Behring's Sea are correctly given. Among them are enumerated the Peninsula of Kamtchatka and Eastern Siberia, and then it is said, "It will not be denied that at the time the United States acquired the territory of Alaska the waters of the Behring's Sea washed only the shores of Russian territory !"

Precisely. But, as Russia ceded to us only a part of such shores, and as she retained as her own a great part of them, we are not in possession of all the shores, and, consequently, we cannot claim "dominion and jurisdiction" over Behring's Sea under the above doctrine.

Now as to the other condition shown to be the second requisite of a closed or landlocked sea-absence of communication with the ocean, except by a channel of which we, as claimants of dominion, might take possession. That is a purely geographical question, to be settled by reference to authentic Maps or Charts. The reliability of the Charts issued by our Hydrographic Office at Washington will not be questioned, so let us consult its Chart No. 68, edition of May 1888, entitled "Behring's Sea and Arctic Ocean." Let us, for brevity's sake, assume, what is, however, not true in fact, that the chain of islands generally called the Aleutian, as far as they go, answers all the requirements of international law as an inclosing barrier. We then need only examine the sea to the westward of the most western of said islands, the one called Atton. The said Chart shows only two islands between Atton and the coast of Kamtchatka, and these intervening islands are Russian territory. The respective positions are laid down in said Chart as follows:

The usual method of nautical calculation shows the shortest distances between the above points to be as follows, to wit, between :

The narrowest of these channels would admit of the passage of a fleet of over 100 vessels sailing abreast in a single line, even if deployed with a quarter of a mile between each two vessels!

Are these channels such as a nation can be supposed to be able to take possession of?"

In all other parts of the world our people have always been the strenuous champion of the freedom of the seas, and have even claimed (see Senate, Rep., No. 1683, 49 Cong. 2 sess., p. 5) that straits as narrow as the Gut of Canso (1 to 14 miles wide) leading to seas accessible by other channels of sufficient width, were free to our use. On this principle every one of the many channels between the Aleutian Islands, and connecting the sea south of them with that north of them, is free to all the world. The best of all of them, the Amoughta Pass, is about 41 miles wide! Imagine the ridicule, the vials of wrath that our publicists and diplomatists would pour out on any luckless wight who, stealing our thunder, should undertake to prove that the Gulf of St. Lawrence, for instance, was by international law a British closed sea, landlocked and inland. And yet logically his position would be infinitely stronger than ours is, for that gulf, insignificant in extent compared with Behring's Sea, is actually inclosed by British territory, and has only three channels of communication with the Atlantic!

There is a story of a naval captain who, on being overhauled by his superiors for not returning a salute fired in honour of his flag, replied that he had a whole number of good reasons for the omission, to wit: firstly, having no powder, and who was thereupon immediately cut short by the remark, "That will do!" You may say the Attorney of the United States himself has rested his case on the ground that Behring's Sea is a landlocked and inland sea. The contrary has now been demonstrated; consequently the matter is settled, and nobody cares to hear any more on so tedious a subject.

But there are always plenty of good people in the world to whom that would not be conclusive by any means, and who can only be convinced by having every one of the other allegations, however hopelessly involved in the preceding, or however absurd or irrelevant in themselves, disproved separately and distinctly. These allegations are, partly in express terms, partly by implication, that (1) Behring's Sea and the Pacific Ocean are separate and different seas; (2) that Behring Sea is not a part of the Pacific, and Behring's Sea was the only interior sea of the North American coast, and was held by Russia; (3) that Russia by the Treaties of 1824 and 1825 (with the United States and Great Britain respectively) abandoned her prior claim to jurisdiction over the Pacific, but did not surrender jurisdiction over Behring's Sea, and that consequently such jurisdiction descended to the United States through the cession to us of all Russia's rights by the Treaty of 1867.

In support of these assertions, the "argument" asks triumphantly if there was a challenge of Russia's jurisdiction over Behring's Sea, why was it not settled in the Treaties? Why was a ten years' limit of mutually free navigation in the interior seas, gulfs, harbours, and creeks of each other on the North American coast accepted by the United States and by Great Britain, if Behring's Sea-declared by the argument to be the only interior seawas part of the Pacific or belonged to the high seas, and, therefore, free to all? Why was the term inland sea used?

The answer to it all is the same as that to so many other conundrums "The boy lied."

Behring's Sea was and is a part of the Pacific.

-

The term Behring's Sea was unknown at the time the Treaties of 1824 and 1825 were made, and, therefore, was not, and could not be, used in them. When a distinctive name was employed for that sea, they called it in those days "The Sea of Kamtchatka". the argument itself admits this by saying "formerly known as the Sea of Kamtchatka." The term Behring's Sea is absent not only from these Treaties, but from all the prior diplomatic correspondence and from all contemporaneous writings. I could fill a page with the mere titles of the encyclopædias, gazetteers, and geographical reference books, &c., published up to 1825, and for many years after, in which I have looked, and looked in vain, for Behring's Sea. The name Behring, in a variety of spellings, occurs in all, as that of a navigator, of a bay on our coast (but far to the east of Behring's Sea), of an island, of a strait, but never, until long after 1825, as that of the sea, now so called. The present application of that name is of much more recent origin, and its general adoption has been gradual and slow; but that this separate name should or could divest this sea of its old quality of forming part of the Pacific Ocean is an idea unknown to the scientific world, Look into any old or modern reference book, under "Behring's Sea " and "Pacific Ocean," and you will always find the first defined as a part of the Pacific Ocean, and this as beginning at Behring's Strait, thus including the first. I found but one exception to this, viz., the second edition of "Appleton's Encyclopædia " (1873), which says that the Pacific is bounded on the north by the Aleutian Islands (Behring's Sea not being properly oceanic in its character), and this is in contradiction to the definition of Behring's Sea, in the same edition, that being said to be part of the Pacific. However, the earliest edition of the same work (1858) makes the Pacific extend from Behring's Strait to the Antarctic circle, and it again proves my assertion. Our own early official Charts, viz., Pilot Charts of Lieutenant M. F. Maury, United States' Navy (United States' Hydrographic Office, 1850), sheets Nos. 2 and 3, series "A," covering the present Behring's Sea, are entitled "North Pacific;" the name Behring's Sea does not occur in them; but on No. 2 the names of "Sea of Ochotsk" and "Sea of Sachalien" are given to those divisions of the Pacific. In the official documents and in the Congressional debates about giving aid to Perry McD. Collins (February 1862, et seq.) for his telegraph between Asia and America viâ Behring's Straits, enacted the 1st July, 1864, Pacific Ocean is the term generally, if not exclusively, used when reference is made to the sea now known as Behring's. But to make assurance doubly sure, I applied for an opinion on the question to the most eminent living authority in matters geographical, Professor Dr. H. Supan, editor of "Petermann's Mitteilungen," who likewise says that all geographers consider Behring's Sea a part of the Pacific. I can submit the correspondence if desired.

A look at a Map or Chart of the region in question (which please to recollect embraces not only the American shore north of the Peninsula of Alaska, but that to the eastward and southward of it, whether Russian, British, or of the United States) will show that so far from Behring's Sea being the only inland sea there, this region is particularly full of peninsulas and whole archipelagoes of islands, and is consequently also full of interior seas, gulfs, barbours, and creeks, and it is for that very reason that they were made the subject of express stipulations in the said Treaties.

No less untrue than the preceding assertion of the argument about the "only inland sea" is the other, that the Treaties of 1824 and 1825 were a sort of give-and-take arrangement as regards marine dominion; that Russia abandoned a part of it only, and had the balance conceded to her. Secretary Adams, in his instructions to our Minister at St. Petersburgh of the 22nd July, 1823 (see American State Papers, "Foreign Relations," second series, folio edition, vol. v, p. 436), after setting forth Russia's claims as including the right to interdict the navigation and the fishery of all other nations to the extent of 100 miles from the coasts of Asia, from 45° north (round) to 51° north of the American Continent, says emphatically:

"The United States can admit no part of these claims. Their right of navigation and of fishery is perfect, and has been in constant exercise from the earliest times, after the peace of 1783, throughout the whole extent of the South Ocean, subject only to the ordinary exceptions and exclusions of the territorial jurisdictions which, so far as Russia's rights are concerned, are confined to certain islands north of the 55th degree of latitude, and have no existence on the coast of America."

And when you remember that in those days there was no such division of the Pacific between Pacific and Behring's Sea as we, or those who do the talking for us, now claim, it is perfectly clear that we and Great Britain, in the respective Treaties of 1824 and 1825, carried our point for free navigation and fishery to its fullest extent by having it acknowledged therein as extending to "any part of the great ocean commonly called the Pacific Ocean or South Sea." And further to show that this was also Russia's view of the meaning of the said Treaties, let me refer to a passage in Bancroft's "History of the Pacific State," vol. xxviii, p. 583. In 1842 the Russian American Company urged the Russian Government to send armed cruizers for the preservation of Behring's Sea as a mare clausum, on account of the great extent of American whale-fishing there; but the Russian Ministry replied that the Russo-American Treaty gave to Americans the right to engage in fishing over the whole extent of the Pacific Ocean.

It is hardly necessary to say anything more. To assert in the face of all this that our part of Behring's Sea is a closed sea, is nothing else than a parody on the old headlandline doctrine, a line, in this case some 900 miles long, from Cape Prince of Wales to Atton, and inclosing a "bay" stretching, at its greatest extent, over about 30 degrees of longitude. This may recommend itself to lovers of a "big thing," but legally and logically it is no less absurd than Russia's still longer headland-line of 1821, which Secretary Adams wiped out.

Perhaps it may be pleaded on behalf of the Judge at Sitka, the Hon. Leff. Dawson, that he is only a District Judge, and that he was misled by the Washington brief; but what can be said for our superior officials, the Secretaries of State and of the Treasury? Were and are they too misinformed on the geography, the history, and even the law governing these cases?

From time to time we have been told by the newspapers that the British vessels seized have been relcased, and then again that it has not been done. It seems to be all a muddle.

The newspapers also say we must, in self defence, prevent any one but the Alaska Commercial Company from sealing in Behring's Sea, because that Company pays our Government a handsome interest on the cost to us of Alaska; that the seals there are all ours because bred on territory of ours, and that free sealing would soon exterminate these animals. Imagine such sophisms and such untruth submitted to the Supreme Court.

The fur-seal are not all, or even nearly all, bred on our territory. Mr. H. W. Collins, in his Report on the seal islands of Alaska, published officially as part of the United States' Census of 1880, vol. xiii, No 42, Part VIII, says, on p. 6, that they also breed on Copper and Behring's Islands, both Russian, and both leased by our Alaska Commercial Company; and on p. 113, that 48,504 of these animals were taken on these Russian islands. But if the seals were all American-born it would make no difference in law, as creatures roaming about the high seas are no man's property, except his who catches them. That "free sealing" might entail extermination of these creatures in the North Pacific, as it has already done elsewhere, is probable, but this gives us no right to make * preventive laws, even of the mildest kind, for others than American citizens and for