1466 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



JUDGE GRAY: Can you give us, Mr. Elder, about the time when 

 the right to buy bait that is what you are speaking about now, under 

 this trading privilege 



MR. ELDER: Yes, Sir. 



JUDGE GRAY (continuing) : was first asserted, and when it was 

 first denied some little history of what the practice had been since 

 the treaty of 1818, in regard to the purchase of bait and supplies? 

 It has not much history, but such as it has, I should like to have you 

 touch upon. 



MR. ELDER : I intended to go in some detail into that later on, but 

 let me say, in a general way, that as far back, certainly, as the For- 

 tune Bay incident, the affidavits disclosed that the Americans had 

 always been in the habit of buying bait. That, you will observe, was 

 on what is now the non-treaty coast. And there are other indications 

 throughout the record, which I cannot advert to out of order, which 

 show that that had been the practice. Sir Robert Bond himself states 

 that. Mr. Root states that in his correspondence. The fact was that 

 with the " speeding up," if I may so say, of modern commercial life, 

 of modern industrial life haste in the matter of fishing, was essen- 

 tial. In order to make a profitable fare it was more convenient, it 

 was more expeditious, to purchase than to take bait; and therefore 

 the American vessels out on the banks, which came down from home 

 with what they call their first baiting I think I am keeping within 

 the line of the record with bait captured largely off Cape Cod, were 

 in the habit when the first bait was used up of putting into the near- 

 est port. Of course up to the Treaty of Washington, and excepting 

 the period during which the treaty of 1854 was in operation, the 

 Americans could do nothing else than buy. They had to buy, because 

 they had no right to fish ; and that practise had grown up, and was 

 entirety well established. When the Treaty of Washington was in 

 effect, the American fleet that put in at Fortune Bay believed it had 

 a right to take its own fish, and it was proceeding to do it when it was 

 interrupted by the natives, who were accustomed to the other prac- 

 tice that of Americans buying from them. I think we must be 

 satisfied that it was the loss of their livelihood, rather than any fail- 

 ure of technical observance, that caused the outbreak. Some of the 

 men who went on board there said : " You cannot take bait." I mean, 

 some of the persons that were engaged in the assault said : " You 

 must buy it of us." The American vessels did buy of them, or some of 

 them did, and others of them put about and went back to Gloucester, 

 or to the New England coast. The same thing was true when it came 

 to the second an the third baiting, that is, the vessels put in some- 

 where to get the bait. 



JUDGE GRAY: Always into the non-treaty coasts? 



