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 Thus he stated specifically that, there “is no such continuous range of mountains running parallel to the coast as the terms of the Treaty of 1825 appear to contemplate,” and that “considering the number and size of the projections, and indentations along the coast, it would be difficult to trace the boundary according to the Treaty.” Notwithstanding these official declarations, as to the mountains and the coast, a position was assumed by Great Britain, in direct conflict with them. A line was claimed, as shown by map 28 of the United States Atlas, which put in British territory all of the inlets and almost all of the harbors and safe anchorages. It included much of the mining territory in the Porcupine, Berners Bay, Juneau, Snettisham, Sumdum, Windham Bay and Unuk River districts, whose mineral wealth for twenty years bas been, without any question, exploited by citizens of the United States. It also included the towns of Pyramid Harbor, Haines, Dyea, and Skagway, all of them situated where the United States had exercised undisputed sovereignty since 1867.

An even more astounding feature of the claim was that the line was not laid down along any part of Portland Canal, but was drawn up Clarence Strait and thence through Ernest Sound to the continent. The character of the contention put forward by Great Britain precluded all possibility of a settlement by the Joint High Commission, and the two governments, by a treaty of March 3, 1903, have, for the purpose of settling all differences, constituted this Tribunal, to whose decision seven questions are submitted.

These questions will be discussed in their order, and the provisions of the treaty of 1898, which are thought to bear upon their solution, will be referred to in the course of the argument.

In the general principles by which treaties are to he interpretated is embodied the important distinction between “construction,” the process through which the general sense of a treaty is derived by the application of the rules of logic to what appears upon its face, and “interpretation,” the process through which the meaning