1848 NOBTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



in 1783 not merely the 9-mile limit round the general coast-line, 

 but any number of miles comprised within a bay. The United States 

 knew that each of these bays was treated as the private property of 

 Great Britain every one of them. The moment you got to ba\>. 

 and could draw a line from headland to headland according to the 

 conventional arrangement between all the European powers con- 

 cerned in British North America, that bay was private property, and 

 the United States, if it had simply said : " I want to fish on your 

 coasts, and within the 9-mile or the 3-mile limit," would have been 

 left very doubtful and uncertain as to whether they had the right to 

 fish in the middle of a bay like that; because they had only got the 

 coast-line fishery, and not the right to fish in the middle. So they 

 asked for bays. They said : " We will not leave the thing in doubt." 

 And that is why they put the words in. So that is why on Friday 

 I carefully began my argument by asking: "What did everybody 

 understand to be the international law in regard to bays in 1818 in 

 that part of the world? " Because I am not dealing with other parts 

 of the world. I do not care, and really do not know very well, what 

 the international law may be in Norway or elsewhere. You may have 

 a totally different principle adopted in other parts of the world, by 

 reason of difference in treaties or a difference in conditions; but in 

 these parts of the world, before any of these documents came into 

 existence, before 1783, before anything later than that, you had all 

 the European powers agreeing that their bays were as much their 

 property as any meadow within their dominions. And therefore 

 the United States said: "Now, we want fishing; and if we want fish- 

 ing, we must have something more than a coast-line. We must have 

 the bays." That brings me, therefore, to the treaty. 



THE PRESIDENT: If you please, Mr. Attorney-General, will you 

 tell us what is the exact difference between a bay and a creek ? 



SIR W. ROBSON : I should have said that a creek is a smaller bay. 



THE PRESIDENT: The difference is in the width? 



SIR W. ROBSON: I think it is largely in the width, yes. Taking 

 bay, creek, and inlet, the bay is the larger, the creek the smaller, and 

 the inlet the smallest of the three, like the mouth of a river 



Ji IH;E GRAY: I think, Mr. Attorney-General, that creek, as I have 

 understood it, and as it is understood with us, means a small stream. 



THE PRESIDENT: The stream itself, or the mouth of the stream? 



JUDGE GRAY : The stream itself, which would include the mouth. A 

 creek is a small stream, I think so. 



SIR W. ROBSON : It may be so. 



SIR CHARLES FITZPATRICK : A small stream emptying from the land 

 into a bay ? 



JUDGE GRAY: Ye?. 



SIR W. ROBSON : That may be the meaning of "creek." 



