QUESTION FIVE. 157 



now number four or five hundred in the Bay of Fundy, and that a 

 serious attack is in contemplation. 



Numerous statements and references running through the mass of 

 evidence found in the Appendix to the Case of the United States 6 

 show beyond question that American fishing vessels resorted in great 

 numbers to the Bay of Fundy, and other large outer bays for the 

 purpose of prosecuting the fisheries. 



An examination of this evidence, which includes some of the 

 affidavits containing the grounds upon which the seizures were 

 made, establishes that the sole ground for each seizure was that a 

 fishing vessel of the United States had entered a port or harbor within 

 three marine miles of the shores of the British possessions for some 

 purpose other than the four specified in the renunciatory clause of 

 the treaty. 



THE ORIGIN AND COURSE OF THE CONTROVERSY AS TO " BAYS." 



In 1839, Mr. Vail, acting Secretary of State, in obedience to a di- 

 rection from the President of the United States, made a report on 

 the conditions obtaining on the fishing grounds : 



It does not appear that the stipulations in the article [Art. I of the 

 treaty of 1818] above quoted have since the date of the convention 

 been the subject of conflicting questions of right between the two 

 Governments* 



He then reviewed the various seizures of American fishing schoon- 

 ers and the ground for their seizure, and stated : 



From these statements it will appear that the only cases of seizure 

 of which anything is known at the department not being made on 

 the coasts of Newfoundland or Labrador, occurred at places in which, 

 under the convention of 1818, the United States had forever re- 

 nounced the right of their vessels to take, dry and cure fish; retain- 

 ing only the privilege of entering them for the purposes of shelter, 

 repairs, purchasing wood and obtaining water, and no other. In the 

 absence of information of a character sufficiently precise to ascertain 

 either, on the one side, the real motives which carried the American 



TJ. S. Case, Appendix, 426. 



& U. S. Case, Appendix, 32&-406, 407-460, 1076-1078. 



c U. S. Case, Appendix, 433. 



* U. S. Case, Appendix, 436-440. 



