Page:Alaskan boundary tribunal (IA alaskanboundaryt01unit).pdf/133

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ARGUMENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
123

the way round, but it also showed the boundary line fir to the interior of all of these tomntains.[1]

This was the interpretation of the United Stutes as to what mountiins were meant by the Treaty and. whit is even more sig- nificant in the present arginnent, it is an allimmttive and positive declaration that the mountains next to the sea were not those meant by the Treaty.

To the same effeet. varving only in tmmuaterial details, is the official map of British Columbia of L884. and that of the Dominion of Canada corrected to 1882.[2]

Here are Russian, Canadian, English, American, and private maps of well known cartographers. from the vear after the Treaty to the year of the Ameriean purchase, and American and Canadian maps after the purchase, all of them showine the boundary line as it was understood under the terms of the Treaty, all of them showing moun- tains next to the seu, and not one of them drawing the line alone the summits of these mountains, but segregating them in such a pro- nounced and conspicnous way by laying it down with an interval of clear space of many miles that the line could not possibly be associated with them.

From the time of the treaty of 1825 down to L885, a period of Tu years, no ollicial map was eyer issued, showing the boundary line drawn along the summits of the mountiins wext to the sea, and of the seores of maps issued during that period by cartographers not one has been produced that so depicts the line.

lf the uniform conduct of the parties most interested, during a pertod of seventy vears, and the general consensus of the educated world, publicly declared, could conclhide a matter, then there would be no room for arenment on the question.

THE STIKINE RIVER.

DRYAD AFFAIR.

Nine years after the Treaty of 1825, what is known ws the Drvad Affair ocenrred, ‘The Dryad was a vessel of the Hudson's Bay Conm- pany which in 183+ appeared off St. Dionysius, a redoubt constructed by the Russians near the mouth of the Stikine River, The avowed

purpose of the vessel was to establish a trading post up the Stikine on


  1. U. S. Atlas, No. 24.
  2. British Atlas, Nos. 31, 32.