288 APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
The power of Congress to legislate concerning those waters. 
7 Thon follows the argument, opening as follows: 
“The fate of the second of these propositions depeuds largely upon that of the 
first, for if the jurisdiction and dominion of the United States as to these waters be 
not sustained, the restrictive acts of Congress must fall . . ‘i 
This argument offers great temptation to submit it to criticism in detail, but I 
shall confine myself to the main issue. 
259 It states that international law recognizes seas and waters of a certain kind 
s “landlocked or inland,” and accords dominion and jurisdiction over thein 
to individual nations. Quotations from the text-books are then given to define the 
physical conditions required by international law to constitute such landlocked or 
inland sea. These conditions may be summed up in Vattel’s axiom: ‘‘ It must be 
entirely surrounded by the territory of the nation claiming jurisdiction, and must 
have no other communication with the ocean than by a channel of which that nation 
may take possession.” 
All perfectly true. The trouble is merely in the ‘‘ application on’t” to the case in 
point. The boundaries of Behring’s Sea are correctly given. Among them are 
enumerated the Peninsula of Kamtchatka and Eastern Siberia, and then it is said, 
“Tt will not be denied that at the time the United States acquired the territory of 
Alaska the waters of the Behring’s Sea washed only the shores of Russian territory!” 
Precisely. But, as Russia ceded to us only a part of such shores, and as she retained 
as her own a great part of them, we are not in possession of all the shores, and, conse- 
quently, we cannot claim ‘‘dominion and jurisdiction” over Behring’s Sea under 
the above doctrine. 
Now as to the other condition shown to be the second requisite of a closed or land- 
locked sea—absence of communication with the ocean, except by a channel of which 
we, as claimants of dominion, might take possession. ‘That is purely a geographical 
question, to be settled by reference to authentic Maps or Charts. ‘The reliability of 
the Charts issued by our Hydrographic Office at Washington will not be questioned, 
so let us consult its Chart No. 68, edition of May 1888, entitled “ Behring’s Sea and 
Arctic Ocean.” Let us, for brevity’s sake, assume, what i is, however, not true in fact, 
that the chain «f islands generally called the Aleutian, as far as they go, answers 
all the requirements of international law as an inclosing barrier. We then need 
only examine the sea to the westward of the most western of said islands, the one 
called Atton. The said Chart shows only two islands between Atton and the coast 
of Kamtchatka, and these intervening islands are Russian territory. The respective 
positions are laid down in said Chart as follows: 
° U ° ‘ 
Atton (most western United States territory), west extremity of...--.-.---. 52 57 N. 172 30 KE. 
Copper Island (nearest land eastward), south-east extremity of.....---.---- 54 35 N. 168 05 E. 
Copper Island (north-west), extremity of-.-.-.2-22-- 222-2. 2+ cee ec- anna 54 55 N. 167 24 E. 
Behring’s Island, nearest land eastward to Copper Island.......-........-..|.-.-.--.....].------------ 
Point nearest to Copper Island, Cape Chitron....-2. .--...--2.-=-.---------- bd poe 166 37 KE. 
Point nearest to Kamtchatka coast, Sea Lion's Head.-.-.......-...-.-.------- 55° 116 IN: 165 40 E. 
Kamtchatka, point nearest to Behring’s Island............-...-----.------- 56 06 N 163 20 EK. 
The usual method of nautical calculation shows the shortest distances between 
the above points to be as follows, to wit, between— 
Ation and, Copper Island sense eceeee eee eee 183 ) Nautical miles and 
Copper Island and Behring’s Island --------.- 27 a fraction over 
Behring’s Island and Kamtchatka....-.....-- 23 in every case. 
The narrowest of these channels would admit of the passage of a fleet of over 100 
vessels sailing abreast in a single line, even if deployed with a quarter of a mile 
between each two vessels! 
Are these channels such as a nation can be supposed to be able to take posses- 
sion of ? 
In all other parts of the world our people have always been the strenuous cham- 
pion of the freedom of the seas, and have even claimed (see Senate, Rep., No. 1683, 
49 Cong. 2 sess., p.5) that straits as narrow as the Gut of Canso (1 to 14 miles wide) 
leading to seas accessible by other channels of sufficient width, were free to our use. 
On this principle every one of the many channels between the Aleutian Islands, and 
connecting the sea south of them with that north of them, is free to all the world. 
The best of all of them, the Amoughta Pass, is about 41 miles wide! Imagine the 
ridicule, the vials of wrath that our publicists and diplomatists would pour out on 
any luckless wight who, stealing our thunder, should undertake to prove that the 
Gulf of St. Lawrence, for instance, was by international law a British closed sea, 
landlocked and inland. And yet logically his position would be infinitely stronger 
