Fort Worth weekly gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-10-30
ON THE SOUTHERN FRONTIER.
An Unmarked Boundarw Line Between Mex
leo and the United States.

New York Star.
tOue of the most important questions
pending between the governments of the
United States aud Mexico just now is the
proper marking of the boundary line be-
tween the two countries. This remark
was made in the course of a chat l had
with Senior Jose NJ. Garcia of Janos.
Mexico, at the Fifth Avenue hotel last
evening. ''You must knoT, he con-
tinued, in explanation, ''that the
boundary line between the two republics
is, for some 1900 miles, purely artificial.
Down as far westward as FL Paso, Tex,
line in the center of the Rio Grande
gives the water OF the river equally to
the two nations, but from Ell Paso, Tex,
to Tia Junia, San Diego county, CAL,
the line is an imaginary one, marked
out by monuments of iron and
stone erected by Commissioner Lar
rigui for Mexico and by Mai. Emory
of the corps of United States en-
gineers, for your country. When this
survey was completed, somewhere be-
tween the years 1850 80, the whole
country was an arid waste. Now II has
a large popula ion, growing denser day
by day. In view of the absence of q
population the commission contented IT.
self by making the line By erecting
monumerts-in many cases ninety miles
apart. The result now is, that man
living close to the frontier liTs Cf either
Arizona or New Mexico, except he Is In
the neighborhood of q monument, cannot
tell whether he is in the United STATES or
Mexico, and, of course, the sure shing
holds good on our side of the border. SO
great has this trouble grown OF la;e that
Mexican custom house, until few
years ago, was collecting duties ia che
United States, while at the present time
miners from the United Stats ara taking
up claims, under your mining laws, upon
our territory
"Has anything been done to remedy
the evil?'
eyes, but only by the military author
tiles. AS early as 1888 a bill passed the
congress of the United States and that of
Mexico, providing for q resurvey of the
boundary, to be made by the military
engineer officers of the two governments.
The object of the survey was to deter
mine how many monuments would be
required to SO mark the line that each
monument would be In sight of another,
TO the end that a man could trace the
line for himself at any point. This work
was so admirably done by Capt. Thomas
W. Symons, OF the United States corps
of engineers, that his field notes were
accepted by our government and his re-
port to your government approved.
That Is all the good, however, that
came of Symon work. The Ameri-
can congress has not appropriated any
money to remark the line, though our
government is ready to pay one-half OF
the expense. During Mr.. Cleveland
Standardization our minister to Washing
ton was most earnest IN his efforts to
have the matter attended to, and in one
of Presidents Cleveland messages he
drew attention to its Importance, but
that IS all that has come of 1t. Since
the Republican party has got into power
the outlook has become more than
gloomy, and excuse me, but il seems to
us Mexicans that there is desire on the
part of your government to leave. for
some occult reason, question unsettled
which, In the very near future, may
give rise to the most serious eompliea-
tions.