OUR INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARY: AN 

 OBJECT LESSON.* 



THE subject of International Arbitration brings vividly to my 

 mind one of the most agreeable reminiscences of my early life. 

 Shortly after leaving college and while still a law student, it was 

 my good fortune to be appointed British secretary to the Board of 

 International Arbitrators appointed to settle the claims of the Hud- 

 son's Bay Company against the United States for the property 

 which the Company had owned in what is now the States of Oregon 

 and Washington, south of parallel 49°, which had been fixed upon 

 as the International boundary. The peaceful solution of what had 

 been for years a rankling and irritating controversy made at the time 

 a deep impression on my mind which still remains, and it was a rare 

 privilege thus early in life to come in close contact with some of the 

 prominent men of the continent — with the members of the British 

 Embassy in Washington and the Arbitrators, one a retired Federal 

 Judge and the other 'a leading Canadian statesman. Of the others 

 engaged in the arbitration I will name only one, the Hon, Caleb 

 Cushing, who was the leading counsel for the United States and who 

 had been its Attorney-General and was perhaps the foremost lawyer 

 of this country after the death of Webster. 



The subject assigned to me for this morning is "Our Interna- 

 tional Boundary." My acquaintance with a part of it began early. 

 My boyhood home was on the northern foothills of the Adirondack 

 Mountains, on the Lower Canada side of parallel 45°, which there 

 forms the International boundary. Our farm produce was sold and 

 our purchases made at one of the old time "line stores " — built upon 

 the line, with one counter on the American side and the other on the 

 Canadian, the goods of each country, being kept carefully on its own 

 side. The iron post marking the boundary, to which we often hitched 

 our horses, stood directly opposite the front door. On the other side 

 of the road the farmer owned land on both sides of the line and it 

 was no uncommon sight to see him ploughing across the boundary 

 in a field partly in each country, or the cattle grazing quietly in such 

 a field. The farmers on both sides patronized the line stores, buying 



♦Address delivered at Lake Mohonk Conference on International Arbi- 

 tration, 1909. 



