The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1897-02-17
The Alaskan Boundary.

The Alaskan Boundary.
The treaty negotiated with Great
Britain, creating a joint commission for
determining the boundary between
the United States, Alaskan territory and
the British possessions, relates merely to
the locating and marking of the n
hundred forty-first meridian which was
made a part of the divisional line in the
treaty ceding that country to the
United States. The determining of
the meridian is purely an engineering
and mathematical problem. It's position
will be located at points on the earth,
between which the line will be sur
veyed and marked by the erection of
posts.
But this meridian marks the boun-
Diary only from the north down to Mt
St. Elias. From that point, under the
treaty of 1926, between England and
Russia, the line follows the SUBMITS of
an assumed mountain range running
parallel with the coast, provided this
line should not be more than ten marine
leagues from the shore. In this con-
tingency the line was to follow the
windings of the coast at a distance of
ten marine leagues down to the fifty
six parallel of latitude, where it would
strike Portland channel, and thence
through that channel to the open sea.
This boundary was accepted by the
United States when it acquired the ter
ritory from Russia, in 1867. 1t was
then known that there was no contin-
nous range of mountains extending
south from Mount St. Elias within the
prescribed limit from the coast, and
that the boundary would have to be de-
termined by running a line at a dis
lance of ten marine leagues from the
winding shore.
This, too, would have been chiefly a
work of engineering, but in 1887 the
traditional disposition of Great Britain
to claim everything in sight found ok
preston in the preposterous claim adj
vanced by the Canadian authorities
that the ten leagues inland should be
measured, not from the main shore, but
from the outer edge of the islands along
the coast. These islands are many,
some are very large, and upon n of
the largest is Sitka, the old and the
present Alaskan capital. The outer
edge of the outer islands of the main
group is, in some places, fifty miles or
more from the mainland coast. Ten
marine leagues are thirty geographical
miles. So that the effect of the Can
adian contention, if conceded, would be
to drive the United States from the
mainland, below Mount st. Elias, and
even to give to England a part of the
islands themselves. The further claim
is made that the channel through which
the southern boundary runs is not
Portland but :Behem channel, though
the former is distinctly named in the
treaty. Behem channel is further to
to the west, and if it should be accepted
as the southern boundary, the Do
minion would acquire two large islands
and several small ones. The milk in
the cocoanut of the British contention,
as 10 the Alaskan boundary, is easily
accounted for. On a smaller scale, it
is the British Venezuelan policy APP
piled to a small strip of North Amer
lea, and British ingenuity in devising
a claim upon this part of Alaska, as was
the case in Venezuela, has been whet-
ted by the discovery of gold in that
otherwise forbidding land.
When one considers the frame of
mind into which a person is thrown by
the necessity for defending in court his
right to his possessions against a false or
I" trumped up" claim, the growing ir.
ritation in the United States toward
Great Britain, and the disposition in
any compact with her to put the bars
up high and strong for the protection
of American interests, is easily ex-
plainable, and is justified on the ground
that demands the greatest caution and
iustifes the most extreme measures,
the right of self defense. The United
States will hardly accept the Canadian
Interpretation of the treaty, and the
British government cannot with de-
cency or dignity ask the United States
to arbitrate this absurd claim. 1t is