The Landward Boundary of Alaska. January of the present year represents that Premier Salisbury and the Colonial Secre tary, Hon. Joseph Chamberlain, " have been considering the result of the inquiries into records made in behalf of British Columbia," especially those derived from certain docu ments found in Montreal; and it is claimed that these show Clarence Strait to be the true Portland Channel or " canal," or " inlet," — as it is now interchangeably called by the promulgators of these novel views. On this basis, the statement has been flung out to the public that " under the Anglo-Russian treaty of 1829" there belonged to Great Britain, on this coast-strip an area of" 3,000000 acres, opposite Prince of Wales Island on the Pacific coast, which is of high strate gic commercial value, and which the United States has usurped since buying Alaska." It was also suggested from the same source that " the Canadian members of the Alaskan Boundary Commission have been misled into assuming the correctness of the United States' assumption." In reply to this announcement it may be remarked, first, that Montreal is a strange place for- the storage of the essential and authentic data of a treaty boundary between two European nations; second, that the language of the last American-Russian treaty and that of the Anglo-Russian treaty of 1825,' in respect to this southern and eastern boundary, is identical; and that no " AngloRussian treaty of 1829" is mentioned in our Alaskan title-deed; third, this interpretation puts the Stikine River wholly into British territory, so that the specific grant of the navigation of any part of it to the British would be contradictory and useless — thus the absurdity of the new interpretation is apparent; and fourth, that Portland Channel is clearly delineated on the charts made by Captain Vancouver of the royal navy, which are the highest British authority, and were in existence and in the possession of the English government in 1825, when the treaty in evidence was concluded, — so that
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there can be no reasonable doubt as to which body of water is " Portland Channel." The uncertainty about the identity of this body of water is of recent date, and appears to have been sedulously cultivated. This strip of Alaskan seacoast nearly fivehundred miles long, extending south by southeast from the body of the territory, appears but as the tail to the dog, and, by the uninformed, may be thought of very little consequence; nevertheless in this case the tail wags the dog; for while its soil is of average fertility, its climate is superior to that of any other section of Alaska. It also contains a large proportion of the popula tion, having among its towns the two largest in the territory, — Sitka, on an island mid way of the strip, the seat of government, and having, in 1890, 1190 inhabitants; and Juneau, with a population of 1253, — sit uated in the interior of the mainland, north ern section, in the midst of a rich mineral and grazing region. A governor of the Alaskan territory was appointed in 1884, when, also, a district court was established. Previous to that date it was impossible for a settler to buy public land. This long southeastern angle of Alaska is fortunately the only one which affords a possibility of being placed in doubt, or con cerning which there can be any confusion; for from Mount St. Elias, at the northern end of the elongated southeastern angle, the boundary between Alaska and British terri tory is formed by the 141st parallel of longitude; and any dispute in regard to it can be settled by the diplomacy of the sur veyor's theodolite and links. Indeed, as ardently as Britain wished to include in her domain the rich gold-fields of the Yukon River (which crosses this boundary in nearly an cast and west direction), the line run by her own surveyors, and completed last year, agrees very closely with that of our own sur veyors, — throwing all the gold deposits now known on that river and its tributaries within the limits of the United States.
