44 



Hunting is an easement that is still more under the control of national 

 dominion, because it is conducted with firearms and is, therefore, a 

 more dangerous practice where the people are savages or are rebel- 

 lious, because it furnishes a pretext for introducing among them arms 

 and ammunition. And hunting and trapping are different pui'suits. 

 Eussia had powerful inducements for keeping hunting on land or sea 

 and trading with the natives under her exclusive dominion. 



What is dominion'? Sir Robert Phillimore, in his "Commentaries 

 on International Law, Vol.1, p. 26G, Ed. 1871, says: "Dominion is the 

 fullest right which can be exercised over a thing : the right of property, 

 so called.''^ On page 207 he says : "As dominion is acquired by the com- 

 bination of the two elements of fact and intention, so, by the dissolution 

 of these elements, or by the contrary fact and intentioUj it may be lost 

 or extinguished." 



On page 274 he says : 



But when occupation by use and settlement has followed upon dis- 

 covery, it is a clear proposition of law that there exists that corporal 

 possession {corporalis quaeclam f>osse.ssio (a) detentio corporalis (b) ) wliicli 

 confers an exclusive title u])on the occupant, and the dominium emi- 

 nens, as jurists speak, u^jon the country whose agent he is. 



On page 285 Jie further says: 



COXLII. The nature of occupation is not confined to any one class or 

 description; it must be a beneficial use and occupation (le travail d' ap- 

 propriation); but it nuiy be by a settlement for the purpose of prose- 

 cuting a particular trade, such as a fishery, or for working mines, or 

 pastoral occupations, as well as agriculture, though Bynkershoek is cor- 

 rect in saying, cultura utique et aura agri possessionem quam maxime 

 indicat. 



Vattel justly maintains that the pastoral occupation of the Arabs 

 entitled them to the exclusive possession of the regions which they 

 inhabit. 



It has been truly observed that, agreeably to this rule the ]N"orth 

 American Indians would have been entitled to have excluded the Britisli 

 fur-traders from their hunting-grounds; and not having done so, the 

 latter must be considered as having been admitted to a joint occupa- 

 tion of the territory, and thus to have become invested with a similar 

 right of excluding strangers from such portions of the country as their 

 own industrial operations pervade. 



CCXLIII. A similar settlement was founded by the British and 

 Russian fur companies in North America. 



The chief portion of the Oregon Territory is valuable solely for tlie 

 fur-bearing animals which it produces. Various establishments in dif- 

 ferent parts of this Territory organized a system for secniring the preser- 

 vation of these animals, and exercised for these purposes a control over 

 the native population. This M'as rightly coTitended to be the only exer- 

 cise of proprictari/ right of which these ]3articular regions at that timet 



