THE NORTHEAST COAST FISHERIES 503 



ample supplies of wood and water " ; " lying at anchor and 

 remaining inside of bays to clean and pick fish"; "selling 

 goods and buying supplies " ; " landing and transhipping 

 cargoes of fish." 



The fishermen of the United States were privileged by the 

 treaty to take fish of every kind on the southern shores of 

 the Magdalen Islands. This involved the herring fishery, and 

 herring are certainly included in the comprehensive term 

 " fish of every kind." From the peculiar mode of taking 

 this kind of fish, resort to the shore was necessary for haul- 

 ing seines and constructing weirs, but the Canadian authori- 

 ties remained inflexible in their determination to prevent 

 such landing. It is true that on these islands no landing 

 privileges were expressly guaranteed in the treaty, but it 

 was contended in Washington that as the fishery of the 

 Magdalen Islands was principally for herring, a mode of 

 fishery carried on from the shore, the right to prosecute 

 it at all must of necessity presuppose the right to use the 

 shore. At all events, whether or not landing privileges are 

 inseparable from the right to take herring, American fisher- 

 men continued to land on the Magdalen Islands, despite the 

 opposition of the natives. A petty warfare resulted that 

 kept full the measure of ill-feeling between New England 

 and Canada. 



A subject that provoked much discord, and that soon in- 

 volved the two powers in another diplomatic controversy, 

 arose from opposing theories entertained in Great Britain 

 and the United States concerning the line of " three-mile 

 limit " as applied to the bays and harbors of British America. 

 Several American vessels, including the Washington in 1843, 

 had been seized within the Bay of Fundy and other " bays " 

 of the coast, at a greater distance than three marine miles 

 from the shore. The Canadian authorities, to make sure of 

 their position in thus seizing foreign vessels outside a three- 

 mile line from the shore, had appealed to the crown lawyers 

 at London to ascertain definitely whether Americans had a 

 right, under the treaty of 1818, to fish in the bays of Fundy 

 and of Chaleurs, or to navigate the Strait of Canso ; or, in 



