230 DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE. 



negotiating tlie treaty witli Connt I^esselrode. Beyond all doubt tlioy 

 prove that Mr. Adams's meaning- was tlie reverse of what Lord Salisbury 

 infers it to be in the paragraph of which lie quoted only a part. 



The four principal articles of the treaty negotiated by Mr. Middleton 

 are as follows : 



Art. I, It is agreed that, in any part of the Great Ocean, commonly called the Pa- 

 cific Ocean or South Sea, the respective citizens or subjects of the high contracting 

 powers shall be neither disturbed nor restraiued, either in navigation or in fishing, or 

 in the power of resorting to the coasts, upon points whicli may not already have l)een 

 occupied, for the purpose of trading with the natives, saving always the restrictions 

 and conditions determined by the following articles: 



Art. II. With a view of preventing the rights of navigation and of fishing exer- 

 cised upon the Great Ocean by the citizens and subjects of the high contracting 

 powers from becoming the pretext for an illicit trade, it is agreed that the citizens 

 of the United States shall not resort to any point where there is a Russian establish- 

 ment, without the permission of the governor or commander; and that, reciprocally, 

 the subjects of Russia shall not resort, without jiermission, to any establishment of 

 the United States upon the Northwest Coast. 



Akt. III. It is moreover agreed that, hereafter, there shall not be formed by the cit- 

 izens of the United States, or under the authority of the said States, any establish- 

 ment upon the Nortliwest Coast of America, nor in any of the islands adjacent, to the 

 north of fifty-four degrees and forty minutes of north latitude ; and that, in the same 

 manner, there shall be none formed by Russian subjects, or under the authority of 

 Russia, south of the same parallel. 



Art. IV. It is, nevertheless, understood that during a term of ten years, counting 

 from the signature of the present convention, the ships of both j)owers, or which be- 

 long to their citizens or subjects, respectively, may reciprocally frequent, without 

 any hindrance whatever, the interior seas, gulfs, harbors, and creeks upon the coast 

 mentioned in the preceding article, for the purpose of fishing and trading with the 

 natives of the country. 



The first article, by carefully mentioning the Great Ocean and describ- 

 ing it as the ocean "commonly called the Pacific Ocean or South Sea," 

 evidently meant to distinguish it from some otlier body of water with 

 wliich the negotiators did not wish to confuse it. Mr. Adams used the 

 term " South Sea" in the dispatch quoted by Lord Salisbury, and used 

 it with the same discriminating knowledge that prevades his whole ar- 

 gument on this question. If no other body of water existed within the 

 possible scope of the treaty, such particularity of description would 

 have had no logical meaning. But there was another body of water 

 already known as theBehring Sea. That name was first given to it in 

 1817 — according to English authority — seven years before the American 

 treaty, and eight years before the British treaty, with Eussia; but it 

 had been known as a sea, separate from the ocean, under tlie names of 

 the Sea of Kamchatka, the Sea of Otters, or the Aleutian Sea, at differ- 

 ent periods before the E^mperor Paul issued his ukase of 1799. 



The second article x>l;viuly shows that the treaty is limited to the 

 Great Ocean, as separate from theBehring Sea, because the limitation 

 of the "Northwest Coast" between the fiftietli and sixtieth degrees could 

 apply to no other. That coast, as defined both by American and British 

 negotiators at that time, did not border on the Behring Sea. 



The third article shows the compromise as to territorial sovereignty 

 on the Northwest Coast. The United States and Great Britain had both 

 claimed that Russia's just boundary on the coast terminated at the 

 sixtieth degree north latitude, the southern border of the Aleutian penin- 

 sula. Eussia claimed to the tifty-first parallel. They made a compro- 

 mise by a nearly equal division. An exactly equal division would have 

 given Eussia 51 30; but 10 miles farther north Prince of Wales Island 

 ])iesented a better geographical point tor division, and Eussia accepted 

 a little less than half the coast of which she had claimed all and 51 40 

 was thus established as the dividing point. 



