290 APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
261 A look at a Map or Chart of the region in question (which please to recol- 
lect embraces not only the American shore north of the Peninsula of Alaska, 
but that to the eastward and southward of it, whether Russian, British, or of the 
United States) will show that so far from Behring’s Sea being the only inland sez 
there, this region is particularly full ‘of peninsulas and whole archipelagoes of 
islands, and is consequently also full of interior seas, gulfs, harbours, and creeks, 
and it is for that very reason that they were made the subject of express stipula- 
tions in the said Treaties. : 
No less untrue than the preceding assertion of the argument about the ‘only 
inland sea” is the other, that the Treaties of 1824 and 1825 were a sort of give-and-take 
arrangement as regards marine dominion; that Russia abandoned a part of it only, 
and had the balance conceded to her. Secretary Adams, in his instruetions to our 
Minister at St. Petersburgh of the 22nd July, 1823 (see American State Papers, 
“Voreign Relations,” second series, folio edition, vol. v, p. 436), after setting forth 
Russia’s claims as including the right to interdict the navigation and the fishery of 
all other nations to the extent of 100 miles from the coasts of Asia, from 45° north 
(round) to 51° north of the American Continent, says emphatically: 
“The United States can admit no part of these claims. Their right of navigation 
and of fishery is perfect, and has been in constant exercise from the earliest times, 
after the peace of 1783, throughout the whole extent of the South Ocean, subject 
only to the ordinary exceptions and exclusions of the territorial] jurisdictions which, 
so far as Russia’s rights are concerned, are confined to certain islands north of the 
55th degree of latitude, and have no existence on the coast of America.” 
And when you remember that in those days there was no such division of the 
Pacific between Pacific and Belring’s Sea as we, or those who do the talking for 
us, now claim, it is perfectly clear that we and Great Britain, in the respective 
Treaties of 1824 and 1825, carried our point for free navigation and fishery to its 
fullest extent by having it acknowledged therein as extending to ‘‘any part of the 
great ocean commonly called the Pacific Ocean or South Sea.” And further to show 
that this was also Russia’s view of the meaning of said Treaties, let me refer to a 
passage in Bancroft’s ‘‘ History of the Pacific State,” vol. xxviii, p. 583. In 1842 the 
Russian American Company urged the Russian Government to send armed cruizers 
for the preservation of Behring’s Sea as a mare clausum, on account of the great 
extent of American whale-fishing there; but the Russian Ministry replied that the 
Russo-American ‘Treaty gave to Americans the right to engage in fishing over the 
whole extent of the Pacific Ocean. 
It is hardly necessary to say anything more. To assert in the face of all this that 
our part of Behring’s Sea is a closed sea, is nothing else than a parody on the old 
headland-line doctrine, a line, in this case some 900 miles long, from Cape Prince of 
Wales to Atton, and inclosing a ‘“‘bay” stretching, at its greatest extent, over about 
30 degrees of longitude. This may recommend itself to lovers of a “big thing,” but 
legally and logically it is no less absurd than Russia’s still longer headland-line of 
1821, which Secretary Adams wiped out. 
Perhaps it may be pleaded on behalf of the Judge at Sitka, the Hon. Leff. Dawson, 
that he is only a District Judge, and that he was misled by the Washington brief; 
but what can be said for our superior officials, the Secretaries of State and of the 
Treasury? Were and are they too misinformed on the geography, the history, and 
even the law governing these cases? 
From time to time we have been told by the newspapers that the British vessels 
seized have been released, and then again that it has not been done. It seems to be 
all a muddle. 
The newspapers also say we must, in self defence, prevent any one but the Alaska 
Commercial Company from sealing in Behring’s Sea, because that Company pays our 
Government a handsome interest on the cost to us of Alaska; that the seals there are 
all ours because bred on territory of ours, and that free sealing would soon extermi- 
nate these animals. Imagine such sophisms and such untruth subinitted to the 
Supreme Court. 
The fur-seal are not all, or even nearly all, bred on our territory. Mr. H. W. Collins, 
in his Report on the seal islands of Alaska, published officially as part of the United 
States Census of 1880, vol. xiii, No. 42, Part VIII, says, on p. 6, that they also breed 
on Copper and Behring’s Islands, both Russian, and both leased by our Alaska Com- 
mercial Company; and on p. 113, that 48,504 of these animals were taken on these 
Russian islands. But if the seals were all American-born it would make no differ- 
ence in law, as creatures roaming about the high seas are no man’s property, except 
his who catches them. That “free sealing” might entail extermination of these 
creatures in the North Pacific, as it has already done elsewhere, is probable, but this 
gives us no right to make preventive laws, even of the mildest kind, for 
262 others than American citizens and for localities other than our own territory. 
Even the Washington brief admits this. International agreement, and not 
the ipse divit of any single nation, is the proper remedy, if there be one, That freq 
