1590 AWARD OF THE FISHERY COMMISSION. 



bodies of water as long as they kept themselves more than three miles 

 from the shore. In short, they would have contended, as it has been 

 contended, in the brief filed in this case, that where the bays are more 

 than six miles in width from headland to headland, they are to be 

 treated in this respect, for fishing purposes, as parts of the open sea; 

 but the evidence, as I said before, has eliminated all that matter from 

 the inquiry. The only bodies of water as to which any such question 

 ran arise are, in the first place, the Bay of Fundy. Now, the right of 

 American fishermen to enter and fish in that bay was decided by arbi- 

 tration in the case of the schooner Washington, and Her Majesty's 

 Government have uniformly acquiesced in that decision. So, as to that 

 body of water, the rights of the citizens of the United States must be 

 regarded as rex adjwiicata. In addition, however, it turns out that 

 within the body of the Bay of Fundy there has not been any fishing 

 more than three miles from the shore for a period of many years. One 

 of the British witnesses said that it was forty years since the mackerel 

 fishery ceased in the Bay of Fundy. At all events, there is no evidence 

 in this case of fishing of any description in the body of the Bay of 

 Fundy more than three miles from the shore, and this fact, in addition 

 to the decision in the Washington case, disposes of that. 



The next body of water is the Bay of Miramichi ; as to which it will 

 turn out by an inspection of the map on which the Commissioners, ap- 

 ]x>inted under the Keciprocity Treaty, marked out the lines reserved 

 from free fishing, on the ground that they were mouths of rivers, that 

 the month of the river Miramichi comes almost down to the headlands 

 of the bay. You will remember that the report of the Commission 

 on the Keciprocity Treaty is referred to in the Treaty of Washington, 

 and that the same places excluded by their decision remain excluded 

 now. What is left ! The narrow space below the point marked out as 

 the mouth of the river Miraraichi, and within the headlands of the bay, 

 is so small that there can be no fishing there of any consequence, and 

 no evidence of any fishing there at all has been introduced. So far as 

 the Bay of Miramichi goes, therefore, I cannot see that the headland 

 question need trouble you at all. 



Then comes the Bay of Chaleurs, and in the Bay of Chaleurs what- 

 ever fishing has been found to exist seems to have been within three 

 miles of the shores of the bay, in the body of the Bay of Chaleurs. I 

 Hm not aware of any evidence of fishing, and it is very curious that this 

 Kay of Chaleurs. about which there has been so much controversy here- 

 tofore, can be so SH mnarily dismissed from the present investigation. 



Hiip|K>He that a great deal of factitious importance has been given to 

 the Bay of Chaleurs from the custom among fishermen, and almost uni- 

 versal a generation ago, of which we have heard so much, to speak of 

 the whole of the Gulf of St. Lawrence by that term. Over and over 

 again, and particularly among the older witnesses, we have noticed that 

 when they spoke of going to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, they spoke of it 

 the term "Kay of Chaleurs,'' but in the Bay of Chaleurs proper, in 

 Mly of the bay, I cannot find any evidence of any fishing at all. I 

 therefore, that the Bay of Chaleurs may be dismissed from our 

 eotiHideration. 



TlierH are two or three other bodies of water as to which a possible 

 ICH! question may be raised, but their names have not been intro- 

 tbe testimony on this occasion from first to last. The head- 

 ion, therefore, gentlemen, I believe may be dismissed as, for 

 I- parpOM of this u.quiry, wholly unimportant, and although I am 

 >med to speak for iny friend, the British Agent, and to say that 



