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ARGUMENT OF THE UNITED STATES
15

form a line more or less parallel with hind or compose system~ of their own, in both cases enclosing considerible sheets of water. whieh are sometimes also shoul and sometimes relatively deep. ‘The entrance to these interior bays or lagoons nay be wide in breadth of surface water, but tt is nirrow in mavignble water. ‘lo take a specific ease, on the south coast of Cuba the Arehipithiyo de Jos Canario: stretches from sixty to vighty miles from the nutiniand to Le Isla de Pinos. its lenvth from the Jardines bank to Cape Frances is over a hundred wiles. * * * Ti vases of this sort the question whether the interior waters are. or are not. lakes enclosed within the territory. wiust always depend npon the depth upon the banks. and the width of the entrances. Each must be judged upon its own merits. But tn the instanee cited, there can be littie donbt that the whole Archipiélago de Jos Canirios ix a mere salt-water lake. aid thet fle houwndery af the land af Colbie phas doug the erterian elge of tee hetnks.[1]

In the famous ease of the Amn (46 Rob, Adm. 873) Lord Stowell held that the extent of territorial waters must) he estimated from the outer edge of the land represented in that case hy certain dow nud islands formed from the alluvial wash and debris of the Mississippi river, more than three miles from the Belize. the extreme point of the tain land. “It is argued,” said Lord Stowell. “that the line of territory is to he taken only from the Belize, which is a fort raised on made kind by the former Spanish possessors. I am of a different opinion. I think that the protection of territory is to be reckoned from these islunds, and that they are the natural appendages of the coast on which they border, van from which. indeed. they are formed,”

It thus appears that from fde vater cons? Mie ot a inaritime state. ts defined in physten! geowraphy, ix invariably measured ander international law, the limit of that zone of tervitorial water gener- ally known as the marine league. The boundary of Ajaska.—that is. the exterior boundary from which the inarine leavue is teasured.—runs along the outer edge of the Alaskan or Alexander Archipelago. embracing a croup composed of hundreds of iskunds, When “measured in a straight line from headland to headland” at their entrances, Chatham Strait, Cross Sound. Stunner Strait and

Clarence Stwait. by whieh this exterior coast line is pierced. meas-


  1. Hall, Int. Law, p. 129–130.