1 91 4] Settlement of International Disputes 205 



Convention of 181 8. The Treaty of Washington by Article XVIII 

 restored these rights, but as they were claimed to be more valuable than 

 certain rights given to British subjects by Articles XIX and XX, a Board 

 of Commissioners was provided by Article XXII to determine the 

 amount to be paid by the United States. This was to be composed 

 (Article XXIII) of three Commissioners appointed, one by each party 

 and one by them jointly. 



Sir Alexander Tulloch Gait was appointed British Commissioner; 

 John H. Clifford, the American, and on his death, Ensign Kellogg. 

 M. Maurice Delfosse, the Belgian Ambassador at Washington, was 

 appointed by the Queen and the President jointly. They met at Halifax, 

 and, Mr. Kellogg dissenting, made an award November 23rd, 1877, of 

 $5,500,000 in favour of Britain. The result was a surprise to the United 

 States; and there was some talk of repudiation, but the amount was paid 

 within the year allowed by the Treaty. 



17. The fourth matter in dispute agreed by the Treaty to be disposed 

 of by arbitration has a rather curious history. By the Pakenham- 

 Buchanan Treaty of 1846 the boundary was "the forty-ninth parallel 

 of north latitude to the middle of the channel which separates the con- 

 tinent from Vancouver Island, and thence southerly through the middle 

 of the said channel and of Fuca's Straits to the Pacific Ocean." With a 

 not unusual irony of geography there turned out to be three channels, 

 any of which might fairly be called "the channel": Rosario (or Vancou- 

 ver's) Douglas and De Haro, in the order from east to west. Britain 

 claimed Rosario, the United States, De Haro as "the channel", and 

 much negotiation was the result. In 1869 a Convention was entered 

 into to refer the dispute to the President of Switzerland ; but this failed 

 to pass the Senate. British subjects entered and settled on San Juan, 

 one of the disputed islands. General Harney landed an armed force and 

 took possession of it for the United States. Britain ordered out men- 

 of-war to the spot; it was, however, agreed that the two nations should 

 occupy the disputed territory jointly until the ownership should be 

 decided. 



By Article XXXIV of the Treaty of Washington, the question was 

 left to the decision of the Emperor of Germany. That monarch, October 

 2 1st, 1872, decided in favour of the American contention. 



18. Russia had, before the cession of Alaska, attempted to exercise 

 rights of ownership in the Behring Sea which were protested against by 

 both Britain and the United States. Not long after the cession, in 

 1867, of Alaska, legislation was passed by the United States which was 

 interpreted as preventing the killing of fur seals in Behring's Sea. A 

 little later the United States openly claimed the sea as its own, a mare 

 clausum, although it is "a sea larger than the Mediterranean and the 



