91^ 
 IB7M5. 
 

THE 
 
 ALASKA BOUNDARY L I N T^ ^^ '''■"^) 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS CORWIN MENDENHALL 
 
 with map 
 
 PROM 
 
 THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY 
 
 APRIL 18 9 6 
 

 ^ 
 
1896.] The Alaska Boundary Line. 517 
 
 BESIDE THE STILL WATERS. 
 
 Ah God ! To lie awake at deep of night, 
 
 And hear the rain down-dripping overhead, 
 
 And know that joy is quenched and hope is fled, 
 
 And from all earth have faded glow and light ! 
 
 Have mercy, Father! On my smarting sight 
 
 Let dreamless sleep its grateful shadows spread ; 
 
 Give me a while to rest as one who, dead, 
 
 Can reck of nothing ! When the east grows white 
 
 I will he strong, will bravely face once more 
 
 This dry-eyed agony, not as of yore 
 
 Soothed by swift-gushing tears ! Now, all my soul, 
 
 All prayers, all yearning, but reach out and set, 
 
 Athirst, ablaze, towards one receding goal — 
 
 One hour's oblivion — to forget, forget ! 
 
 My God, I thank Thee ! Ah, I cannot know 
 By what still waters and what pastures green, 
 Close maybe to those secret founts unseen, 
 All human finding fathoms deep below, 
 Whence life itself takes its mysterious flow. 
 Thou hast my spirit led in sleep, to glean 
 Healing and strength ! Grief lingers, yet its keen. 
 Fine throb grows dimmer, fainter, in the slow 
 Advancing dawn. A lark will soar and sing 
 While still a tiny clod of earth may cling 
 To her glad breast : and so, dear Lord, I too 
 Rise from the ground, and, lifting up my voice, 
 As golden morning flushes into view. 
 Remember still, and yet rejoice — rejoice ! 
 
 Stuart Sterne. 
 
 THE ALASKA BOUNDARY LINE. 
 
 " In endeavoring to estimate its char- which Russia ceded to the United States 
 
 acter I am glad to begin with what is her entire possessions in America. The 
 
 clear and beyond question. I refer to distinguished orator, whose address on 
 
 the boundaries fixed by the treaty." that occasion was an exhibition of pro- 
 
 These words form the opening of the found historical and geographical research 
 
 magnificent speech of Charles Sumner in and far-sighted statesmanship which has 
 
 the United States Senate in 1867, in ad- seldom been equaled, does not appear to 
 
 vocacy of the ratification of the treaty by have suspected that by coming into pes- 
 
518 
 
 The Alaska Boundary Line. 
 
 [April, 
 
 session of the great territory whose pur- 
 chase he so ably advocated the United 
 States would find itself involved, a quar- 
 ter of a century later, in two controver- 
 sies, both with Great Britain, one of 
 which should concern what he then de- 
 clared to be " clear and beyond question." 
 What is generally known as the " Be- 
 ring Sea controversy," but which might 
 be called with greater propriety the " fur 
 seal controversy," has had its beginning, 
 unfortunately not its end, within the last 
 decade. In Sumner's day notliing was 
 known which indicated the possible exist- 
 ence of conditions such as have given rise 
 to this dispute. It is a little difficult to 
 understand, however, that so able a dip- 
 lomat as Sumner could have studied the 
 definition of the boundaries of the new 
 territory as found in the treaty of ces- 
 sion without seeing therein the seed of 
 future complications with the English na- 
 tion. That he began by assuming the 
 boundaries to be " beyond question " must 
 have been due in large measure to the fact 
 that, as far as related to the land lines, 
 they were turned over to us exactly as 
 they had been agreed upon by treaty of 
 Russia with Great Britain more than for- 
 ty years earlier, during which period no 
 controversy over them had arisen. He 
 was awai'e, of course, of the controver- 
 sies between Russia and both the United 
 States and Great Britain, in the first 
 quarter of the century, regarding territo- 
 rial and maritime rights and privileges, 
 but the vagueness, in certain important 
 respects, of the English-Russian treaty of 
 1825 does not seem to have impressed 
 itself upon him. As a matter of fact, the 
 superior importance of southeast Alaska, 
 which is the only part whose boundary is 
 likely to be in controversy, was not gen- 
 erally recognized at that time, and reli- 
 able information about the whole was so 
 scanty that little attention was likely to 
 be given to mere " metes and bounds." 
 Since the occupancy of this part of the 
 territory by Americans and its fairly full 
 exploration by government officers, its 
 
 importance has been admitted by us and 
 recognized by the English to the end that 
 the boundary line dividing it from Brit- 
 ish Columbia and the Northwest Terri- 
 tory bids fair to become a matter of dis- 
 pute between the two nations, and one 
 of no mean proportions. Though not of 
 such a nature as to demand immediate 
 settlement, it is not unlikely that it may 
 be involved with two or three other ques- 
 tions at present pending, and about which 
 not only diplomats, but the people gener- 
 ally have been, and are, deeply concerned. 
 The Alaska boundary line is quite worthy 
 of sejiarate consideration on its own ac- 
 count, and it will be a misfortune if any 
 ill-considered act shall result in its being 
 merged with other questions of really less 
 importance, and subjected to the by no 
 means uncertain chances of arbitration. 
 
 In the treaty which determined the ces- 
 sion of the Russian possessions in North 
 America to the United States, concluded 
 March 30, 1867, the geographical limits 
 (on the east) of the territory transferred 
 are defined as follows : — 
 
 " The eastern limit is the line of de- 
 marcation between the Russian and the 
 British possessions in North America as 
 established by the convention between 
 Russia and Great Britain of February 
 28, 1825, and described in Articles III. 
 and IV. of said convention in the follow- 
 ing terms : — 
 
 " Commencing from the southernmost 
 point of the island called Prince of Wales 
 Island, which point lies in the parallel 
 of 54° 40' north latitude, and between the 
 131st and 133d degree of west longi- 
 tude (meridian of Greenwich), the said 
 line shall ascend to the north along the 
 channel called Poi'tland Channel as far 
 as the point of the continent where it 
 strikes the 56th degree of north latitude ; 
 from this last-mentioned ])oint the line 
 of demarcation shall follow the summit 
 of the mountains situated parallel to the 
 coast as far as the point of intersection 
 of the 141st degree of west longitude (of 
 the same meridian), and finally, from said 
 
1896.] 
 
 The Alasha Boundary Line. 
 
 519 
 
 point of intersection, the said meridian 
 line of the 141st degree, in its prolonga- 
 tion as far as the Frozen Ocean. 
 
 "IV. With reference to the line of 
 demarcation laid down in the preceding 
 article, it is understood : — 
 
 "1st. That the island called Prince of 
 Wales Island shall belong wholly to Rus- 
 sia (now, by this cession, to the United 
 States). 
 
 "2d. That whenever the summit of 
 the mountains which extend in a direc- 
 tion parallel to the coast from the 56th 
 degi'ee of north latitude to the point of 
 intersection of tlie 141st degree of west 
 longitude shall prove to be at the dis- 
 tance of more than ten marine leagues 
 from the ocean, the limit between the 
 British possessions and the line of coast 
 which is to belong to Russia^ as above 
 mentioned (that is to say, the limit to 
 the possessions ceded by this convention), 
 shall be formed by a line parallel to the 
 winding of the coast, and which shall 
 never exceed the distance of ten marine 
 leagues therefrom." 
 
 Nearly all boundary-line treaties have 
 been found more or less faulty in con- 
 struction when subjected to rigorous tests 
 such as are sure to come sooner or later. 
 This is doubtless to be attributed in a 
 great degree to the fact that they are 
 usually framed by politicians rather than 
 by geographers ; the advice of the latter 
 being often ignored. The political dij^lo- 
 mat is generally possessed by a smgle 
 dominant idea in entering into a conven- 
 tion, to which all others must be suboi'di- 
 nate, and to the realization of which all 
 other features of the treaty must lead. 
 
 The convention of 1824 between the 
 United States and Russia, and that of 
 1825 between Russia and Great Britain 
 (in which are to be found the boundary- 
 line articles quoted above), were the re- 
 sult of a determination on the part of the 
 two English-speaking nations to break 
 down the Russian Emperor's ukase of 
 1821, in which territory extending as low 
 as 51° north latitude was claimed by Rus- 
 
 sia, as well as complete jurisdiction over 
 nearly all water north of this line, thus 
 threatening the fishing and whaling in- 
 terests and the carrying-trade of both 
 nations. The limitation of Russian pos- 
 sessions to that part of the coast above 
 54° 40' north latitude and the grant- 
 ing of certain maritime privileges for a 
 limited time were the principal results 
 sought after and accomplished, and un- 
 questionably little thought was given to 
 the definition of a boundary line which 
 traversed a region esteemed to be of lit- 
 tle value, either present or prospective. 
 In consequence of this indifference and 
 the apparent absence of geographical in- 
 stinct in framing the treaty, we have an 
 agreement through which it is now pro- 
 posed to '" drive a coach and six " in the 
 interests of the ever aggressive and per- 
 sistently expanding British Emjjire. 
 
 It is therefore important for intelli- 
 gent Americans to understand the weak- 
 ness of the articles of agreement upon 
 which our Alaska boundary claims are 
 assumed to rest. They can best be con- 
 sidered in the order of definition in the 
 treaty. 
 
 In the first paragraph is found the not 
 uncommon but always imfoi-tunate error 
 of " double definition," or rather, in this 
 particular case, of attempting to fix an 
 astronomical position by international 
 treaty. It could not be known in 1825, 
 and, as a matter of fact, it is not now 
 known, that the southernmost point of 
 Prince of Wales Island is on the paral- 
 lel of 54° 40' of north latitude, for it is 
 almost absolutely certain not to be on 
 tliis parallel. No harm comes from this, 
 however, as in a subsequent article (IV.) 
 the possibility of this definition resulting 
 in a divided jurisdiction over the lower 
 extremity of that island is prevented by 
 the provision that the whole island shall 
 belong to Russia (now to the United 
 States). The incident is quite worthy of 
 note, however, as illustrating the claim 
 that the dominant idea teas the 54° 40' 
 line. The prominence of this idea, in- 
 
520 
 
 The Alaska Boundary JAne. 
 
 [April, 
 
 14t- 140- 
 Mt.St.Elias 
 
 138° 
 
 SKETCH-MAP OF SOUTHEAST ALASKA. 
 Showing Points in Controversy, and the Boundary Lines as drawn on OflScial Maps of the United States and Canada. 
 
 deed, in the minds of the several powers 
 
 was so great as to give rise to the second 
 ambiguity in thehoundary-line definition, 
 which follows immediately upon the heels 
 of the first. The description says, " Com- 
 mencing from the southernmost point " 
 (Cape Muzon), etc., "the said line shall 
 ascend to the north along the channel 
 called Portland Channel." Now, an ex- 
 amination of the sketch-map of Alaska, 
 shown above, will make it clear that, 
 beginning with the point of departure 
 as defined above, one must proceed to 
 
 the east for about fifty miles in order 
 to reach the entrance of Portland Chan- 
 nel, or Portland Canal, as it is often 
 called. On the absence of anything in 
 the treaty in reference to this eastward 
 line has been founded a claim that the 
 use of the name " Portland Channel " is 
 an error, an oversight, and that the line 
 was meant to be drawn by turning to the 
 north as soon as ])0ssil)le, which would 
 be after passing Cape Chacon, the east- 
 ernmost of the two capes at the southern 
 extremity of Prince of Wales Island, and 
 
1896.] 
 
 " ascending to the north " through Clar- 
 ence Strait and Behni Canal, and finally 
 intersecting the 56th parallel of north 
 latitude in Burroughs Bay. The effect 
 of this would be to throw the whole of 
 the great Revilla-Gigedo Island, togethfer 
 with a large territory between that and 
 Portland Canal (all of which has been 
 almost universally recognized as belong- 
 ing to Alaska), over to the British side. 
 Preposterous as is this claim, it has for 
 some years received official support at 
 the hands of the Canadian authorities, 
 who have so drawn the line on several 
 of their official maps. It is found on a 
 general map of the Dominion of Canada 
 published by the Interior Department in 
 1887, and it is drawn in the same way 
 upon what jJurports to be a copy of an 
 official Canadian map of 1884 (accompa- 
 nying Executive Document 146, Fiftieth 
 Congress, second session), although an 
 original, now before me, of same date 
 and title, and with which the copy is al- 
 most identical in other respects, exhibits 
 the line as following the Portland Canal, 
 in accord with the traditional claims of 
 the United States. In recent English dis- 
 patches it has been announced that new 
 facts relating to the treaty have been 
 discovered which greatly strengthen the 
 later Canadian interpretation of this part 
 of the line, but it is hardly to be be- 
 lieved that English diplomats will con- 
 sider this line in any other light than as 
 affording excellent material with which 
 to " trade " in convention, or on which to 
 ' " yield " in arbitration. 
 
 , On entering the mouth of the Port- 
 land Channel, which is struck almost in 
 the centre by the 54° 40' line, we meet 
 with another claim of comparatively re- 
 cent date. Just to the north of what must 
 be admitted to be the real entrance to 
 this channel are two considerable islands, 
 Wales Island and Pearse Island. North 
 of these is a narrow, dangerous channel 
 separating them from the mainland, and 
 joining Portland Canal above with the 
 open sea. It is claimed that, admitting 
 
 The Alaska Boundary Line. 
 
 521 
 
 Portland Channel, as laid down on the 
 maps, to be the real channel referred to 
 in the treaty, this comparatively narrow 
 passage is a part of it, and the boundary 
 line must be drawn through it so as to 
 put Wales Island and Pearse Island on 
 the Canadian side. This claim is not 
 recognized on the official Canadian map 
 referred to above, dated 1884, but it is 
 upon that of 1887. It can have but lit- 
 tle value, except when it comes to the 
 " general scramble " which is evidently 
 being prepared for. 
 
 The Portland Canal presents another 
 difficulty in the fact that it does not ac- 
 tually reach the "56th degree of north 
 latitude," as seems to be implied in the 
 language of the treaty, and this has been 
 used as an argument to prove that Port- 
 land Channel was not really the channel 
 through which it was originally intended 
 to draw the boundary line. But this canal 
 comes to within a very short distance of 
 the 56th parallel, probably falling short 
 of it by not more than three or four 
 miles, and possibly by not more than a 
 fraction of a mile. The Salmon and 
 Bear rivers debouch into this canal at 
 its head, and the bed of either may re- 
 present the extension of the inlet to the 
 56th parallel. In any event, it is a mat- 
 ter of no great importance, as some sort 
 of hiatus must necessarily exist in a line 
 passing from the level of the sea to the 
 summit of mountains. 
 
 Altogether the most serious trouble is 
 to be anticipated in the interpretation of 
 that part of the treaty which defines the 
 line as it is to be drawn from the head 
 of Portland Canal to the 141st meridian 
 of west longitude near Mount St. Elias. 
 
 In Article III. the language used is 
 that " from tliis last-mentioned point " 
 (where Portland Channel sti-ikes the 56th 
 degree of north latitude) '"the line of 
 demarcation shall follow the summit of 
 the mountains situated parallel to the 
 coast as far as the point of intersection 
 of the 141st degree of west longitude," 
 etc. But as there was, apparently, even 
 
522 
 
 The Alaska Boundary Line. 
 
 [April, 
 
 then a doubt as to the position if not 
 the existence of such a range, the second 
 paragraph of Article IV. was inserted, 
 defining the distance of the line from 
 the winding of the coast, in case the as- 
 sumed mountain range might be found 
 to run further from the shore than was 
 then supposed. Although most interest- 
 ed in the other features of the treaty, it 
 is evident that British diplomacy, with 
 its accustomed shrewdness, was looking 
 after secondary as well as primary ques- 
 tions, and was by no means disj^osed to 
 trust to the possible meanderings of any 
 little - known range of mountains, even 
 though drawn upon the map by its own 
 explorers. It was provided, therefore, 
 that while the " summit of the mountains 
 parallel to the coast " should furnish the 
 boundary line whenever such line would 
 be ten mai'ine leagues, or less, from the 
 coast, if it should appear in the future 
 that said mountains carried their sum- 
 mits to a greater distance inland, then 
 the line was to be drawn " parallel to the 
 winding of the coast," and so as never 
 to " exceed the distance of ten marine 
 leagues therefrom." It is important to 
 note that this article may be regarded as 
 containing something stronger than a 
 quasi-admission on the part of Great 
 Britain that the strip of territory con- 
 ceded to belong to Russia should be in 
 width ten marine leagues from the coast 
 line : it also implies that this is the maxi- 
 mum width to which she will consent, 
 and that there is nothing in the treaty 
 to prevent her making it one league or 
 half a league, if, in the future, she is able 
 to do so and the mountains 2^a7'aUel to 
 the coast do not stand in the way. 
 
 When this treaty was made, and in- 
 deed until a comparatively recent date, 
 the charts of the region prepared under 
 the direction of Vancouver were the most 
 reliable at hand. One of them (it is like- 
 ly to have been the French edition) was 
 doubtless before the authors of the ar- 
 ticles defining the boundary line. All 
 show a well-defined range of mountains, 
 
 running nearly parallel to the coast line, 
 and removed from it by a varying dis- 
 tance, sometimes as great as forty miles 
 or more. It is now known, however, and 
 has been known for several years, that the 
 very regular and neatly drawn mountain 
 ranges which Vancouver's map exhibits 
 owe their origin to the imagination of his 
 draughtsman more than to anything else ; 
 that is, as far as their form goes. In- 
 deed, it is probably just to say that they 
 were intended only as conventional re- 
 presentations of the fact that mountains 
 were seen in almost every direction, and 
 esijecially in looking from the coast to- 
 ward the interior. Within the past few 
 years many topographical maps have 
 been executed, and many photographs 
 have been made of these mountains as 
 viewed from the summits of some of 
 those which are accessible. Very ex- 
 cellent views have been obtained from 
 elevations of four thousand and five thou- 
 sand feet, looking towards the intei'ior 
 and extending far beyond any claim of 
 the United States. These show a vast 
 " sea of mountains " in every direction, 
 generally increasing in elevation as the 
 distance from the coast increases. Seen 
 from a distance or from the deck of a 
 ship at sea, they might easily create the 
 impression of a range or ranges " par- 
 allel to the winding of the coast." As 
 a matter of fact, there is nothing of the 
 kind, but only the most confused and ir- 
 regular scattering of mountains over the 
 whole territory, at least until the Fair- 
 weather range, south of Mount St. Elias, 
 is reached. Of course it is quite possi- 
 ble to draw a series of lines from moun- 
 tain summit to mountain summit, which 
 would form a line parallel to the coast, 
 or any other assumed line, but no one 
 can deny that the language of the treaty 
 implies a range of summits extending " in 
 a direction parallel to the coast." As 
 the mountains which actually exist cover 
 the territory d(jwn to the water's edge, 
 the logical application of the mountain- 
 summit definition, if it is to be applied 
 
1896.] 
 
 at all, is to draw the line from peak to 
 peak along the seacoast, and this our 
 friends on the other side have not hesi- 
 tated to-do. It is so drawn on the offi- 
 cial Canadian map dated 1887, and also 
 by Dr. G. M. Dawson, director of the 
 Dominion Geological Survey, on his map 
 submitted to show proposed conventional 
 boundary lines. Naturally, this line, in 
 common with all recently drawn maps 
 of the Canadian government, practically 
 leaves little to us except the group of 
 islands lying off the mainland. While 
 nominally allowing us a narrow strip, 
 which is perhaps not quite all covered 
 by high tides, it makes several short cuts 
 which serve to break the continuity of 
 our coast line, and to give considerable 
 seacoast to British Columbia. 
 
 Against the mountain-summit theory, 
 the contention of the United States is, 
 or should be, that as it is unquestionably 
 proved that no such range of mountains 
 exists as was shown on the charts of Van- 
 couver, and as the high contracting par- 
 ties evidently had in mind when they 
 agreed to the treaty, it becomes neces- 
 sary to fall back upon the alternative de- 
 finition, which places the line " parallel to 
 the winding of the coast," and not more 
 than ten marine leagues distant there- 
 from. It may be claimed that this was to 
 have application only in localities where 
 the range of " mountains parallel to the 
 coast " was more than ten marine leagues 
 from the coast, and that it vanishes when 
 said range disappears. In reply it may 
 be said that there are indications strong- 
 ly pointing to the actual existence of 
 such a range far beyond the boundary 
 limit towards the interior ; but even if it 
 be finally known that no such range ex- 
 ists, either more or less than ten marine 
 leagues from the sea, the intent of the 
 agreement can be distinctly proved ; and 
 in the impossibility of executing one of 
 its provisions, an alternative, specially 
 provided for the failure of that one, must 
 be accepted. 
 
 But as soon as we suggest that both the 
 
 The Alaska Boundary Line. 
 
 523 
 
 spirit and the letter of the treaty would 
 be satisfied by drawing the line ten ma- 
 rine leagues from the coast, we are met 
 with some astounding arguments as to 
 what is meant by the coast. A well- 
 known English authority has contended, 
 in effect, that the coast line from which 
 this distance should be measured should 
 be drawn tangent to, and so as to include, 
 the islands lying along the coast. The 
 effect of this would be practically to ex- 
 clude us from the mainland, and to throw 
 valuable parts of the islands themselves 
 over to the Canadian side. In the face 
 of the plain statement that the line is to 
 be drawn " parallel to the winding [si- 
 nuosites'] of the coast," it is not believed 
 that this point can be seriously urged. 
 
 Should it be found possible to project 
 a line satisfactory to both parties, from 
 Dixon's Entrance, at some point of which 
 it must begin, to the region of the Mount 
 St. Ellas Alps, there will be no difficulty 
 in agreeing upon the remainder of the 
 boundary. Fi'om the point where it 
 strikes the 141st meridian west longitude 
 it is to be extended along that meridian 
 " as far as the Frozen Ocean." Since it 
 is an astronomical line, its position can be 
 ascertained as accurately as circumstances 
 require. 
 
 In order to remove a not uncommon 
 but erroneous impression that the Alaska 
 boundary line is now, and has been for 
 some time, in a state of adjudication, it 
 may be well to say that thus far nothing 
 has been done except to execute such 
 surveys as have been thought desirable 
 and necessary for the construction of 
 maps, by which the whole subject could 
 be properly presented to a joint boun- 
 dary - line commission whenever such 
 should be appointed, and on which the 
 location of the line could be definitively 
 laid down if a mutual agreement should 
 be reachedo Such a survey was first 
 brought to the attention of Congress in 
 a message of President Grant in 1872. 
 It was not until 1889, however, that the 
 work was begun by the United States 
 
524 
 
 The Alaska Boundary Line. 
 
 [April, 
 
 Coast and Geodetic Survey, which sent 
 two parties to the valley of the Yukon, in 
 the vast interior of the territory, with 
 instructions to estahlish camps, one on 
 that river, and the other on its branch 
 the Porcupine, both to be as near the 
 141st meridian as possible. These par- 
 ties were to carry on a series of astro- 
 nomical observations for the purpose of 
 determining the location of the meridian, 
 to execute such triangulation and topo- 
 graphical surveys as were necessary for 
 its identification, and to establish perma- 
 nent monuments as nearly as might be 
 upon the meritlian line. 
 
 They remained at their posts, under 
 stress of weather and other unfavorable 
 conditions, for two years, during which 
 their work was done in a manner quite 
 sufficient for any demands ever likely to 
 be made upon it. The two roost impor- 
 tant points on the boundary, where it in- 
 tersects the two great rivers named above, 
 were thus determined, and a year or two 
 later the position of the boundary merid- 
 ian in relation to the summit of Mount 
 St. Elias was established. It is difficult 
 to see what more will be required for a 
 long time to come, as far as relates to 
 this part of the boundary line. In south- 
 east Alaska, where all the uncertainties 
 as to definition of the boundary line exist, 
 peculiar and in a certain sense insuper- 
 able obstacles are met with in the actual 
 survey or " running " of a line in the or- 
 dinary sense. In nearly all of the pro- 
 posed routes most of the line passes 
 through a region practically inaccessible, 
 or at least not accessible without the ex- 
 penditure of enormous sums of money 
 and many years of time, wholly dispro- 
 portionate to the end to be gained. To 
 attempt to make anything like a detailed 
 topographical survey of the wide region 
 covered by the several claims, of suffi- 
 cient accuracy to satisfy the conditions, 
 and to " run " a line wherever it should 
 finally be located, would involve labor 
 and expense impossible to estimate in 
 advance, but sure to be extraordinarily 
 
 great. In view of these facts, it was 
 determined to make such a survey as 
 would enable a boundary-line commission 
 to fix upon any one of several " conven- 
 tional " lines which had been suggested 
 already as satisfactory substitutes for 
 that of the treaty, now generally admit- 
 ted to be impossible of realization. In 
 July, 1892, an agreement was entered 
 into between the United States and Great 
 Britain for the execution of a joint or 
 coincident survey of this region, for boun- 
 dary - line purposes. It was agreed by 
 the connnissioners appointed to make 
 this survey to cany out, in effect, the 
 plan mentioned above. Astronomical 
 stations were to be established at the 
 mouths of the principal rivers which flow 
 across the boundary line, namely, at the 
 head of Burroughs Bay, the mouths of 
 the Stikine and the Taku, and the head 
 of Lynn Canal. A series of triangles 
 were to be run from these up the river 
 valleys, until a point beyond the probable 
 or possible location of the boundary was 
 reached. Topographical sketches were 
 to be made and a good deal of photo- 
 graphic topogi'aphy was to be done, espe- 
 cially by the Canadian parties. This 
 plan, which was successfully carried out, 
 received the approval of the Dejjartment 
 of State, and the rej^resentatives of the 
 two governments cooperated in its exe- 
 cution. It is believed to have furnished 
 all information, besides what had been 
 previously accumulated, necessary to a 
 full discussion and a complete settlement 
 of the controversy. One of the impor- 
 tant results of this work has been the ac- 
 cumulation of evidence, if indeed any 
 were needed, of the impossibility of the 
 " mountain-summit " line, and the conse- 
 quent necessity of falling back upon a 
 line at a measured distance from the 
 coast. That this distance, in accordance 
 with the spirit and intent of the treaty 
 of 1825, should be practically ten marine 
 leagues is apparent from the treaty itself 
 and from contemporaneous history. It 
 was evidently meant to convey, or rather 
 
1896.] 
 
 to confirm, to Russia a " strip of the 
 coast," complete and unbroken, from 
 the parallel of 54° 40' north latitude to 
 Mount St. Elias. The word lisiere used 
 in the treaty to describe this strip, and 
 which becomes "line" in the English 
 version, means much more than that, be- 
 ing originally equivalent to " border," 
 " selvage," " fringe," or " list " of cloth, 
 always standing for something of very 
 detinite width and continuity. Contem- 
 porary writers might be quoted, showing 
 a common belief among Englishmen 
 themselves that the treaty accorded to 
 Russia a very detinite and continuous 
 strip of the mainland, which, by cutting 
 off direct access to the coast, " rendered 
 the great interior of comparatively little 
 value." 
 
 In conclusion, the situation may be 
 summed u\) as follows : — 
 
 Our purchase of Alaska from Russia 
 in 1867 included a strip of the coast 
 (lisiere de cote) extending from north 
 latitude 54° 40' to the region of Mount 
 St. Elias. This strip was thought to be 
 separated from the British possessions 
 by a range of mountains (then supposed 
 to exist) parallel to the coast, or, in the 
 case of these mountains being too re- 
 mote, by a line parallel to the windings 
 (sinuosites) of the coast, and nowhere 
 greater than ten marine leagues from the 
 same. As the advantage of an alterna- 
 tive line could hardly have been intend- 
 ed to accrue to one only of the contract- 
 ing parties, and as Great Britain would 
 benefit by every nearer approach of the 
 alleged mountain range than ten marine 
 leagues, it must be inferred that the spirit 
 and intent of the treaty was to give Rus- 
 sia the full ten leagues wherever a range 
 of mountains nearer to the coast than that 
 did not exist. For more than fifty years 
 there was, as far as is known, no claim 
 on the part of Great Britain to any oth- 
 er than this simple interpretation of the 
 treaty, and up to a very recent date all 
 maps were drawn practically in accord 
 with it. Above all, it is clear, both from 
 
 The Alaska Boundary Line. 
 
 625 
 
 the language of the treaty and from con- 
 temporaneous history, tluit the strip of 
 coast was intended to be continuous from 
 the parallel of 54° 40' north latitude. 
 The right of complete jurisdiction over 
 this coast, exercised so long by Russia 
 without protest from Great Britain, be- 
 came ours by purchase in 1867. Since 
 that date the development of the north- 
 west has shown the great value of this 
 lisiere. Its existence has become espe- 
 cially disagreeable to Great Britain, be- 
 cause through its waterways and over 
 its passes much of the emigration and 
 material supplies for her northwestern 
 territory must go. The possession by 
 us of the entire coast of North America 
 north of 54° 40' to the Arctic Ocean is 
 not in itself in harmony with her desire 
 or her policy. The Alaska boundary- 
 line dispute offers an opportunity to 
 break the continuity of our territorial 
 jurisdiction, and by securing certain por- 
 tions of the coast to herself greatly to 
 diminish the value of the remaining de- 
 tached fragments to us. The wisdom of 
 this from the Downing Street standpoint 
 cannot be questioned. Those of us who 
 desire to assist in its accomplishment 
 have only to urge the importance of sub- 
 mitting every controversy of this kind, 
 no matter whether we are right or wrong, 
 to the court of arbitration. Arbitration 
 is compromise, especially when two great 
 and nearly equally strong nations are en- 
 gaged in it. No matter how much or 
 how little a nation carries to an arbitra- 
 tion, it is tolerably certain to bring some- 
 thing away. Once before a board of 
 arbitration, the English government has 
 only to set up and vigorously urge all of 
 the claims referred to above, and more 
 that can easily be invented, and it is all 
 but absolutely certain that, although by 
 both tradition and equity we should de- 
 cline to yield a foot of what we pur- 
 chased in good faith from Russia, and 
 which has become doubly valuable to us 
 by settlement and exploration, our lisiere 
 will be promptly broken into fragments, 
 
526 
 
 Latter -Day Cranford. 
 
 [April, 
 
 and, with much show of impartiality, 
 divided between the two high contracting 
 parties. 
 
 It is to be regretted that our share in re- 
 cent important events has tended to lead 
 us toward this end rather than away from 
 it. We have thrust ourselves into a con- 
 troversy over a boundary line on another 
 continent, in which we can have no inter- 
 est, except perhaps that which grows out 
 of a very foggy and uncertain sentiment. 
 We have assumed that a Eurojoean power 
 is about to " extend its system " to a 
 part of the western continent, or that 
 England is on the point of " oppress- 
 ing " the people of a South American 
 republic, or of " controlling the desti- 
 ny " of their goverimient. Against this 
 we have made an active and aggressive 
 protest, and have clearly intimated that 
 if Great Britain does not submit this 
 boundary question to arbitration we shall 
 make trouble. In so doing we have 
 once more put ourselves exactly where 
 far-sighted English statesmanship would 
 have us. Under ordinary circumstances 
 our attitude on this question would be 
 considered as almost an offense, and the 
 channels of diplomatic correspondence 
 
 would not be as clear and uninterrupted 
 as they now are. 
 
 The truth is that Great Britain is 
 meeting our wishes in this matter with 
 almost indecent haste, because the arbi- 
 tration of the Alaska boundary line, by 
 which she hopes and expects to acquire 
 an open seacoast for her great northwest 
 territories, and to weaken us by breaking 
 our exclusive jurisdiction nortli of 54° 
 40', is enormously more important to 
 her than anything she is likely to gain or 
 lose in South America. Having driven 
 her to accept arbitration in this case, it 
 will be impossible for us to refuse it in 
 Alaska, and we shall find ourselves again 
 badly worsted by the diplomatic skill of 
 a people who, as individuals, have de- 
 veloped intellectual activity, manliness, 
 courage, unselfish devotion to duty, and 
 general nobility of character, elsewhere 
 unequaled in the world's history, but 
 whose diplomatic policy as a nation is 
 and long has been characterized by ag- 
 gressiveness, greed, absolute indifference 
 to the rights of others, and a splendid 
 facility in ignoring every principle of jus- 
 tice or international law whenever com- 
 mercial interests are at stake. 
 
 T. C. Mendenhall. 
 
 LATTER-DAY CRANFORD. 
 
 It is the eccentric dower of some to 
 gi'ow quite as hot-headed and tremulous 
 over a prospective needle in a haymow 
 as ever Midas could have been on re- 
 ceiving his gift. To such. Knutsford, in 
 Cheshire, offers a perfect hunting-ground 
 for that sort of plunder so humorous- 
 ly resembling Gratiano's reasons: "You 
 shall seek all day ere you find them ; 
 and when you have them, they are not 
 worth the search." No more satisfying 
 occupation can be invented in this an- 
 cient world than the pursuit of what does 
 not absolutely exist, if only the hunter 
 
 be just credulous enough ; bold in belief, 
 yet " not too bold." He must cling to 
 his guesswork with a dauntless zeal ; at 
 the same time, he shall, for his own ease, 
 recognize the probable futility of such 
 doggedness. For to reconstruct a habi- 
 tation on the base of some foregone ro- 
 mance is to strike a balance between spe- 
 cial disappointment and a vague general 
 
 joy- 
 
 The present Knutsford, in toto, is 
 emphatically not the Ci-anford of Mrs. 
 Gaskell's homely chronicle, but it glit- 
 ters with links of similitude ; moreover. 
 
THE ATLANTIC 
 MONTHLY 
 
 DEVOTED TO 
 
 Literature, Science, Art, and Politics 
 
 VOLUME LXX VII.— NUMBER 462 
 
 APRIL, 1896 
 
 Page 
 
 THE OLD THINGS. I. -IV Henry James 433 
 
 CHINA AND THE WESTERN WORLD Lafcadio Hearn 450 
 
 THE FLUTE J. Russell Taylor 465 
 
 OLD-TIME SUGAR-MAKING Rowland E. Robinson 466 
 
 A SON OF THE REVOLUTION Octave Thanet 471 
 
 AN ARCHER'S SOJOURN IN THE OKEFINOKEE .... Maurice Thompson 486 
 
 SOME MEMORIES OF HAWTHORNE. Ill Rose Hawthorne Lathrop 492 
 
 THE SCOTCH ELEMENT IN THE AMERICAN 
 
 PEOPLE Nathaniel Southgate Shaler 508 
 
 BESIDE THE STILL WATERS Stuart Sterne 517 
 
 THE ALASKA BOUNDARY LINE T. C. Mendenhall 517 
 
 LATTER-DAY CRANFORD Alice Brown 526 
 
 THE CASE OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS: II. THE TEACH- 
 ER'S SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL POSITION F. W. Atkinson 534 
 
 THE PRESIDENCY AND SENATOR ALLISON 544 
 
 THE NEW POE 551 
 
 PAINTING, SCULPTURE, AND ARCHITECTURE 554 
 
 La Farge's Considerations on Painting. — Hamerton's Imagination in Landscape Painting, — Florence 
 Simmonds's Ricci's Antonio Allegri da Correggio. — The Writings on Art of Anna Jameson. — Cole and 
 Van Dyke's Old Dutch and Flemish Masters. — Eugenie Sellers's Furtwangler's Masterpieces of Greek 
 Sculpture. — Longfellow's A Cyclopaedia of Works of Architecture in Italy, Greece, and the Levant. 
 
 COMMENT ON NEW BOOKS 569 
 
 THE CONTRIBUTORS' CLUB 573 
 
 Above the World. — A Book-Lover's Paradise. — Figliuolo Learns to ^pat}. , , , ,, , ,,, ,,, 
 
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 l!o8ton, 180 WasLlQgtou SU 
 
 KufTalo, GIennj'« 
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 Cincinnati, 602 Race St. 
 Olevt'land, 48 ihc Arcade. 
 Columbus, 106 N. High. 
 Denver. 826 Fifteenth St. 
 Kvansville, 213 Up 2nd St. 
 Kansas City, 917 Walnut St. 
 Milwaukee, 122 Grand Ave. 
 
 Minneapolis, 329 H'pin Ave. 
 New Orleans, 522 & 524 Common St 
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 and bv Druggists, Plumbers, and Dealers in Hardware 
 and House-furnishing Goods 
 
THE 
 
 ALASKA BOUNDARY LINE 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS OORWIN MENDENHALL 
 
 FROM 
 THE INDEPENDENT 
 OCTOBER ^6 1899 
 
A Ballad of Hallowmass. 
 
 By Clinton ScoUard. 
 
 IT )iaijpc(] at the time of HiiUowinass. wlieu the dead may walk abroad, 
 That the wraitb of Italph of tho peaceful hoart went forth from the courts of God, 
 Went forth from the paradisial ways, from the paths? of asphodel. 
 From the vistas veiled in a .eoldou haze where tlie souls of the sainted dwell; 
 And as he passed he heard tiie peal of the summoning trumpet blown. 
 And he saw the cloud of witnesses go wavering by to the throne; 
 And earthward switt on a tide of joy and love he seemed to swim. 
 For he thought of the hour wiien liis stahvait sons should go to the throne with him; 
 When they should stand on his either hand who had been his pride on earth. 
 And Icuow in the sigiit of the l^iving Light the bliss of a second birth. 
 
 And so to tlie land he had called his own, to the realm he had ruled, he came. 
 
 Where, under the spell of his gracious sway, grim war had been but a name, 
 
 Where the Jierds had strayed on the liappy hills, and traffic roared in the mart. 
 
 Where life had lost its cankering ills, for peace had flowered in the heart. 
 
 But lo ! as he looked on the harvest fields, on the ways of tlie wide-wheeled wain. 
 
 He saw wild masses of marching men sweep over the pillaged plain; 
 
 He saw no flocks on the great green slopes, no kine in barn or byre. 
 
 But the sheltering thatch of the farmstead roof liclced up by the tongues of fire; 
 
 And the women's groans and the children's moans surged by him like a wave, 
 
 And the cloudy reek of plundered towns where none was left to save. 
 
 Then on he pressed to the seat of power in the crook of a broad sea bay. 
 
 Where, under the frown of the bastioned walls, the lines of a leaguer lay; 
 
 In he went to the tallest tent, and sat unseen at the board 
 
 Where the fierce chiefs plotted the city's sack, each chief with his bared sword; 
 
 He who sat at the council's head was the leaguer's grimmest one. 
 
 And the dead King looked in his flery eyes and knew the man for his son. 
 
 So forth he went from the tallest tent, b.v the leaguer's outmost guard. 
 
 Till lie came to the moal and the mighty keep and the archway triple-barred; 
 
 Not a warder's eye as he slipped by beheld the wraith of the King, 
 
 And scarce, as he sped toward the castle gate, did he meet with a living thing, 
 
 For Famine into the weedy .streets had come as a grizzly guest. 
 
 And down from the pallid window-panes there peered the face of the Pest. 
 
 He glided into the castle court, and on to the bancjuet-hall 
 
 Wherefrom there echoed a mirthful rouse in iterant rise and fall: 
 
 He looked within for a little space, then shrunk him back from the door. 
 
 For he saw the face of his other son and a painted paramour. 
 
 It happed at the time of Hallowmass, when the dead may walk abroad, 
 
 Tiiat the wraith of Ralph of the peaceful heart went back to the courts of God; 
 
 And a bittei-er anguish than was his few noble soids have known 
 
 As he saw the cloud of witnesses go wavering down from the throne. 
 
 He passed to the high and holy place, and straight to the feet of Him 
 
 About whom stand in a shining band the saints and the seraphim: 
 
 " I pray," he said, " that my soul may tread the dark of the outer way. 
 
 That those I love may be borne above to the light of the living day; 
 
 Send thou my soul to the utmost goal of night to dwell therein, 
 
 Tliat they thereby may be raised on high from the awful pits of sin ! " 
 
 But the Presence spake: " Remorse shall wake because of these words of thine 
 
 Within the breasts of the recreant ones ere another day decline; 
 
 And they shall win from the ways of sin, ere the span of their lives be through. 
 
 Because of the love of a father's heart, and the deed that thou wouldst do ! " 
 
 And so from the time of Hallowmass, when the dead may walk abroad. 
 
 The soul of Ralph of the peaceful heart abode in the courts of God. 
 
 Clinton, N. Y. 
 
 2871 
 
The Alaska Boundary Line. 
 
 By T. C. Mendenhall, 
 
 President of Worcester Polytechnic Institute. 
 
 DISPUTES over boundary lines have 
 always been most difficult of settle- 
 ment. Most nations are reluctant to 
 i^ive up territory, even when it is apparently 
 uf little value, immediate or prospective. 
 The United States has been more nearly an 
 exception to this rule than any other great 
 nation. This is undoubtedly owing to the 
 enormous extent of our original possessions, 
 considered in relation to our comparatively 
 small population. Because our territory has 
 been generally far in excess of the demands 
 of our people we have been indifferent and 
 careless as to the disposition of outlying re- 
 gions which have not, for the time, seemed 
 of much concern to our welfai-e. Most of 
 our controversies have been with a nation 
 whose policy is always the exact opposite of 
 this; a nation which promptly seizes all that 
 comes within its reach, and never gives up 
 a foot. In all of our boundary disputes with 
 Great Britain we have been worsted; that 
 is, we have yielded territory to which our 
 claim was as good as hers and often better. 
 It is to be regretted that our people have not 
 been generally well informed as to the 
 merits of these controversies and, especially, 
 that they have not felt a greater interest in 
 the outcome. We have been so busy in the 
 occupation and development of the great in- 
 terior that a few hundred square miles here 
 and there of distant, unsettled regions have 
 not seemed to be important. 
 
 The boundary line between Alaska and 
 British Columbia, now under discussion, is 
 involved in peculiar difficulties. Its impor- 
 tance has greatly increased within the last 
 two or three years on account of the discov- 
 ery and development of rich mining re- 
 sources in its neighborhood. It ought to 
 have been fixed long ago, and might have 
 been with vastly less Irritation and friction 
 than are now unavoidable. 
 
 The desirability of coming to an agreement 
 with Great Britain was long ago recognized 
 2872 
 
 by all who were familiar with the facts, but 
 one administration after another has found 
 itself so occupied with other, generally much 
 less important, affairs that it was easier to 
 postpone tlian to act. In 1891 and 1892, in 
 official communications relating to this and 
 other public business, forwarded to the then 
 Secretary of State. Mr. Blaine, the pressing 
 importance of a determination of this line 
 was urged, and these letters were forwarded 
 by him in regular course to Congress, to- 
 gether with his approval of the suggestions 
 they embodied. They received little atten- 
 tion. This was prior to the discoveries of 
 gold in the Klondike region and there is no 
 doubt that a settlement might then have 
 been reached with comparatively little effort. 
 
 The difficulty is one which we inherited 
 from Russia, and it arises primarily out of 
 the unfortunate and ambiguous definition of 
 the boundary found in the ti'eaty between 
 Russia and Great Britain in 1825. When 
 we bought Alaska in 1867 we bought that 
 definition and all of the trouble to which it 
 must necessarily give rise. All nations ought 
 to have learned long ago that boundary lines 
 sJiould he defined astronomicalUj. The latitude 
 and longitude of any point on the earth may 
 now be determined with almost any desired 
 degree of precision. Natural boundary 
 marks, such as rivers and mountains, al- 
 though apparently meeting every require- 
 ment, are far from satisfactory. Rivers 
 change their courses; we have had disputes 
 growing out of this fact, and we had a long 
 controversy with Great Britain to determine 
 which river was the St. Croix of the treaty. 
 Mountains are erroneously named and often 
 do not really exist as shown on an explorer's 
 map. Much of the trouble over the Alaskan 
 boundary has arisen out of confusions of this 
 sort. English and American astronomers 
 would never differ, sensibly, over the loca- 
 tion of the 141st meridian. 
 
 Fortunately a large part of the Alaskan 
 
The Alaska Boundary Line 
 
 2873 
 
 boundary line Is astronomical. It is that 
 part Avhich proceeds from a point near the 
 summit of Mt. St. Elias along the 141st me- 
 ridian west of Greenwich to the Arctic 
 Ocean. Over this there is no dispute, or if a 
 dispute should ever arise it can easily be set- 
 tled. The line separating what is known as 
 Southeast Alaslia from British Columbia, be- 
 ginning at the most southerly point of 
 Prince of Wales Island and ending near the 
 summit of Mt. St.. Elias, is the subject of the 
 present controversy. 
 
 The language of the treaty is as follows: 
 " Commencing from the soutlieruraost point 
 of the island called Prince of Wales Island, 
 which point lies in the parallel of 54° 41' 
 north latitude, and between the 131st 
 and 133d degree of west longitude (meridian 
 of. Greenwich), the said line shall ascend to 
 the north along the channel called Portland 
 Channel as far as the point of the continent 
 where it strilies the 5Gth degree of north 
 latitude; from this last mentioned point the 
 line of demarcation shall follow the summit 
 of the mountains situated parallel to the 
 coast as far as the point of intersection of the 
 i41st degree of west longitude (of the same 
 meridian, and finally, from the said point of 
 intersection, the said meridian line of the 
 141st degree, in its prolongation as far as 
 the Frozen Ocean." 
 
 The first serious difficulty is to determine 
 what is meant by " the channel called Port- 
 land Channel." Our friends the enemy in- 
 terpret this to mean that on leaving the 
 southernmost point of Prince of Wales Island 
 the line must be drawn at once to the north 
 to the 5Gth parallel of north latitude, and 
 this carries it to the west of the great Re- 
 villa Gigedo Island into Burrough's Bay, 
 thus throwing that island and a large block 
 of the mainland under their jurisdiction. 
 In order to enter what has always been 
 known as Portland Channel it is necessary 
 to proceed from the beginning at Prince of 
 Wales Island straight to the east for about 
 sixty miles, and then " ascend to the north 
 along the channel," which Is the line we 
 claim. The omission of this easterly line 
 from the treaty opens the door for the Brit- 
 ish contention, and to support It they main- 
 tain that the use of the name Portland Chan- 
 nel was an oversight. We contend, on the 
 
 contrary, that the omission of the fifty or 
 sixty miles of easting from the southernmost 
 point of Prince of Wales Island is of no spe- 
 cial importance because any one would un- 
 derstand that before you could ascend along 
 the channel you must get into it. On the 
 56th parallel, therefore, the two claims are 
 separated by the distance from Burrough's 
 Bay to tlje head of Portland Channel, a mat- 
 ter of about thirty-five miles. From this 
 point until they come together near Mt. St. 
 Elias they continue to be apart by about the 
 same distance. Roughly, then, tliere is in 
 dispute an irregular strip of territory about 
 700 miles long, with an average width of 35 
 to 40 miles, nearly three and a half times 
 the area of the State of Massachusetts. The 
 line contended for by the British follows 
 the shore from Burrough's Bay to the mouth 
 of the Stikine River, thence, still as close to 
 the shore as it can be shown upon an ordi- 
 nary map, to the Taku Inlet, which it crosses 
 at the southei'n end ana then, turning to the 
 west, it crosses Lynn Canal, leaving all of 
 that splendid estuary on the Canadian side, 
 iikoAvise the wonderful Glacier Bay, with its 
 famous Muir Glacier, going straight for the 
 Fairweather Mountains, which it follows to 
 Mt. St. Elias. This claim is based on the 
 next phrase of the treaty, which declares 
 that after leaving Portland Channel " the 
 line of demarcation shall follow the summit 
 of the mountains situated parallel to the 
 coast as far as the point of intersection of 
 the 141st degree of west longitude, etc." On 
 the old chart bj' Vancouver on which the 
 treaty was based, a range of mountains par- 
 allel to the coast and situated about thirty- 
 five miles back from the shore is shown, 
 the summits l)eiug beautifully arranged in a 
 continuous chain. Undoubtedly such a range 
 was supposed to exist at that time, but the 
 English diplomats who framed the treaty 
 with Russia evidently suspected that its po- 
 sition might not be shown correctly on Van- 
 couver's map, and fearing that it was really 
 further inland than it there appeared they 
 thought it wise to insert a modifying clause 
 by which Russia could be prevented from 
 getting too wide a strip of the western coast. 
 The nearer the supposed range of mountains 
 was to the shore line the better for them, so 
 they did not propose to limit its position on 
 
2874 
 
 The Independent 
 
 that side, but lest it should stray too far 
 to the east they shrewdly provided as fol- 
 lows: "That whenever the summit of the 
 mountains which extend in a direction paral- 
 lel to the coast from the 56th degree of north 
 latitude to the point of intersection of the 
 141st degree of west longitude shall prove to 
 be at the distance of more than ten marine 
 leagues from the ocean, the Hmit between 
 the British possessions and the line of coast 
 which is to belong to Russia, as above men- 
 tioned (that is to say, the limit of the posses- 
 sions ceded by this convention) shall be 
 formed by a line parallel to the winding of 
 the coast, and which shall never exceed the 
 distance of ten marine leagues therefrom." 
 
 Now the American contention is that there 
 is no such range of mountains parallel to 
 the coast; mountains there are in plenty; 
 Southeast Alaska is covered with them, but 
 they are scattered about in absolute irregu- 
 larity; generally increasing in hight toward 
 the east, but nowhere simulating a " range " 
 even approximately lilie that shown on Van- 
 couver's chart. This being the case, it is 
 contended that it is necessary to fall bacli 
 upon the alternative definition of the line in 
 which the intent of the language of the 
 treaty is clearly that Russia should be pos- 
 sessed of a strip ten marine leagues (about 
 thirty-five miles) in width, counting from 
 the " winding of the coast." The line 
 claimed by us is drawn upon this assump- 
 tion. Mountains being extremely numerous 
 all over this strip of territory, the English 
 have no difficulty in drawing their line from 
 peali to peak so that it shall practically fol- 
 low the water's edge, and this, they claim, 
 is following " the summit of the mountains 
 situated parallel to the coast." 
 
 Of course there is much involved in this 
 controversy besides the mere question of 
 square miles of territory. The really serious 
 object of Great Britain is to secure one or 
 more seaports and access to the interior 
 without coming under American .iurisdiction, 
 which means the breaking of the contin- 
 uity of our coast line so that instead of con- 
 trolling, practically, the entire western coast, 
 except that part from Cape Flattery to 54° 
 40' north latitude, which we gave up to 
 her in 1840, our jurisdiction as far as Mt. St. 
 I'jlias will be over a series of disconnected 
 
 fragments. It will bo seen from the above 
 brief statement of the case that, considering 
 the literal interpretation of the treaty as it 
 stands, the affair is one of much perplexity, 
 and that it is by no means one-sided. The 
 phrase, " following the summit of the moun- 
 tains situated parallel to the coast," is, it 
 must be confessed, of uncertain meaning. 
 It does not say the ranf/e of mountains par- 
 allel to the coast. If it did the meaning would 
 be clear, but on the other hand it may be 
 fairly claimed that raixje is implied; other- 
 wise there is the manifestly absurd assump- 
 tion that mountains, or a moimtain, may be 
 situated parallel to the coast. 
 
 In the face of this ambiguity we may fall 
 baclv upon a generally accepted principle in 
 boundary disputes that continuous occupa- 
 tion of territory or undisputed recognition of 
 a line shall have a determining effect. It 
 cannot be denied that up to a comparatively 
 recent date, about 1887, the line was drawn 
 upon English maps essentially as upon those 
 of Russia, or upon our own, and thex'e is 
 much evidence to show that this ime was 
 what was meant in the treaty. Before 
 Alaska came into our possession there was a 
 strong feeling among Canadians that this 
 strip, now known as Southeast Alaska, 
 ought to belong to Great Britain, but it was 
 not held that it was hers in virtue of the 
 treaty. In illustration of this I will make a 
 few quotations from a prominent Canadian 
 newspaper printed in 1803, shortly after the 
 finding of gold in the sands of the Stikine 
 River, a discovery which was thought at the 
 time to be of much importance: 
 
 " It is certainly not acceptable . . . that 
 the business of such a highway should reach 
 the interior through a Russian door of thirty 
 miles of coast. . . . It is clearly undesira- 
 ble that the strip thi*ee hundred miles long 
 and thirty miles wide, which is only used by 
 the Russians for the collection of furs and 
 walrus teeth, shall forever control the en- 
 trance to our very extensive northern terri- 
 tory. . . . The strip of land which 
 stretches along from Portland Canal to Mt. 
 St. Elias with a breadth of thirty miles and 
 which, according to the treaty of 1825, forms 
 a part of Russian America, must eventually 
 become the property of Great Britain." 
 
 It is important to note in these extracts. 
 
Notes of an Itinerant Policeman 
 
 2875 
 
 and many others similar in strain could be 
 quoted, the admission of practically every- 
 thing now claimed by us— the Portland Ca- 
 nal, the thirty miles widtli. and the fact that 
 the treaty of 1825 made tliis the property of 
 Russia. 
 
 Naturally the thing for the United States 
 to do was to stand by this interpretation, so 
 long accepted by the English, and to declare 
 that the territory was ours. We shall be 
 compelled, liowever, to allow the matter to 
 go into arbitration. If arbitration means a 
 decision in accord with the principles of 
 justice and eqiiity, we ought to welcome 
 such a determination of the case. But in 
 modern diplomacy arbitration means com- 
 promise, and we may as well resign our- 
 selves to the cutting in two of our Alaskan 
 domain and the rupture of the continuity of 
 our coast line. We are driven to arbitration 
 by our own act of a few years ago when we 
 " thrust ourselves into a controversy over a 
 boundary line on another continent, in which 
 we can have no interest except, perhaps, 
 that which grows out of a very foggy and 
 uncertain sentiment." This result was dis- 
 tinctly foreseen more than three years ago, 
 and predicted in an article printed in the 
 
 AtUintlc Monthly for April, 189G, the closing 
 paragraph of which is as follows: 
 
 " The truth is that Great Britain is meet- 
 ing our own wishes in this matter with al- 
 most indecent haste, because the arbitration 
 of the Alaslca boundary line, by which she 
 liopes and expects to acquire an open sea 
 coast for her great northwestern territories, 
 and to Avealcen us by breaking our exclusive 
 jurisdiction north of 54° 40', is enor- 
 inously more important to her than anything 
 she is likely to gain or lose in South America. 
 Having driven lier to accept arbitration in 
 this ease it will be impossible for us to re- 
 fuse it in Alaska, and we shall find ourselves 
 again badly worsted by the diplomatic skill 
 of a people who, as individuals, have devel- 
 oped intellectual activity, manliness, cour- 
 age, unselfish devotion to duty, and general 
 nobility of character elsewhere unequaled 
 in the world's history, but whose diplomatic 
 policy as a nation is and long has been char- 
 acterized by aggressiveness, greed, absolute 
 indifference to the rights of others, and a 
 splendid facility in ignoring every principle 
 of justice or international law whenever 
 commercial interests are at stake." 
 
 Worcester, Mass. 
 
 Notes of an Itinerant Policeman. 
 
 II.— THE HABITUAL CRIMINAL. 
 By Josiah Flynt. 
 
 IN appearance and manner the professional 
 offender has not changed much in the 
 last decade. I knew liim first over ten 
 years ago when, making my earliest studies 
 of tramp life, I saw him again five years 
 ago while on a short trip in Hoboland, and 
 we liave met recently on the railroads; and 
 he looks just about as he did when we first 
 got acquainted. 
 
 Ordinarily he would not be noticed in 
 mixed company by others than those ac- 
 customed to his ways. He is not like the 
 tramp whom practically any one can pick 
 out in a croAvd. He dresses well, can often 
 carry himself after the manner of a gentle- 
 * Copyright, 189P, by The Independent. 
 
 man, and generally has a snug sum of 
 money in his pockets. It is his face, voice 
 and habits of companionship that mark him 
 for what he is. Not that there is that in his 
 countenance which Lombroso would have 
 us believe signifies that he is a degenerate, 
 cougenitally deformed or insane, but rather 
 that the life he leads gives him a look which 
 tlie experienced observer knows as the 
 '■ mug of a crook." lie can no more change 
 tliis look after reaching manhood than can 
 a genuinely honest man, who has never been 
 in prison, acquire it. I had learned to know 
 it, and had become practiced in discov- 
 ering it long before I became a policeman. 
 It took me years to reach the stage when In 
 
2876 
 
 The Independent 
 
 merely looking hurriedly at a criminal some- 
 thing Instinctively pronounced him to be a 
 thief, but such a time certainly comes to 
 him who sojourns much in criminal en- 
 vironment. There are, of course, certain 
 special features and wrinkles that one looks 
 for, and that htlp in the general sum- 
 ming up, but after a while these are not 
 thought of in judging a man, at least not 
 consciously, and the observer bases his 
 opinion on instinctive feeling. Given the 
 stylish clothes to which I have referred, a 
 hard face, suspicious eyes which seem to 
 take in everything, a loitering walk, a pe- 
 culiar guttural cough given by way of sig- 
 nal, and called the thiefs cough, and a 
 habit of lingering about places where a 
 " sporty " constituency is usually to be 
 found, and there is pretty conclusive evi- 
 dence that a professional thief is in view. 
 All of this evidence is not always at hand; 
 sometimes there is only the cough to go by, 
 but the circumstances being suspicious any 
 one of them is sufficient to make an expert 
 observer look quickly and prick up his ears. 
 
 In New York City, for instance, there are 
 streets in which professional thieves can 
 be met by the dozen, if one understands 
 how to identify them, and it is only neces- 
 sary to p.iss a few words and they can be 
 drawn into conversation. Some are dressed 
 better than others— there are a great many 
 ups and downs in the profession— and some 
 look less typical than the more experienced 
 men— it takes time for the life to leave its 
 traces— but there they stand, the young and 
 old, the clever and the stupid, for any one 
 who knows hoAV to scrape acquaintance with 
 them. They are tlie most difficult people in 
 the world to learn to know well until one 
 has mastered their free masonry, and then 
 they are but little more fearful of approach 
 than is the tramp. 
 
 I devote a special chapter to their class 
 because I believe that they are the least 
 understood of all offenders, and also, as I 
 stated above, because I consider them the 
 real crux of the problem of crime in this 
 country. The petty offender is comparative- 
 ly easy to discourage, the backwoods crim- 
 inal will disappear as our country develops, 
 the born criminal, the man who says that 
 he cannot help committing crimes, can be 
 
 shut up indefinitely, but the professional 
 criminal seems to baffle the criminologist 
 as well as the penologist, and he probably 
 does more financial damage to the commu- 
 nity than all the others put together. He is 
 the man that we must apprehend and pun- 
 ish before crime in the United States will 
 fail to be attractive, and at the present mo- 
 ment it is its attractiveness which helps to 
 make our criminal statistics so alarming. 
 
 I have placed him third in numerical 
 strength in my general classification, and 
 1 believe this to be a correct estimate of 
 the number of those who really make their 
 living by professional thieving, but it Is 
 thought by many, who do not discriminate 
 in this particular, that he leads in the gen- 
 eral criminal population. If those are to 
 be included who would like to succeed as 
 professional thieves and fail, and drop 
 down sooner or later into the occasional 
 criminal's class, the position I have given 
 the so-called successful " professional " 
 would have to be changed; but it has seemed 
 best to confine the class to those who are 
 rated successful, and on this basis I doubt 
 whether an actual census taking, if it were 
 possible, would prove them to be more nu- 
 merous than I have indicated. Seeing and 
 hearing so much of them on my travels I 
 made every effort to secure trustworthy 
 statistics in regai'd to their number, and as 
 the bulk of them are known to the police, it 
 seemed reasonable to suppose that, if I 
 passed round enough among different police 
 organizations, I ought to get satisfactory 
 figures, but the fact of the matter is that the 
 police themselves can only make guesses 
 concerning the general situation, and I am 
 unable to do any better. 
 
 When putting queries concei'ning the num- 
 ber of the offenders in question, my in- 
 formants wanted me to differentiate and 
 ask them about particular kinds of profes- 
 sionals before they would reply. One very 
 well informed detective, for instance, said: 
 " Do you mean the whole push, or just the 
 A No. 1 guns ? If you mean the push, why 
 you're safe in saying that there are 100,000 
 in the whole country, but the most of 'em 
 are a pretty poor lot. If you mean the real- 
 ly good people, 10.000 will take 'em all In." 
 The cities which were reported to have 
 
OC TOr>Eli 2(>, 1899 
 
 J- 
 
 Survey of the World : 
 
 Dewey in Washington —The Political Situation — Yacht Races — The Cuban Census — 
 Venezuelan Revolution Battles in South Africa — French Army Reforms, etc 2855 
 
 Colonial Administration for the United States . . Sir Godfrey Lagden 2861 
 
 The Younger Writers of Norway Edmund Gosse 2862 
 
 The Dreyfus Affair . Yves Goyot 2865 
 
 A Ballad of Hallowmass (Poem) Clinton ScoIIard 2871 
 
 The Alaskan Boundary Line Pres. T. C. Mendenhall 2872 
 
 Notes of an Itinerant Policeman . Josiah Flynt 2875 
 
 The Inauguration at Yale Dr. Kinsley Twining 2878 
 
 Reform in the Consular Service Gaillard Hunt 2881 
 
 The South African War .... An American Resident of Johannesburg 2883 
 
 The Negro Child Mrs. L. H. Harris 2884 
 
 The Good Old Way of Teaching Ascham FoIIansbee 2886 
 
 A Wayside Family (Story) J. Edmund Vance Cooke 2888 
 
 Helps and Hindrances to the Study of Life .... Prof. Lionel S. Beale 289 1 
 
 Frederick Chopin E. Irenaeus Prime-Stevenson 2892 
 
 Book Reviews : 
 
 The Last Days of Rome— A Study of the Alcohol Question —Matthew Arnold - Search- 
 Light Letters— The Archbishop's Unguarded Moment, and Other Stories, etc iL^^^ 
 
 Editorials : 
 
 The ProbI m of the Philippines —The New College Presidents— A Lesson From Canada- 
 American Sympathy in the Transvaal -Campaign Contributions From Office Holders, etc. 2902 
 
 Religious : 
 
 Theological Contrasts in England and America . Rev. C. S. Macf arland 29 H 
 The Lutheran General Council G. H. Gerberding 2913 
 
 Financial, Insurance, etc 29 1 7 
 
 Ten Cents a Copy = Two Dollars a Year 
 
 130 FULTON STREET, NEW YpRfK ' 
 
J 
 
 <v>/»%^%< 
 
 -%*< 
 
 I See The ^i^^Sf :s ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 Range 
 
 J 
 
 3j| that does about everything but 
 
 ^ talk. It has an illuminated, 
 
 ^ asbestos, lined oven and many ' 
 
 35 improvements that sa\'e coal, 
 
 3J time and worry. Now on ex- ' - - -^="- jC 
 
 ^ hibition at the Glemvood dealer's — the Glenwood Home Grand the latest JJ^ y 
 
 i GLENWOOD I 
 
 ~3p \^t\x Stove Company, Taunton, Mass. 
 
 wmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 
 
 U 
 
 '%/ty5fc!^'^ l> %>1>«%?5>^%«%>^»%<<^ ,l/ i t/ %%^%<^'%%<%^<%,i%^^^ 
 
^^\ 
 
 FIFTY-FOURTH ANNUAL STATEMENT 
 
 NEW=YORK LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY^ 
 
 Nos. 346 and 348 Broadway, New York City. 
 
 JOHN A. HcCALL, - - = - President. 
 
 BALANCE SHEET, JANUARY 1ST, 1899. 
 
 ASSETS. 
 
 United States. State, City, County and other Bonds 
 (cost value $115,687,034). market value, Dec. 31, 1898.. . 
 
 Bonds and Mortgages (777 first liens) 
 
 Real Estate (68 pieces. Including ir? office buildings)... 
 Deposits In Trust Companies and Banks, at Interest 
 Loans to Policy-holders on their policies as security 
 
 (legal value thereof. $16.(X)0.000) 
 
 Loans on Stocks and Bonds (market value, t9,229.702). . 
 I Stocks of Banks. Trust Companies, &c. (*4,532,086 cost 
 
 I value), market value, Dec. 31,1898 
 
 1 Premiums In transit, reserve charged In Liabilities 
 
 Quarterly and Semi-Annual Premiums not yet due, re- 
 serve charged In Liabilities 
 
 Interest and Rents due and accrued 
 
 Premium Notes on policies In force (legal value of 
 policies, |;2,500,000 
 
 *121,579,619 
 39,00-2,758 
 16,589,(100 
 8,434,786 
 
 9.818,600 
 7,390.845 
 
 6,050,881 
 2,280,188 
 
 2,087,274 
 1,440,487 
 
 1,.S20,423 
 
 TOTAL. ASSETS $215,944,811 
 
 LIABILITIES. 
 
 Policy Reserve (per certificate of New 
 York Insurance Department $175,710,249 
 
 All other LlabllltleB: Policy Claims, An- 
 nuities, Kndowments &c., awaiting 
 presentment forpKymeut 
 
 Additional I'olicy Reserve vol- 
 untarily set aside by the Com- 
 panv 
 
 Surplus Reserved Funds volun- 
 tarily set aside by the Com- 
 pany 
 
 Other Funds for all other con- 
 tingencies. 
 
 2,858,383-$178.069.6S2 
 
 26,414,234 
 
 t,.S19- :r?,876,179 
 
 TOTAL LIABILITIES S215,»44,811 
 
 CASH INCOME, 1898. 
 
 New Premiums $7,644,715 
 
 ) Renewal Premiums 27,987,983 
 
 TOTAL PREMIUMS $35,6:S,648 
 
 Interest on: 
 
 Bonds $5,740,819 
 
 Mortgages 1,940,937 
 
 Loans to Policy-holders, secured by re- 
 serves on policies 628,638 
 
 Other Securities 391,353 
 
 Rents received 875,741 
 
 Dividends on Stocks 221,780 
 
 TOTAL, INTEREST, RENTS, «fcc. 
 
 9,799.268 
 
 TOTAL INCOME $45,431,916 
 
 EXPENDITURES, 1898. 
 
 Paid for Losses, Endowments and Annuities 
 
 Paid for Dividends and Surrender Values 
 
 Commissions ($3,,'i20,904.:«) on New Business of 
 $152,093,369 ; Medical Examiners' Fees, and In- 
 spection of Risks ($449,428) 
 
 Home and Branch Office Expenses, Taxes, Adver- 
 tising, E(iulpment Account, Telegraph, Post- 
 age, Commissions on $791,927,731 of Old Business 
 and Miscellaneous Expenditures 
 
 Balance— Excess of Income over Expen- 
 ditures for year 14,932,9«4 
 
 $15,890,97S 
 6,128,888 
 
 3,770,332 
 
 5,208,754 
 
 TOTAL EXPENDITURES «45,431,91« 
 
 INSURANCE ACCOUNT. 
 
 ON THE BASIS OF PAID-FOR BUSINESS ONLV, 
 
 NUMBER OF POLICIES. 
 
 In Force, December 31, 1897. . 382,958 
 
 New Insurance Pald-for, 1898. 73,471 
 Old Insurances revived and 
 
 Increased, 1898 835 
 
 TOTAL PAID-FOR i 
 BUSINESS j 
 DEDUCT TERMINATION^!^ 
 By Death, Maturity, Suiv 
 render, Expiry, &c 33,380 
 
 AMOUNT. 
 
 $877,020,925 
 152,093,869 
 
 2,129,688 
 
 407,*^«4, Sl,031,'^43,98'4 
 
 87,222,862 
 
 Paid-for Business in 
 Force December 
 31st, 1898 373,934 
 
 I I Gain In 1898 40.976 
 
 ^ New Applications Declined In 1898 6,142 
 
 «944,0ai,l«0 
 
 $67,000,195 
 15,986,836 
 
 COMPARISON FOR SEVEN YEARS. 
 
 (1891-1898.) 
 
 Dec. 31st, 1891. Dec. Slst, 1898. Gain In Seven Years. 
 
 Assets $125,947,290 $215,944,811 $89,997,521 
 
 Income 31,854,194 45,431,917 13,577,723 
 
 DivideniJs of 
 
 Year to Policy 
 
 Holders 1,260,340 
 
 Total Pay- 
 ments of Year 
 
 to Policy 
 
 Holders 12,671,491 
 
 Number of 
 
 Policies in 
 
 Force 182,803 
 
 Insurance 
 
 in Force, 
 
 premiums 
 
 paid $575,689,649 $944,021,120 $368,331,471 
 
 2.759.432 
 
 21,519,865 
 
 373,934 
 
 1.499.092 
 
 8.848,374 
 
 191,131 
 
 1 
 
 Certificate of Superintendent of State of New York insurance Department. 
 
 Albany, January 6th, 1899. 
 I, LOUIS F. PAYN, Superintendent of Insurance of the State of New York, do hereby certify that the NEW-YOBK LIFE INSU B- 
 ANCE COMPANY, of the City of New York, In the State of New York, Is duly authorized to transact the business of Life Insurance 
 in this State. . ., 
 
 I FURTHER CERTIFY that, in accordance with the provisions of Section Eighty-four of the Insurance law of the State of New 
 York, I have caused the policy obligations of the said company, outstanding on the 31st day of December, 1898, lo be valued as per tne 
 Combined Exoerlence Table of Mortality, at four per cent. Interest, and I certify the same to be $175,710,249. 
 I FURTHER CERTIFY that the admitted assets are 
 
 ^218,844, ex X. 
 
 THE GENERAL LIABILITIES, $2,3'58.383. THE NET POLICY RESERVE, AS CALCULATED BY THFS DEPART.MENT, $175,710 
 249, MAKING THE TOTAL LIABILITIES PER STATE LAWS, 
 
 ^17 8,068.638. 
 
 THE ADDITIONAL POLICY RESERVE VOLUNTARILY SET ASIDE BY THE COMPANY, 
 
 1^2, 888, 626. 
 THE SURPLUS RESERVED FUNDS VOLUNTARILY SET ASIDE BY THE COMPANY, 
 
 ^26,4X4,284. 
 
 OTHER FUNDS FOR ALL OTHER CONTINGENCIES, 
 
 ^8,628.8X9. 
 
 IN WITNESS WHEREOF. I have hereunto subscribed my name and caused- aiy official seal to be afUxed »t the City of Albany, the 
 day and year flrtt above written. I_i^3XJTS F. IPAJTOi , 
 
 -SUPKHINTKNDKNT OF iNSrKANCK ( ' 
 
^^%^%%%%%%»%^%^>^%^^%^^%»%'%^»%%^/%^%%f^%^%/%^^»%<%^%%.%<%l 
 
 J MORTON TRUST 
 
 J 
 
 \ 
 
 COMPANY, 
 
 38 Nassau St., New York. 
 
 CAPITAL, = = $1,000,000 
 SURPLUS, = = $1,500,000 
 
 Continuing the Business of the late firm of 
 
 Messrs. flORTON, BLISS & CO. 
 
 President, - 
 \ ice- President, 
 Second Vice-Pres. , 
 Secretary, 
 
 James W. Alexander, 
 John Jacob Aster, 
 George F. Baker, 
 Edward J. Berwind, 
 Frederic Cromwell, 
 Henry M. F'lagler, 
 G. G. Haven, 
 Jos. C. Hendrix, 
 Abram S. Hewitt, 
 
 LEVI P. MORTON. 
 E. J. BERWIND. 
 J. K. CORBIERE. 
 - W. R. CROSS. 
 
 DIRECTORS. 
 
 James N. Jarvie, 
 Aug. D. Juilliard, 
 Joseph Larocque, 
 D. O. Mills, 
 Levi P. Morton, 
 Richard A. McCurdy, 
 W. G. Oakman, 
 John Sloane, 
 William C. Whitney. 
 A. Wolff. 
 
 The Audit Company 
 
 OF NEW YORK. 
 
 Equitable Buildings {20 Broadway. 
 
 ^\ Simplifies Systems of Accounting, 
 j[ thus Insuring Reduced 
 
 ^ [ Expenses. 
 
 ose 
 
 By our system of 
 payments, every fam- 
 ily in moderate cir- 
 cumstances can own 
 a fine piano We take 
 old instruments in ex- 
 change, and deliver 
 the piano in your house 
 free of expense 
 
 Write for catalogue 
 and full explanations. 
 
 You can deal with us 
 at a distant point the 
 same as in Boston 
 
 Vose & Sons Piano Co. 
 
 160 Boylston St. Boston, Mass. 
 
 r 
 
 1 
 
 'TT'Vs/y Tl^dtt^M °^ common sense in the 
 WlJV fUnWll use of flour was marked 
 by the manufacture of flour from the entire 
 wheat berry. Although a principal article ot 
 diet, in one form or another, flour had been 
 suffered to become impoverished for the sake 
 of color. The vital, blood-producing elements 
 of wheat are found in the darker parts, and 
 cannot be made white. 
 
 franUininillsFloiir 
 
 AFINE FLDUR DFTIIE ENTIRE WHEAT. 
 
 when baked is a golden brown, and therein 
 lies the secret of its health and strength-giving 
 qualities. The strength of the entire wheat ' 
 berry is retained, the indigestible husk only 
 being rejected. 
 
 If your grocer does not have it, send us his | 
 name and your order— we will see that you are 
 supplied. Free Booklet for postal. 
 
 THE GENUINE MADE ONLY BY 
 
 FRANKLIN MILLS CO.. Lockport, N. Y. 
 
 ! 
 
 4^'^'%^'%'^'%^'%%'%^'%^'%'%^%%%^^%%'%%<%%'%%«%%^%%%%<%%^%%<%i%'%%^ 
 
THE 
 
 ALASKA B U N JJ A K Y L I W 
 
 E 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS CORWIN MENDENHALL 
 
 With map 
 
 BULLETIN 
 
 OP THE 
 
 AMERICA^; GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY 
 
 19 
 
128° 
 
 SKETCH-MAP OF SOUTH-EAST ALASKA. 
 
THE ALASKA BOUNDARY LINE, 
 An Address before the American Geographical Society", 
 
 BY 
 
 T. C. MENDENHALL. 
 
 President of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. 
 
 A few years ago I had the pleasure of addressing the Society 
 upon the Boundary Line separating Southeast Alaska from the 
 British Northwest Territory, calling attention to the ambiguous 
 and uncertain definition of the line in the treaty between Russia 
 and Great Britain, in which it was originally defined, and predict- 
 ing a controversy, the beginnings of which were even then in evi- 
 dence. Since then, as everybody knows, this controversy has 
 grown in magnitude and intensity until it has attracted the atten- 
 tion of most intelligent people, and it is everywhere acknowledged 
 to be of such importance as to justify a review of the situation at 
 the present time. As a nation we have often been singularly negli- 
 gent in the making of treaties involving delimitation of territory, 
 and especially so in our intercourse with Great Britain, with which 
 nation our territorial relations have been most intimate. Up to 
 this time we have shown little, because we have felt little, of that 
 spirit of "hold-fast," which has always characterized the diplo- 
 matic policy of the English people. We have been so busy in the 
 occupation and development of the great interior that a few hun- 
 dred square miles here and there of distant, unsettled regions 
 have seemed to us of little importance. A better understanding 
 on the part of the masses of our people of the interests involved 
 would do much to secure a more vigorous support of just claims 
 on the part of our government authorities; and it is hoped that a 
 dissemination of better information as to the nature of the present 
 dispute will result in>a popular demand for a rigid insistence upon 
 those claims. But it must not be assumed that the question of the 
 Alaska Boundary is entirely one-sided. There are serious difficul- 
 ties in the interpretation of the language of the treaty, and to some 
 of these it will be well to give careful consideration. 
 
 It is well known that in the purchase of this territory in 1867 it 
 was conveyed to us in the language of the treaty between Russia 
 and Great Britain, made in 1825. Whatever jurisdiction and rights 
 
 67 
 
68 The Alaska Boinidary Li?ie. 
 
 we may possibly claim now were those claimed and exercised by 
 Russia from 1825 to 1867 — no more and no less. 
 
 That part of the treaty which is responsible for the pending 
 controversy is as follows: 
 
 " Commencing from the southernmost point of the Island called Prince of Wales 
 Island, which point lies in the parallel of 54° 40' north latitude and between the 131st and 
 133d degrees of west longitude (meridian of Greenwich), the said line shall ascend to the 
 north along the channel called Portland Channel as far as the point of the continent 
 where it strikes the 56th degree of north latitude ; from this last-mentioned point the 
 line of demarcation shall follow the summit of the mountains situated parallel to the 
 coast as far as the point of intersection of the 141st degree of west longitude (of the 
 same meridian) and finally from the said point of intersection, the said meridian line 
 of the 141st degree, in its prolongation as far as the frozen ocean." 
 
 The first apparent difficulty is the detennination of what is 
 meant by "the channel called Portland Channel." The Canadians, 
 many of them, have interpreted this to mean that on leaving the 
 southernmost point of Prince of Wales Island the line should be 
 drawn at once to the north as far as the 56th parallel of north lati- 
 tude, and this carries it to the west of the great Revilla Gigedo 
 Island into Burrough's Bay,* thus throwing that island and a large 
 block of the mainland under their jurisdiction, although now 
 claimed by us. In order to enter what has always been known as 
 Portland Channel it is necessary to proceed from the beginning at 
 Prince of Wales Island straight to the east for about sixty miles, 
 and then "ascend to the north along the channel," which is the 
 line we claim. The omission of a reference to this easterly line in 
 the treaty opens the door for the British contention, and to support 
 it they maintain that the use of the name Portland Channel was an 
 oversight. We contend, on the contrary, that the omission of the 
 fifty or sixty miles of easting from the southernmost point of the 
 Prince of Wales Island is of no special importance, because it 
 would be assumed that before you can ascend along a channel you 
 must get into it. 
 
 This point was strongly insisted upon for several years by Cana- 
 dian authorities, but it has been practically given up as unreason- 
 able and untenable, in the conferences of the ^oint Commissioners 
 appointed a year or two ago. A far more serious claim is based on 
 the next phrase of the treaty, which declares that after leaving Port- 
 land Channel 
 
 " the line of demarcation shall follow the summit of the mountains situated parallel 
 to the coast as far as the point of intersection of the 141st degree of west longitude," 
 etc. 
 
 * Or Inlet. 
 
The Alaska Boundary Line. 69 
 
 The charts of this region on which the treaty-makers principally 
 relied were those of Vancouver, who explored the northwest coast 
 in the interests of the British Government about one hundred years 
 ago. Vancouver traversed the estuaries and followed the windings 
 of the coast pretty thoroughly, but he did not go inland, all of his 
 work being done, in fact, from the deck of his ship. On his charts 
 a beautifully continuous range of mountains is shown, skirting the 
 coast about 35 miles back from the shore. This range was proposed 
 by the Russian diplomats as a suitable natural boundary. The 
 English, however, were suspicious of the accuracy of Vancouver's 
 map, and were especially concerned lest the range of mountains 
 shown thereon should be found to be really further from the coast 
 than 10 marine leagues. They cited the fact that they had only a 
 few years before encountered difficulty in settling a boundary con- 
 troversy with the United States, on account of the discovery that 
 mountain ranges shown upon the map did not so exist actually upon 
 the ground. They proposed that the line should be fixed at ten 
 marine leagues, about 35 miles, from the windings of the coast, and 
 it was finally agreed to insert the modifying clause, 
 " that whenever the summit of the mountains which e.Ktend in a direction parallel 
 to the coast from the 56th degree of north latitude to the point of intersection of 
 the 141st degree of west longitude shall prove to be at a distance of more than ten 
 marine leagues from the ocean, the limit between the British possessions and the line 
 of coast which is to belong to Russia, as above mentioned, shall be formed by a 
 line parallel to the winding of the coast, and which shall never exceed the distance of 
 ten marine leagues therefrom." 
 
 It is a fact of the utmost importance that the English repre- 
 sentatives were willing to accept a line "always at a distance of 
 ten marine leagues from the shore," and that they protected them- 
 selves against a possible divergence of the supposed range of 
 mountains to a greater distance inland. The extension of the line 
 to the north along the 141st degree of longitude west of Greenwich 
 is a simple astronomical problem over which there can be no dis- 
 pute, and so the whole controversy is over the meaning of that 
 part of the treaty which defines the boundary from the point where 
 the Portland Channel meets the 56th parallel of north latitude to the 
 141st meridian, which it intersects very nearly at the summit of 
 Mount St. Elias. The superiority of English diplomacy is shown 
 in the wording of the treaty so that, while the swinging of the 
 mountain range inland beyond the ten marine leagues shall not 
 carry the boundary line with it, if it should be found to be really 
 less than that distance from the shore, the Russian holdings must 
 be reduced accordingly. 
 
70 The Alaska Boundary Line. 
 
 About ten years ago the United States began a survey for the 
 purpose of definitely locating this boundary line. The first work 
 was the establishment of astronomical stations on tributaries of 
 the Yukon, to determine and mark at a few important points the 
 141st meridian north of Mount St. Elias. About 1891 a survey of 
 the lower part of the region traversed by the boundary was under- 
 taken by the United States and Canada jointly, but it was agreed 
 that the two parties should work independently of each other, so 
 that more ground might be covered, each Government to receive 
 the results of the work of the other. A large part of the work was 
 topographical, especially that of the Cariadian parties. 
 
 The result of this survey was to prove, at least to the satisfac- 
 tion of those representing the American side of the controversy, 
 that the range of mountains shown on Vancouver's map does )t 
 exist, and that within the prescribed distance of ten marine leag .es 
 there is no range of mountains in Southeast Alaska " parallel to 
 the windings of the coast.'" Mountains there are in plenty, but 
 they are scattered about in absolute irregularity, generally increas- 
 ing in height towards the east, but nowhere simulating a range, 
 except in the northern extremity of the territory under considera- 
 tion, where is to be found the Fairweather range, and possibly for 
 a short distance in the neighborhood of the White and Chilkoot 
 passes. 
 
 The American contention is, therefore, that in view of the failure 
 of the first paragraph in its application to existing conditions, 
 it becomes necessary to fall back upon the second and fix the 
 boundary line at ten marine leagues from the shore, parallel to the 
 windings of the coast. 
 
 To this argument Canadians have replied that the phrase 
 "shall follow the summit of the mountains parallel to the coast" 
 is applicable to those mountains which are admitted to be generally 
 but irregularly distributed over the stri]i of territory in dispute, and 
 that the line should be laid down by joining the summits of those 
 nearest the shore. The effect of the adoption of this principle 
 is to place the line everywhere very near the coast, leaving almost 
 nothing but the western mountain slopes to the United States, and, 
 what is more important, interrupting at several points the con- 
 tinuity of our coast line, giving to Great Britain many important 
 estuaries, waterways and harbors. Indeed, it is clear in all of tjie 
 negotiations that the primary object of Great Britain is to obtain 
 coast line by which she may control admission to the interior. 
 
 Recognizing the difficulty of interpreting this treaty, Americans 
 
The Alaska Boundary Line. 71 
 
 h^ve very properly called to their support the doctrine of vested 
 rights, accruing from continuous and undisputed and unmixed ozcw- 
 pancy. Here it cannot be denied that everything is in our favor. 
 From 1825 to 1867 the Russians claimed this territory, as we now 
 claim it, without a word of protest from Great Britain. Not only 
 Russian maps, but all maps drawn, up to a very recent time, showed 
 the boundary where we believe it should be. All English charts so 
 represent it. The Hudson Bay Company, an English corporation, 
 leased from Russia a large part of this strip of land, following and 
 adopting the boundary line as now claimed by us, paying an annual 
 rental for its use. Before Parliamentary Committees the territory 
 thus leased was defined and acknowledged by these maps, and in 
 .numerous proceedings the Russian claim was admitted without 
 ^^uestion. Many important points were actually occupied by Russian 
 Colonies, and none by British. 
 
 After the United States assumed jurisdiction in 1867, the Depart- 
 ment of State published a map showing the bounds of the newly 
 acquired territory; many American enterprises were established 
 within the now disputed area, some at the extremest points, all 
 without a word from Great Britain ; and there was never an attempt 
 to colonize this region by British subjects. Only a little more than 
 ten years ago, when the value of the mineral resources of the region 
 began to be understood, the first Canadian map was printed show- 
 ing any other line than that now claimed by us. Even now Eng- 
 lish maps, almost without exception, show the boundary line as it 
 is found on our own maps, and as late as about a year ago the Scot- 
 tish Geographical Magazine, an acknowledged authority on carto- 
 graphy, published a very complete map of the whole region, with 
 the boundary laid down in agreement with American claims. As 
 to the absolute justice of these claims there can be no doubt in the 
 minds of competent but unbiassed authorities. During the session 
 of the Joint Commission the British Commissioners submitted a 
 proposal to arbitrate the whole question in conformity to the terms 
 of the Venezuelan arbitration, but they declined to consent to the 
 ■selection of an umpire from the American continent. The Amer- 
 ican Commissioners proposed to submit the matter to a tribunal 
 consisting of three judges of the highest standing in each country, 
 a binding decision to be reached by at least four of these. This 
 proposition, which must impress all as being eminently fair, was 
 rejected by the British Commissioners, and no further attempt to 
 reach an agreement was made by the Joint Commission. 
 
 Through the ordinary diplomatic channels a tentative agreement 
 
72 The Alaska Boundary Line. 
 
 has been reached, covering a small portion of the line in the neigh- 
 borhood of the passes at the head of Lynn Canal, where most con- 
 flict of jurisdiction has occurred, and a temporary relief from 
 strained relations is promised. It will be but temporary, however, 
 and it would have been safer and better if the United States had 
 stood squarely for its contention in every detail. If once sub- 
 mitted to arbitration the result would be a compromise, regardless 
 of our real rights, and these are so clear that no concession ought 
 to be made. 
 
The Society is not responsible for the opinions or the statements of writers in the Bulletin. 
 
 BULLETIN 
 
 OF THE 
 
 American Geographical Society 
 
 PUBLISHED FIVE TIMES A YEAR 
 
 Vol XXXII. "No. 1, 1900 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Physical Geography of New York State. By R. S. Tarr, . - - i 
 
 The Five Civilized Tribes ; Indian Territory. By C. H. Fitch, - 15 
 Palestine as Illustrating Geological and Geographical Controls. By Reginald 
 
 A. Daly, --------- 22 
 
 A Dictionary of Topographic Forms. By Herbert M. Wilson, - 32 
 
 Notes on Climatology. By Robert DeC. Ward, - - - - 42 
 
 Notes on Anthropology. By Roland B. Dixon, - - - - 47 
 
 Physiographic Notes. By Ralph S. Tarr, ----- 52 
 
 Notes on Geographical Education. By Richard E. Dodge, - - 55 
 
 Geographical Record, --.-----61 
 
 The Alaska Boundary Line. By T. C. Mendenhall, - - . 67 
 
 Map Notices. By Henry Gannett, ----- 73 
 
 Accessions to the Library, - - - - - - - 75 
 
 Book Notices, - - - - - -- - -78 
 
 Obituary. W. H. Gilder, --..-. 84 
 
 Notes and News, - - - - - - - -85 
 
 Transactions of the Society : Commemoration of the late Charles P. Daly, 88 
 
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