ADDENDUM. 



409 



lies, lias changed, in the international eye of the law, the character of 

 the Amazon, as it flows through the territory of Brazil, and has con- 

 verted it from a river into a strait, connecting arms — free navigable 

 arms — of the sea with the main ocean. And no nation, even though 

 she own both shores of such a strait, can have the right to shut it up 

 against the world as a common highway. Such is the doctrine of the 

 international code. 



"'Straits,' says Wheaton, 'are passages communicating from one 

 sea to another. If the navigation of the two seas thus connected is 

 free, the navigation of the channel by which they are connected ought 

 also to be free. Even if such strait be bounded, on both sides, by the 

 territory of the same sovereign, and is at the same time so narrow as 

 to be commanded by cannon-shot from both shores, the exclusive terri- 

 torial jurisdiction of that sovereign is controlled by the right of other 

 nations to communicate with the seas thus connected. Such right may, 

 however, be modified by special compact, adopting those regulations 

 which are indispensably necessary to the security of the State whose 

 interior waters thus form the channel of communication between dif- 

 ferent seas, the navigation of which is free to other nations. Thus the 

 passage of the strait may remain free to the private merchant vessels* 

 of those nations having a right to navigate the seas it connects, whilst 

 it is shut to all foreign armed ships in time of peace. 



" ' So long as the shores of the Black sea were exclusively possessed 

 by Turkey, that sea might, with propriety, be considered a mare 

 clausum ; and there seems no reason to question the right of the Otto- 

 man Porte to exclude other nations from navigating the passage which 

 connects it with the Mediterranean — both shores of this passage being 

 at the same time portions of the Turkish territory ; but since the terri- 

 torial acquisitions made by Russia, and the commercial establishments 

 formed by her on the shores of the Euxine, both that empire and other 

 maritime powers have become entitled to participate in the commerce 

 of the Black sea, and consequently to the free navigation of the Dar- 

 danelles and the Bosphorus. This right was expressly recognised by 

 the seventh article of the treaty of Adrianople, concluded, in 1829, be- 

 tween Russia and the Porte, both as to Russian vessels and those of 

 other European States in amity with Turkey.' — Wheaton } s Elements of 

 International Law, page 229. 



" The international code, though it affords cases which rest upon the 

 principles involved in this question of the Amazon, yet it affords no 

 case precisely similar and parallel to it. 



" In the first place, there is no other river in the world like the Ama- 



