the twenty-third and twenty-fourth parallels. The right of Bolivia to this territory was recognized by Chile in a number of acts, of which the following may be instanced. Between the years 1842 and 1845 the Bolivian Consul at London brought suit against the Chilean frigate Lacaw for having clandestinely taken a cargo of guano from the seaboard recognized as belong- ing to Bolivia, The British law courts pronounced sentence upon the ship; and no objection was offered by Chile either to the suit or to the sentence.
The treaty between Bolivia and Peru provided for a bound- ary between those countries, and Chile was therefore separated from Peru by a broad strip of desert territory owned by Bolivia. Under these circumstances and with the historical facts of the case in mind, but one conclusion can follow. The northern boundary of Chile was long at the twenty- seventh parallel, but the vigorous claims of Chile to all the territory as far north as the twenty-fourth parallel resulted in this as the final boundary between Bolivia and Chile, as determined by the treaty of 1874. It would seem from an examination of these facts that the question of boundaries would be settled along lines guided by the treaties of 1874 and the years immediately succeeding, which made specific men- tion of towns, ports, parallels, and the like.
Significance of Nitrate as a National Resource
The intense rivalry of the neighboring states with respect to the ownership of the nitrate fields has its foundation in the exceptional value of the deposits: they proved to be richer than the guano deposits, at first considered the chief resource of the desert coast.[1] The nitrate beds lie near the sea, are worked with comparative ease, and are in great demand among the densely populated countries of Europe as fertilizer to main- tain the high productivity of their long-tilled lands. Further-
- ↑ In regard to the importance of the Chilean deposits it is of interest to note that in 1920 Chilean nitrate accounted for about one-third only of the world’s production of fixed inorganic nitrogen; two-fifths came from atmospheric nitrogen, a source insignificant before the World War. The cost of producing the latter tends to come down while the former goes up (E. Kilburn Scott: Nitrates and Ammonia from Atmospheric Nitrogen. Jonrn, Royal Soc, of Arts, Vol. 71, 1923, pp. 859-876).
