THE LANDWARD BOUNDARY OF ALASKA. By George J. Varney. TF there ever was another nation so much -*- given to what she calls " rectifying our frontiers " as Great Britain, it must be one that she assisted in the operation until that now unknown nation has neither frontiers nor back tiers remaining. The numerous territorial grants to Englishmen and the en croachments of English colonists ever prove convenient stakes-out-of-line to which the entire old line is made to conform; and thus British boundaries, whenever new inter ests develop, are "rectified" — always to the enlargement of her domain, but only to her temporary satisfaction. By the treaty of 1842 between the United States and Great Britain — familiarly known as the Webster- Ashburton Treaty — our northern and eastern boundaries were defi nitely and finally settled (except in those details depending on the surveyors) from Mars Hill, at the eastern line of Maine, westward to the Rocky Mountains. In re gard to the extensive territory between these mountains and the Pacific Ocean, President Tyler said, in his message trans mitting the Webstcr-Ashburton treaty to the Senate: "After sundry informal com munications with the British minister upon the subject of the two countries west of the Rocky Mountains, so little probability was found to exist of coming to any agreement on that subject at present, that it was not thought expedient to make it one of the subjects of formal negotiation to be entered upon between this government and the British minister, as part of his duties under his special mission." This statement affords a reasonably suf ficient indication that the government of Great Britain still cherished the purpose of providing not only a northern but a western boundary for this section different to that
established by the treaty between the United States and Russia in 1824. Emperor Alexander I. had, in 1822, issued a ukase claiming the territory of the Pacific coast north of the 51st parallel of north latitude (marking the northerly end of Van couver Island), and declaring that part of the Pacific Ocean lying north of a line drawn from the point mentioned to 490 north latitude on the Asiatic coast of the Pacific a closed sea. The United States protested vigorously against the exclusion of her whalers from this large ocean area, and to such good effect that, two years later, by the treaty just mentioned, the closed sea was made an open one, and our right to the territory as far north as 540 40' admitted without reserve. It is apparent that the action of our government in this matter was not narrow and selfish, but to the benefit of all maritime nations. Curiously, however, there followed closely on this treaty with the United States an other between Russia and England, by which 540 40' north latitude was also made the line of demarkation between Russian and British territory. The latter treaty was signed on February 25, 1825, during the last illness of the Tsar Alexander. The two nations at this time, together with France, had just entered into a coalition to aid Greece in throwing off the Turkish yoke; consequently Russia exercised unusual com plaisance toward a power in respect to which, from her genius and her great need of seaports for her vast interior, she has subsequently, for a long period, maintained a somewhat different attitude. There came a time in the reign of the succeeding emperor, Nicholas I., when the advantage to Russia of the maintenance by the United States of her northern territorial
