QUESTION FIVE. 93 



the agreement of 1874 between Great Britain and Germany; the 

 action of the Danish Government in 1880; the North Sea Conven- 

 tion of 1882; and the action of France in 1888 referred to in the 

 British Case at pages 114 and 115. His Majesty's Government does 

 not anticipate that this point will be seriously contested; the same 

 principle was adopted by the United States as long ago as 1806, and 

 was formally admitted by them in the Alaska Arbitration in 1903. 

 (British Case, App.. p. G2.) 



The printed Argument of the United States in that case contained 

 the following (British Case, App., p. 489) : 



u It thus appears that from the outer coast line of a maritime state, 

 as defined in physical geography, is invariably measured under inter- 

 national law, the limit of mat zone of territorial water generally 

 known as the marine league. The boundary of Alaska, that is, 

 the exterior boundary from which the marine league is measured, 

 runs along the outer edge of the Alaskan or Alexander Archipelago, 

 embracing a group composed of hundreds of islands. When " meas- 

 ured in a straight line from headland to headland" at their en- 

 trances, Chatham Strait, Cross Sound, Simmer Strait and Clarence 

 Strait, by which this exterior coast line is pierced, measure less than 

 ten miles. That fact, according to the authorities quoted in the 

 British Counter Case, pp. 24-28, place them within the category of 

 territorial waters. All of the interior waters touching upon the 

 lits'iere, such as Behm Canal, Taku Inlet and Lynn Canal are, in the 

 language of Hall, " lakes enclosed within the territory," and as such 

 are territorial waters, regardless of their width at their entrances 

 when measured from headland to headland. 



"Distinction between the coast line of physical geography for the 

 purposes of boundary, and the political coast line, for tfa purposes 

 of jurisdiction. 



" Physical geography simply reproduces the actual coast lines of 



maritime states, as they are defined by nature at the point of 



10f> contact of the sea with the land. The following description 



of the coast of Maine, from an eminent geographical authority, 



may be taken as an apt illustration : 



" ' On the Atlantic coast Maine presents an uninterrupted succes- 

 sion of peninsulas, islands, and bays; and all these bays are the 

 mouths of rivers outlets of valleys having their origin far in the 

 interior. Nothing similar is seen on all the territory of the Union. 

 One must come to Norway or go to the extreme point of South 

 America to find so long a part of the coast 400 kilometers in a 

 straight line from the southwest to the northeast so deeply cut up 

 that we measure on it more than 4,000 kilometers of contact with the 

 deep sea. All these bays of Maine are also fiords, but spacious, and 

 which in spite of their equally rocky banks, of comparatively little 

 elevation, receive the morning *and afternoon sun, as well as that of 

 noon, and open to mariners more ports, more anchorages and safe 

 shelters than all the other coasts upon the three seas of the Union.' 

 92909 S. Doc. 870, 61-3, vol 8 24 



