Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 16.pdf/101

 00

awarded to the United States; for they showed the American territory as coming down to Portland Channel, according to the very language of the treaty of 1825, which language seems to have been ignored an<i defied in this decision. . . . The award is everywhere, except at a single point, which is Mount Fairweather, considerably within the line of American con tention. It will also be perceived that the line of the award, after leaving Portland Channel, touches the line of the American contention only at a point near Mount Van couver in the St. Elias Alps, but that farther to the east it actually crosses the line of the American claim and cuts off a corner of what the American claim conceded to Canada in the vicinity of Mount St. Elias; a few square miles of glacier and cinder. The decision cuts off two islands which constituted the southern end of the so-called Alaskan "pan handle," and which had1, prior to the Cana dian pretension, being supposed to belong to Russian America, and subsequently to the United States, and which had been so char tered on all the maps, and gives them to Canada; and that instead of making Portland Canal the southern boundary of American territory according to the tenor of the treaty of 1825, it proceeds in the very face of the language of that treaty and traces the boun dary through the narrow channel called Pearse Canal, and does not make the Port land Canal the boundary line until the point far to the east of the open sea is reached where Pearse Canal debouches from (or unites with) Portland Canal. On the other hand, it gives to the United States two small islands of unpronounceable names, not shown at all on many of the maps, situated at the mouth of Pearse Canal, indicated by two black blotches on the smaller of the sub joined maps, claimed by the Canadians in their pretension. Having regard to so much of the decision as relates to the southern boundary, it is our deliberate judgment that the decision gives the Canadians this much more than they had a right to claim. This is mathematically true, unless in the year 1825

south meant north, and unless, since that time, the Portland Canal has changed its geographical location by crossing over from the south to the north side of the two islands known as Prince of Wales Island and Pearse Island. The Anglo-Russian treaty of 1825, quoted above, declares that the line, after leaving the southernmost point of Prince of Wales Island, shall proceed toward the north along the pass called Portland Channel,—the lan guage of the treaty being "remontera au nord le long de la passe dite Portland Channel." A glance at the map will show that the boun dary, as made by the commission, does not leave the southernmost point of Prince of Wales Island and proceed toward the north by the Portland Channel, but that if it had done so it would have given Prince of Wales Island and Pearse Island to the United States. Instead of starting at the southern most point of Prince of Wales Island and proceeding to I he north along the pass called Portland Channel, it is made by this decision to start at the northern point of Prince of Wales Island and1 to proceed toward the north along Pearse Channel. A more ob vious mal-interpretation and perversion of the language of a treaty could not be imag ined. It thus appears that the Canadian con tention relating to the southern part of the boundary was not supported by any ground except "this ground, here in Canada." The Canadians wanted an outlet through Port land Channel in the vicinity of Port Simpson, and the award coolly gives it to them out of American territory, and the American com missioners yield. A glance at the maps which the American Law Review prints with the "Note," from which we have quoted, leads us to wonder whether its editors have not mistaken Wales Island for Prince of Wales Island, the latter confessedly American territory, lying some sixty or seventy miles west of Wales Island. The boundary line starts from the southern most point of Prince of Wales Island; about this there was no controversv.