95 



north latitude, and that, in the same manner, there shall be none 

 formed by Eussian subjects or under the authority of Russia south of 

 the same parallel. But by Article LY it was provided that for a period 

 often years the ships of either country might frequent the interior 

 seas, gulfs, harbors, and creeks, upon the coast mentioned in the pre- 

 ceding article, for the purpose of fishing and trading with the natives 

 of the country. 



ISTow it is apparent from the proceedings of the ISTesselrode confer- 

 ence of July 21, 1824, the Diary of Mr. Adams, and the Exjilanatory 

 Kote of Baron Tuyll, that the Russian-American Company were not at 

 all disturbed by tlie broad recognition in Article I of freedom of navi- 

 gation and fishing throughout the whole of the Great Ocean. Their 

 uneasiness had reference to the possibility that the treaty could be 

 construed as giving the right for ten years to trade on the coast of 

 Siberia mid the Aleutian Islands. The substance of the answer made 

 by the Russian Government to the Russian-American Company was 

 that the article of the treaty reserving the right to resort for ten years 

 to certain "interior seas, gulfs, harbors, and creeks" referred to the 

 waters that washed the coast mentioned in Article III, which was 

 the coast most in dispute between the two countries, and, therefore, 

 did not authorize citizens of the United States to trade on the coasts 

 of Siberia and the Aleutian Islands which were never in dispute, and 

 over which Russia for a long time, and without question, had exercised 

 sovereign authority; in other words, that the privilege of trading for 

 ten years did not extend to the coast of Siberia, or to the Aleutian 

 Islands, or to the Russian possessions in general on the entire north- 

 west coast of America, but only to the coasts, embracing the territory 

 in disj)ute between the two countries, south of 59° 30' north latitude. 

 Nowhere in the documents referred to is there a suggestion that Rus- 

 sia understood the treaty of 1824 as reserving to itself any peculiar or 

 paramount authority over the waters of the Pacific Ocean outside of the 

 ordinary limit of territorial jurisdiction. The only part of any docu- 

 ment implying that, in the judgment of the Russian authorities, the 

 treaty had no reference to Bering Sea, is the statement incidentally 

 in the proceedings of the ISTesselrode Conference and in the Explanatory 

 Note of Baron Tuyll, to the effect that the coasts of Siberia and the 

 Aleutian Islands were not washed "by the Southern Sea" mentioned 

 iu Article II. But there is no evidence in Mr. Adams's Diary that he 

 assented to this view. He waived any discussion of the question. 



