THE INTEROCEANIC CANAL PROBLEM 183 



may reimburse him for the expense of keeping the way 

 lighted, buoyed, and properly charted. Denmark no longer 

 can collect revenue from the sound dues she formerly exacted. 

 Such is the case in regard to the Gut of Canso, the Straits 

 of Magellan, and, theoretically at least, to those at Gibraltar. 

 The Dardanelles and the Bosphorus are anomalous, in that 

 their navigation continues to be regulated entirely by treaty. 

 These straits do not, however, connect two open seas the 

 Black Sea being a body of water "neutralized" by inter- 

 national agreement, and its free navigation being in some 

 respects restricted; hence the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles 

 do not, strictly speaking, fall within the class of natural 

 channels connecting the high seas. In regard to artificial 

 waterways connecting two open seas, a number of elements 

 enter which would seem to remove them at once from the 

 operation of international law, and to exclude them from 

 the class of natural waterways. 



It has been asserted by high authorities that an artificial 

 canal, linking two open seas, and being also a navigable 

 waterway, should therefore be open to the world; that it 

 should be regarded as a part of the high seas, and that its 

 freedom of use is a corollary to the rule governing the 

 open oceans it connects, it being a necessity to naviga- 

 tion. A canal, therefore, becomes a public way, like the 

 arms of the sea, and should be regulated by the same laws 

 that direct the world's shipping. On the other hand, it has 

 been as freely asserted by equally good authority, that the 

 fact of an artificial channel not having been granted by 

 nature to the use of man, but being wholly the work of man 

 himself, invests it with the character of private or national 

 ownership. One cannot well avoid this conclusion. To 

 assert that a nation may not construct a waterway through 

 its own territory without conceding its free navigation, is to 

 assert that a nation is not sovereign within its own limits. 

 There is no public law that permits a nation to send its 

 armies across the territory of a neutral power, or in any manner 

 to assume a right of transit over its domains. Convenient 

 routes of overland transit, such as railways, are obviously 



