QUESTION FIVE. 171 



With respect to the main question of the right of American vessels 

 to fish within the acknowledged limits of thie Bay of Fundy, it is 

 necessary for a clear understanding of the case, to go back to the 

 treaty of 1783. 



Here Mr. Everett cited the second part of Article III of the treaty 

 of 1783, and continued : 



These privileges and conditions were in reference to a country of 

 which a considerable portion was then unsettled, likely to be at- 

 tended with differences of opinion as to what should, in the progress 

 of time, be accounted a settlement from which American fishermen 

 might be excluded. These differences in fact arose, and by the year 

 1818 the state of things was so far changed that Her Majesty's Gov- 

 ernment thought it necessary in negotiating the convention of that 

 year, entirely to except the Province of Nova Scotia from the number 

 of the places which might be frequented by Americans as being in part 

 unsettled, and to provide that the fishermen of the United States 

 should not pursue their occupation within three miles of the shores, 

 bays, creeks and harbors of that and other parts of Her Majesty's 

 possessions similarly situated. The privilege reserved to American 

 fishermen by the treaty of 1783, of taking fish in all the waters and 

 drying them on all the unsettled portions of the coast of these posses- 

 sions was accordingly by the convention of 1818 restricted as follows: 



Mr. Everett here quoted the words of the renunciatory clause and 

 again continued : 



The existing doubt as to the construction of the provision arises 

 from the fact that a broad arm of the sea runs up to the northeast 

 between the provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. This arm 

 of the sea being commonly called the Bay of Fundy, though not in 

 reality possessing all the characters usually implied by the term 

 " bay," has of late years been claimed by the provincial authorities of 

 Nova Scotia to be included among the " coasts, bays, creeks and har- 

 bors forbidden to American fishermen." 



An examination of the map is sufficient to show the doubtful na- 

 ture of this construction. It was notoriously the object of the article 

 of the treaty in question to put an end to the difficulties which had 

 grown out of the operations of the fishermen from the United States 

 :i long the coasts and upon the shores of the unsettled portions of the 

 country, and for that purpose to remove their vessels to a distance 

 not exceeding three miles from the same. In estimating this distance, 

 the undersigned admits it to be the intent of the treaty, as it is itself 

 reasonable, to have regard to the general line of the coast; and to 

 consider its bays, creeks and harbors, that is, the indentations usually 

 so accounted, as included within that line. But the undersigned can- 

 not admit it to be reasonable, instead of thus following the general 

 directions of the coast, to draw a line from the southwesternmost 

 point of Nova Scotia to the termination of the northeastern boundary 

 between the United States and New Brunswick, and to consider the 

 arms of the sea which will thus be cut off, and which cannot, on that 

 line be less than sixty miles wide, as one of the bays on the coast from 



U. S. Case, 110-111 ; Appendix, 479. 

 92909 S. Doc. 870. 61-3, vol 8 12 



