schatka, a few use the name of Behring, while several other designations are used. The whole number, aggregating, as they did, the opinion of a large part of the civilized world, distinguished the sea, no matter under what name, as altogether separate from the Pacific Ocean.

Is it possible, that with this great cloud of witnesses before the eyes of Mr. Adams and Mr. George Canning, attesting the existence of the Sea of Kamschatka, they would simply include it in the phrase "Pacific Ocean," and make no allusion whatever to it as a separate Sea, when it was known by almost every educated man in Europe and America to have been so desiguated numberless times? Is it possible that Mr. Canning and Mr. Adams, both educated in common law, could believe that they were acquiring for the United States and Great Britain the enormous rights inherent in the Sea of Kamschatka without the slightest reference to that sea, or without any description of its metes and bounds, when neither of them would have paid for a village house lot unless the deed for it should recite every fact and feature necessary for the identification of the lot against any other piece of ground on the surface of the globe? When we contemplate the minute particularity, the tedious verbiage, the duplications and the reduplications employed to secure unmistakable plainness in framing Treaties, it is impossible to conceive that a fact of this great magnitude could have been omitted from the instructions written by Mr. Adams and Mr. G. Canning as Secretaries for Foreign Affairs in their respective countriesimpossible that such a fact could have escaped the notice of Mr. Middleton and Count Nesselrode, of Mr. Stratford Canning and M. Poletica, who were the negotiators of the two Treaties. It is impossible that, in the Anglo-Russian Treaty, Count Nesselrode, Mr. Stratford Canning, and M. Poletica could have taken sixteen lines to recite the titles and honours they had received from their respective Sovereigns, and not even suggest the insertion of one line, or even word, to secure so valuable a grant to England as the full freedom of the Behring Sea.

There is another argument of great weight against the assump. tion of Lord Salisbury that the phrase " Pacific Ocean," as used in Article I of both the American and British Treaties, was intended to include the waters of the Behring Sea. It is true that, by the Treaties with the United States and Great Britain, Russia practically withdrew the operation of the Ukase of 1821 from the waters of the north-west coast on the Pacific Ocean; but the proof is conclusive that it was left in full force over the waters of the Behring Sea. Lord Salisbury cannot have ascertained the value of the Behring Sea to Russia when he assumed that, in the Treatics of 1824 and 1825, the Imperial Government had, by mere inclusion in another

phrase, with apparent carelessness, thrown open all the resources and all the wealth of those waters to the citizens of the United States and to the subjects of Great Britain.

Lord Salisbury has, perhaps, not thought it worth while to make any examination of the money-value of Alaska and the waters of the Behring Sea at the time the Treaties were negotiated and in the succeeding years. The first period of the Russian-American Company's operations had closed before the Ukase of 1821 was issued. Its affairs were kept secret for a long time, but are now accurately known. The money advanced for the capital stock of the Company at its opening in 1799 amounted to 1,238,746 roubles. The gross sales of furs and skins by the Company at Kodiak and Canton from that date up to 1820 amounted to 20,024,698 roubles. The net profit was 7,685,000 roubles for the 21 years-over 620 per cent. for the whole period, or nearly 30 per cent. per annum.

Reviewing these facts, Bancroft, in his "History of Alaska," a standard work of exhaustive research, says :

"We find this powerful monopoly firmly established in the favour of the Imperial Government, many nobles of high rank and several members of the Royal Family being among the shareholders."

And yet Lord Salisbury evidently supposes that a large amount of wealth was carelessly thrown away by the Royal Family, the nobles, the courtiers, the capitalists, and the speculators of St. Petersburgh in a phrase which merged the Behring Sea in the Pacific Ocean. That it was not thrown away is shown by the transactions of the Company for the next twenty years.

The second period of the Russian-American Company began in 1821 and ended in 1841. Within that time the gross revenues of the Company exceeded 61,000,000 roubles. Besides paying all expenses and all taxes, the Company largely increased the original capital, and divided 8,500,000 roubles among the shareholders. These dividends and the increase of the stock showed a profit on the original capital of 55 per cent. per annum for the whole twenty years a great increase over the first period. It must not be forgotten that, during sixteen of these twenty years of constantly increasing profits, the Treaties which, according to Lord Salisbury, gave to Great Britain and the United States equal rights with Russia in the Behring Sea, were in full force.

The proceedings which took place when the second period of the Russian-American Company was at an end are thus described in Bancroft's "History of Alaska":

". . . . In the variety and extent of its operations,' declare the members of the Imperial Council, no other Company can compare with it. In addition to a commercial and industrial monopoly, the Government has invested it with a portion of its own powers in

governing the vast and distant territory over which it now holds control. A change in this system would now be of doubtful benefit. To open our ports to all hunters promiscuously would be a death-blow to the fur trade, while the Government, having transferred to the Company the control of the Colonies, could not now resume it without great expense and trouble, and would have to create new financial resources for such a purpose.''

The Imperial Council, it will be seen, did not hesitate to call the Russian-American Company a monopoly, which it could not have been if Lord Salisbury's construction of the Treaty was correct. Nor did the Council feel any doubt that to open the ports of the Behring Sea "to all hunters promiscuously would be a death-blow to the fur trade."

Bancroft says further :

"This opinion of the Imperial Council, together with a Charter defining the privileges and duties of the Company, was delivered to the Czar, and received his signature on the 11th October, 1844. The new Charter did not differ in its main features from that of 1821, though the boundary was, of course, changed in accordance with the English and American Treaties. None of the Company's rights were curtailed, and the additional privileges were granted of trading with certain ports in China and of shipping tea direct from China to St. Petersburgh."

The Russian-American Company was thus chartered for a third period of twenty years, and at the end of the time it was found that the gross receipts amounted to 75,770,000 roubles, a minor part of it from the tea trade. The expenses of administration were very large. The shareholders received dividends to the amount of 10,210,000 roubles-about 900 per cent. for the whole period, or 45 per cent. per annum on the original capital. At the time the third period closed, in 1862, the Russian Government saw an opportunity to sell Alaska, and refused to continue the Charter of the Company. Agents of the United States had initiated negotiations for the transfer of Alaska as early as 1859. The Company continued, practically, however, to exercise its monopoly until 1867, when Alaska was sold by Russia to the United States. The enormous profits of the Russian-American Company in the fur trade of the Behring Sea continued under the Russian flag for more than forty years after the Treaties of 1824 and 1825 had been concluded. And yet Lord Salisbury contends that during this long period of exceptional profits from the fur trade Great Britain and the United States had as good a right as Russia to take part in these highly lucrative ventures.

American and English ships in goodly numbers during this whole period annually visited and traded on the north-west coast

on the Pacific Ocean. And yet, of all these vessels of the United States and Great Britain, not one ever sought to disturb the fur fisheries of the Behring Sea or along its coasts, either of the continent or of the islands. So far as known, it is believed that neither American nor English ships ever attempted to take one furseal at the Pribyloff Islands or in the open waters of the Behring Sea during that period. The 100-mile limit was for the preservation of all these fur animals, and this limit was observed for that purpose by all the maritime nations that sent vessels to the Behring waters.

Can any one believe it to be possible that the maritime, adventurous, gain-loving people of the United States and of Great Britain could have had such an inviting field open to them forty years and yet not one ship of either nation enter the Behring Sea to compete with the Russian-American Company for the inordinate profits which had flowed so steadily and for so long a period into their treasury from the fur trade? The fact that the ships of both nations refrained, during that long period, from taking a single fur-seal inside the shores of that sea is a presumption of their lack of right and their recognized disability so strong that, independently of all other arguments, it requires the most authentic and convincing evidence to rebut it. That English ships did not enter the Behring Sea to take part in the catching of seals is not all that can be said. Her acquiescence in Russia's power over the seal fisheries was so complete that during the forty years of Russia's supremacy in the Behring Sea (that followed the Treaties of 1824-25) it is not believed that Great Britain even made a protest, verbal or written, against what Bancroft describes as the "Russian monopoly."

A certain degree of confusion and disorganization in the form of the Government that had existed in Alaska was the inevitable accompaniment of the transfer of sovereignty to the United States. The American title was not made complete until the money, specified as the price in the Treaty, had been appropriated by Congress and paid to the Russian Minister by the Executive Department of the Government of the United States. This was effected in the latter half of the year 1868. The acquired sovereignty of Alaska carried with it by Treaty "all the rights, franchises, and privileges" which had belonged to Russia. A little more than a year after the acquisition, the United States transferred certain rights to the Alaska Commercial Company over the seal fisheries of Behring Sea for a period of twenty years. Russia had given the same rights (besides rights of still larger scope) to the RussianAmerican Company for three periods of twenty years each, without a protest from the British Government, without a single interference from British ships. For these reasons this Government

again insists that Great Britain and the United States recognized, respected, and obeyed the authority of Russia in the Behring Sea; and did it for more than forty years after the Treaties with Russia were negotiated. It still remains for England to explain why she persistently violates the same rights when transferred to the ownership of the United States.

Article II of the American Treaty is as follows:-

"Article II. With a view of preventing the rights of navigation and of fishing exercised upon the Great Ocean by the citizens and subjects of the High Contracting Powers from becoming the pretext for an illicit trade, it is agreed that the citizens of the United States shall not resort to any point where there is a Russian establishment, without the permission of the Governor or Commander; and that, reciprocally, the subjects of Russia shall not resort, without permission, to any establishment of the United States upon the northwest coast."

Article. II of the British Treaty is as follows:

"Article II. In order to prevent the right of navigation and fishing, exercised upon the ocean by the subjects of the High Contracting Parties, from becoming the pretext for an illicit commerce, it is agreed that the subjects of His Britannic Majesty shall not land at any place where there may be a Russian establishment, without the permission of the Governor or Commandant; and, on the other hand, the Russian subjects shall not land, without permission, at any British establishment on the north-west coast."

In Articles II of the Treaties it is recognized that both the United States and Great Britain have establishments on the "north-west coast," and, as neither country ever claimed any territory north of the 60th parallel of latitude, we necessarily have the meaning of the north-west coast significantly defined in exact accordance with the American contention.

An argument, altogether historical in its character, is of great and, I think, conclusive force touching this question. It will be remembered that the Treaty of the 20th October, 1818, between the United States and Great Britain, comprised a variety of topics, among others, in Article III, the following:

[See Vol. VI, page 4.]

While this Article placed upon a common basis for ten years the rights of Great Britain and America on the north-west coast, it rade no adjustment of the claims of Russia on the north, or of Spain on the south, which are referred to in the Article as "any other Power or State." Russia had claimed down to latitude 55° under the Ukase of 1799. Spain had claimed indefinitely north