THE ALASKAN BOUND AR Y - 439 



The remaining article to be noted is the seventh, which pro-" 

 vides " that for the space of ten years . . . the vessels of 

 the two powers, or those belonging to their respective subjects, 

 shall mutually be at liberty to frequent, without any hindrance 

 whatever, all the inland seas, the gulfs, havens, and creeks on 

 the coast mentioned in article 3 for the purposes of fishing and 

 (if trading with the natives." I have already referred to the 

 fact that the negotiations were broken off because the British 

 plenipotentiary insisted that the liberty to frequent those " in- 

 land seas, gulfs, havens, and creeks " should be made perpetual, 

 and that the negotiations were renewed upon the basis of the 

 privilege granted in the Russo-American treaty of 1824, the lan- 

 guage of article IV of which, as Secretary Canning informed Sir 

 Charles Bagot* was copied into the British treaty. This ten 

 years' privilege is inconsistent with any other interpretation of 

 the treaty than the complete sovereignty of Russia over, not 

 only a strip of territory on the mainland which follows around 

 the sinuosities of the sea, but also of the waters of all bays or 

 inlets extending from the ocean into the mainland. This is 

 the more manifest when the subsequent history respecting the 

 provision of article IV of the American and article VII of the 

 British treaty is recalled. At the expiration of the term often 

 years the Russian minister in Washington gave notice to the 

 Government of the United States that the privilege had expired, 

 and a notification to that effect was made in the public press of 

 the United States.t Persistent efforts were made by the United 

 States to have the privilege extended for another period of ten 

 3 r ears, but it was firml) 7 " refused by Russia. X The British privi- 

 lege was likewise terminated upon the expiration of the ten 

 years mentioned, and this article of the treaty was never again 

 revived. 



Having reviewed the negotiations preceding the treaty of 

 1825 and examined the provisions of that instrument now in 

 dispute, 1 pass to a statement of facts since the celebration of the 

 treaty, showing the views of the high contracting parties and 

 those claiming under them as to the stipulations of that conven- 

 tion. As soon after the treaty as the data could be compiled, to 

 wit, in 1827, a map was published in St Petersburg, "by order 



*li... 134. Secretary Canning, in his instruction to Sir Stratford Canning, used this 

 language: "Russia cannot mean to give to the United States of America what she 

 withholds from us, nor to withhold from us anything that she has consented to give to 

 the United States." 



fSenate Ex. Doc. No. I, Twenty-fifth Congress, third session, p. 24. % [b., 69. 



