150 FUR-SEAL FISHERIES OF ALASKA. 



North Pacific Ocean " to within a distance of less than 100 Italian miles '^ 

 from the shores of the coast as far south as latitude 51° was at once 

 vigorously protested by our Government and seconded by Great Britain. 



This extension in 1821 of the Russian- American landed claim of 1799 

 from latitude 55° N. down to 51°, plus the control of those open waters 

 of the North Pacific Ocean, was the cause of Mr. Adams's vigorous pro- 

 test made in behalf of our Government during 1822-^'23 for, in opposi- 

 tion to this " new pretension " of landed marine assumption of owner- 

 ship by Russia he addressed himself in emphatic pointed terras. But 

 the court at St. Petersburg plainly anticipated that, and in its reply to 

 the first communication of our minister the shrewdness of Muscovitic 

 diplomacy drew by it from Mr. Adams a definite expression of what 

 I)articular area the American protest was intended to cover. This defi- 

 nition is especially made in the answer of Mr. Adams, July 22, 1823,* 

 who objects to the marine control of a " great ocean," where " it may 

 suffice to say that the distance from shore to shore on this sea in lati- 

 tude 51° N., is not less then 90 degrees of longitude, or 4,000 miles." 



To this assumption of Russia touching the North Pacific Ocean and 

 its extension of the Russian territory from 55° down to 51° N. latitude 

 on the northwest coast — to this assumption alone did our Government 

 protest; and to make our meaning still more clear and decided, Mr. 

 Adams declared, in a dispatch of even date, to Benjamin Rush, minister 

 in London at that time: 



* * * The right of carrying on trade with the natives throughout the northwest 

 coast they (the United States) can not renounce. With the Russian settlements at 

 Kodiak or at New Archangel (Sitka) they may fairly claim the advantage of a free 

 trade, having so long enjoyed it unmolested, and because it has been and would con- 

 tinue to be as advantageous at least to those settlements as to them. But they will 

 not contest the right of Russia to prohibit the traffic, as strictly confined to the Rus- 

 sian settlement itself, and not extending to the original natives of the coast. 



In these emphatic lines do we find precisely that ocean and that coast 

 over which Russia claimed dominion and to which claim we objected. 

 Mr. Adams did not ask that our people should be permitted to enter 

 the Kamchatkan (or Bering) Sea, and trade around and at the seal 

 islands, though he knew then from our traders, as well as we know now, 

 that these fur-seal interests on the Pribylov Islands were the most valu- 

 able of all Russian fur-bearing sources in that whole region; that they 

 were the exchequer of the Russian-American Company. He recog- 

 nized, however, the right of Russia to shut them out, just as we shut 

 them out to-day, otherwise he would have made a demand for trading 

 privileges with them also. 



Every line of the correspondence which passed between our Govern- 

 ment and that of Russia in relation to this subject bears me out in say- 

 ing that the protest of Mr. Adams against the assertion of the ukase 

 of 1821 related exclusively to the northwest coast of the North Pacific 

 Ocean and to the waters of that ocean alone ; for lie makes no refer- 

 ence to any other region, country, coast, or sea. Yet the ukase em- 

 braced the Aleutian Islands, where the southernmost islets of the 

 Kressi group in that Archipelago reach down south as far as latitude 

 51° N. 



Russia was quick to notice that her assumption of control over the 

 waters of the North Pacific Ocean was untenable. She therefore, in 

 her treaty of 1824, settling this matter with us, acknowledged it by 

 article 1. But in this treaty there is no surrender of the Kamchatkan 

 (or Bering) Sea by expression or inference. Russia, in this instrument, 



*The details of this somewhat extended correspondence can be seen in the ar- 

 chives of the State Department and the Library of Congress at Washington. Space 

 here will not allow of their expression beyond the brief citations. 



