334 VENEZUELA AND AFTER 



to American and Canadian officers of the law 

 having prisoners in their custody reciprocal 

 rights of transit across one another s territory, 

 and further removed the rather mediaeval re 

 strictions imposed by the customs laws of the 

 two governments upon the rendering of aid to 

 disabled mariners, in waters traversed by the 

 international boundary, by vessels belonging 

 on the other side of the line. It became a 

 new bond uniting the English-speaking peoples, 

 that through the efforts of Messrs. Root and 

 Bryce a Canadian captain on Lake Erie might 

 go to the aid of a disabled ship in American 

 water without exposure to heavy penalties under 

 the laws of the United States. 



Four other conventions marked this period. 

 The only one that need detain us was that 

 through which a definite term was put to the 

 controversies touching the North Atlantic fish 

 eries. After the sharp clash in the eighties 1 

 between the United States and Canada, there 

 followed nearly twenty years of substantial 

 calm. Not till 1905 was there a revival of 

 trouble. In that year the government of New 

 foundland gave up the practice of licensing the 

 American fishermen and assumed toward them 



1 See above, p. 278. 



