APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 383 
years of the prosperity of that pursuit. On the contrary, Russia in 1842 refused 
officially a demand of the Russian-American Company for interference with those 
whalers on the express ground that the Treaty gave Americans the right to fish over 
the whole extent of the Pacific Ocean (see Bancroft’s ‘‘ History of the Pacific States,” 
vol. xxviii, p. 583). And it may be well to remind Mr. Felton that seal-fishing on 
the high seas is just as legitimate in international law as whale-fishing there. 
Just as little as Russia interfered in times gone by does she do so now, and the 
inference to the contrary which Mr, Felton pretencs to draw from an official Russian 
Notification of the 15th November, 1881, is as unwarranted and as misleading as 
most of his inferences. Mr. Felton assigns a wrong date to it, but quotes it correctly 
and in extenso. It forbids foreign vessels to carry on, without special permit or 
licence, trading, hunting, fishing, &c., on the Rassian coast or islands in the Okhotsk 
and Behring’s Seas, or on the north-east coast of Asia, or within their sea boundary-line 
(the italics are Mr. Felton’s). There is nothing ambiguous in the language of this 
Proclamation, says Mr. Felton, and this isindisputable. It is this gentleman alone 
who introduees ambiguity and even misrepresentation into the discussion, when he 
proceeds to say: “It means that Russia will enforce her sovereignty over the western 
half of Behring’s Sea within her sea boundary-line.” Certain phrases have certain 
definite and well-established meanings, are employed exclusively in such accepted 
signification in official documents, and are always interpreted strictly in this sense. 
The accepted seuse of sea boundary-line, with reference to coasts and islands, is a 
line three miles seaward from low-water mark on the shore, and there is consequently 
no warrant for Mr. Felton’s preposterous misinterpretation. Perusal of pp. 251 to 
273 of the official document above referred to (Sen. Ex. Doc., No. 106) would have 
furnished Mr. Felton proof of the untruth of his assertion and of the falsity of his 
interpretation. Only three cases of interference are there mentioned; none of them 
were for acts done on the high sea, but all for acts within the 3-mile limit. Two of 
these seizures took place in the Russian part of Behring’s Sea, and if Mr. 
349 Felton’s hypothesis of a division between Russia and the United States of 
exclusive jurisdiction over this sea has ever been adopted by our Government, 
the wonder is how it could consistently take any official notice of an exercise of 
such jurisdiction by Russia that would be perfectly legitimate under said hypothesis. 
Mr. Felton’s manner of arguing, his way of stating a proposition and drawing 
inferences from it, offers a refreshing contrast to the stale rules of logic hitherto con- 
sidered as binding upona writer. His method of geographical definition is also quite 
novel, and I confess I have not been able to master 1t. Here is a specimen which is 
entirely beyond me: ‘‘. . . that they [Treaty of 1824 and other documents] all 
had reference to the coast and the waters of the North Pacific, between the 51st par- 
allel of north latitude and Mount St. Elias and east of the 141st meridian of longi- 
tude.” Mount St. Elias is a good many miles inland, and this is the first instance 
known to me of an inland mountain being pressed into service as a terminal point of 
‘coast and waters.” Besides, this limitation of the application of the Treaty of 
1824 leaves a very long coast-line of the Pacific, and unquestionably not of Behring’s 
Sea, viz., that from 141° west to the south-west extremity of the Peninsula of Alaska 
in about 163° 30’ west unprovided for. Was there some kind of ‘ acquiescence” 
about this long coast-line, too, and if so, what was acquiesced in? 
The passage, ‘‘ Russia surrendered or abandoned her claim only to the control of 
the North Pacific Ocean, and to the north-west coast south of latitude 54° north, yet 
her title to the Aleutian Islands, extending [title or islands? @. #.) as far south as 
51° north latitude and longitude 166° to 167° west, is not, and never has been, dis- 
pee or invalidated,” is another geographical conundrum as well as a puzzle in 
ogic. ; 
The closing sentence in Mr. Felton’s article is as extraordinary as anything he has 
achieved in the way of assertion: ‘Congress had entire confidence in our title ”— 
that is, in our title to exclusive jurisdiction in our part of Behring’s Sea. Let us see 
what the ‘Congressional Record” shows on this point: The House tacked on to a 
Senate Bill an amendment that section 1956 of the United States Revised Statutes 
includes and applies to all the waters of Bebring’s Sea in Alaska embraced within 
“the boundary-lines mentioned and described in the Treaty with Russia dated the 
30th March, 1867;” that ‘‘it shall be the duty of the President to issue an annual 
wirning Notification, to have it published in a newspaper, and to cause one or more 
vessels to cruize in said waters to seize all violators of United States laws therein.” 
The Senate refused to pass the amendment. In conformity with the advice of the 
Conference Committee, the amendment was altered to the following: That section 
1956 ‘‘is hereby declared to include and apply to all the dominions of the United 
States in the waters of Behring’s Sea,” leaving the new duties of the President as 
above, and in this shape it was enacted. The effect of the change resulting from 
the Senate’s action is stated in the House Report to be ‘‘ to leave out the words that 
are descriptive of the boundaries of the waters of Alaska.” Mr. Felton is, of course, 
entitled to all the comtort he may be able to derive from this proceeding, but the 
