554. APPENDIX TO CASE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 
The language of Mr. Middleton plainly shows that the lines of latitude were 
502. used simply to indicate the ‘‘dominion” on the coast between the 50th and 
60th parallels of north latitude. 
The important declarations of Mr. Middleton which interpret and enforce the con- 
tention of the United States should be regarded as indisputable authority, from the 
fact that they are but a paraphrase of the instructions which Mr. Adams delivered 
to him for his guidance in negotiating the Treaty with Count Nesselrode. Beyond 
all doubt, they prove that Mr. Adams’ meaning was the reverse of what Lord Salis- 
bury infers it to be in the paragraph of which he quoted only a part. 
The four principal Articles of the Treaty negotiated by Mr. Middleton are as fol- 
lows: 
‘Article I. It is agreed that in any part of the Great Ocean, commonly called the 
Pacific Ocean or South Sea, the respective citizens or subjects of the High Contract- 
ing Powers shall be neither disturbed nor restrained, either in navigation or in fish- 
ing, or in the power of resorting to the coasts, upon points which may not already 
have been occupied, for the purpose of trading with the natives, saving always the 
restrictious and conditions determined by the following Articles. 
“Article Il. With a view of preventing the rights of navigation and of fishing 
exercised upon the Great Ocean by the citizens and subjects of the High Contracting 
Powers from becoming the pretext for an illicit trade, it is agreed that the citizens 
of the United States shall not resort to any point where there is a Russian establish- 
ment without the permission of the Governor or Commander; and that, reciprocally, 
the subjects of Russia shall not resort without permission to any establishment of 
the United States upon the north-west coast. 
‘‘Article III. It is moreover agreed that, hereafter, there shall not be formed by 
the citizens of the United States, or under the authority of the said States, any 
establishment upon the north-west coast of America, nor in any of the islands 
adjacent, to the north of 54° 40’ of north latitude; and that in the same manner 
there shall be none formed by Russian subjects, or under the authority of Russia, 
south of the same parallel. 
“Article 1V. It is, nevertheless, understood that during a term of ten years, 
counting from the signature of the present Convention, the ships of both Powers, or 
which belong to their citizens or subjects respectively, may reciprocally frequent, 
without any hindrance whatever, the interior seas, gulfs, harbours, and creeks upon 
the coast mentioned in the preceding Article, for the purpose of fishing and trading 
with the natives of the country.” 
The Ist Article, by carefully mentioning the Great Ocean, and describing it as the 
ocean ‘‘commonly called the Pacific Ocean or South Sea,” evidently meant to dis- 
tinguish it from some other body of water with which the negotiators did not wish 
to confuse it. Mr. Adams used the term ‘South Sea” in the despatch quoted by 
Lord Salisbury, and used it with the same discriminating knowledge that pervades 
his whole argument on this question. If no other body of water existed within the 
possible scope of the Treaty, such particularity of description would have had no 
logical meaning. But there was another body of water already known as the Beh- 
ring’s Sea. That name was first given to it in 1817, according to English authority, 
seven years before the American Treaty, and eight years before the British 'T reaty 
with Russia; but it had been known as a sea, separate from the ocean, under the 
names of the Sea of Kamtchatka, the Sea of Otters, or the Aleutian Sea, ‘at different 
periods before the Emperor Paul issued his Ukase of 1799. 
The IInd Article plainly shows that the Treaty is limited to the Great Ocean, as 
separate from Behring’s Sea, because the limitation of the ‘‘north-west coast” 
between the 50th and 60th degrees could apply to no other. That coast, as defined 
both by Ainerican and British negotiators at that time, did not border on the Beh- 
ring’s Sea. 
The ILIrd Article shows the compromise as to territorial sovereignty on the north- 
west coast. ‘The United States and Great Britain had both claimed that Russia’s just 
boundary on the coast terminated at the 60th degree north latitude, the southern 
border of the Aleutian Peninsula. Russia claimed to the 51st parallel. They made 
a compromise by a nearly equal division, An exactly equal division would have 
given Russia 54° 30’; but 10 miles farther north, Prince of Walcs’ Island, presented 
a better geographical point for division, and Russia accepted a little less than half 
the coast of which she had claimed all, and 54° 40’ was thus established as the divid- 
ing point. 
The IVth Article of the Treaty necessarily grew out of the claims of Russia to a 
share of the north-west coast in dispute between the United States and Great 
Britain. Mr. Adams, in the instruction to Mr. Middleton so often referred to, 
Says: 
503 “BR sy the IIIrd Article of the Convention between the United States and Great 
Britain of the 20th October, 1818, it was agreed that any country that might 
be claimed by either party on the north-west coast of America, westward of the 
