432 THE ALASKAN B UNDAR Y 



for ten years to frequent " the interior seas, gulphs, hirbours, and 

 creeks upon the coast [north of 54° 40'] for the purpose of trad- 

 ing with the natives of the country." Bagot was instructed to 

 obtain a like privilege for Great Britain, but to secure a longer 

 term than ten years if possible. * He thereupon made a demand 

 for the privilege, not for a term of ten years, but forever as to 

 the coast along the strip of land (lisiere) up to latitude 60° and 

 as to Sitka, and for ten years as to all the other Russian territory 

 to the north. Russia refused the demand on the ground that 

 such a perpetual concession was repugnant to all national feel- 

 ing and was inconsistent with the very idea of sovereignt}', and 

 the negotiations were again broken off.t 



Thereupon Sir Charles Bagot was recalled and Sir Stratford 

 Canning, one of the ablest British diplomatists of the present 

 century, was transferred from Washington to St Petersburg, 

 and the negotiations were again renewed. Sir Stratford Canning 

 was instructed to recede from the demand made by his prede- 

 cessor, and to accept the language of the Russo- American treaty 

 as to the use of the territorial waters of the strip of land {lisiere). 

 This left only the eastern boundary of this strip to be definitely 

 fixed. It was from these instructions to Canning that I have 

 quoted the liberal language in which occur the expressions : 

 " It is not on our part essentially a negotiation about limits," 

 and '' We negotiate about territory to cover the remonstrance 

 upon principle." In this connection it is proper to note that in 

 the early stage of the negotiations, when Sir Charles Bagot re- 

 ported that Russia had indicated latitude 55° as the line of di- 

 vision, Secretary Canning replied : " It does not appear . . . 

 how far the line proposed . . . was intended to run to the 

 eastward. If to the Rocky mountains, it obviously would be 

 wholly inadmissible by us ; " and later in the instruction he 

 says : 



" It would ... be expedient to assign, with respect to the main- 

 land southward of that point [the head of Lynn harbor], a limit, say, of 

 50 or 100 miles from the coast, beyond which the Russian posts should 

 not be extended to the eastward. We must not on any account admit 

 the Russian territory to extend at any point to the Rocky mountains. ".t 



* lb., 434. fib., 439. 



X lb., 419, 420. Attached to Secretary Canning's instruction, from which the above 

 quotation is taken, is a letter to him from the deputy governor of the Hudson's Bay 

 Company (lb., 421), showing that the suggestion of a strip 50 to 100 miles in width 

 originated with that company. He says : " From a want of accurate knowledge of the 

 courses of the rivers or ranges of mountains, it is difficult to suggest any satisfactory 

 boundary in the interior of the country in question, and (if consistent with your 



