Russian Discoveries. 395 
In this curious manifesto (for such in effect it is) the mari- 
time powers of Europe and America are given to understand that 
His Imperial Majesty of Russia has assumed possession of all that 
portion of the north-west coast of America, which lies between 
the fifty-first degree of latitude and the Icy Cape, or extreme 
north; and moreover, that he interdicts the approach of ships 
of every other nation to any part of this line nearer than one 
hundred miles. Whether this wholesale usurpation of 2000 miles 
of sea-coast, to the greater part of which Russia can have no 
possible claim, will be tacitly passed over by England, Spain, 
and the United States, the three powers most interested in it, 
we pretend not to know; but we can scarcely be mistaken in 
predicting that His Imperial Majesty will discover, at no distant 
period, that he has assumed an authority, and asserted a princi- 
ple, which he will hardly be permitted to exercise ; and that there 
is an ancient common law of nations which will not, and cannot, 
be abrogated by the * sic volo’ of a power of yesterday. It has 
apparently escaped the recollection of His Imperial Majesty’s 
advisers, that if his example were to be followed by the maritime - 
nations of Europe, his own ports would be hermetically sealed, 
and an end put at once to the assumption of long appropriated 
coasts by Russia. 
With respect to the legality of taking possession of an unoc- 
cupied territory, to the exclusion of the original discoverer, some 
doubts, we understand, are still entertained among jurists. It is 
time, we think, to come to a decision one way or another, on a 
point of so much importance. Let us examine, however, what 
claim Russia can reasonably set up to the territory in question. 
To the two shores of Behring’s Strait, we admit, she would have 
an undoubted claim, on the score of priority of discovery; that 
on the side of Asia having been coasted by Deshnew in 1648, 
and that of America visited by Behring in 1741, as far down as 
the latitude 59°, and the peaked mountain, since generally known 
by the name of Cape Fairweather : to the southward of this point, 
however, Russia has not the slightest claim. The Spaniards vi- 
sited the northern parts of this coast in 1774, when Don Juan 
Perez, in the corvette Santiago, traced it from latitude 53° 53’ 
to a promontory in latitude 55°, to which he gave the name of 
Santa Margarita, being the north-west extremity of Queen Char- 
lotte’s Island of our charts; and on his return, touched at Nootka, 
ahout which we were once on the point of going to war. In 
the following year, the Santiago and Felicidad, under the orders 
of Don Juan Bruno Heceta, and Don Juan de la Bodega y Qua- 
dra, proceeded along the north-west coast, and described, in la- 
titude 56° 8’, high mountains covered with snow, which the 
named Jacinto; and also a lofty cape, in latitude 57° 2’, to whieh 
3D2 they 
