As to the interior, it is not so easy to locate the exact line of security as related to the Orinoco settlements alone. But when we take into account the fact that Santo Thome was a gateway to El Dorado, and that this interior was, in the language of Phillimore, "essential to the real use of the settlers," without which there would be no reason for maintaining Santo Thome, we are enabled to say that the region attendant upon the Spanish occupation of the Orinoco certainly embraced a large part of the territory now claimed by Great Britain in the interior. Santo Thome was the military and commercial base for the great interior. It was established and defended as a gateway, and to isolate it is to destroy the only reason for its existence.

We have not coupled the Spanish occupation of the Essequibo with their settlements on the Orinoco in this discussion. Elsewhere we have clearly shown, we think, that Spain occupied the Essequibo before the Dutch came, and that her absence at the time did not work an abandonment. If that be so, then any constructive extension of the limits of a settlement at the mouth of the Essequibo, which the law allows, would belong to Spain. If the occupation of the mouth of the river had the effect claimed for it by Great Britain, the basin had been appropriated by Spain before the Dutch came; and that appropriation could not be affected by the wrongful entry of the Dutch beyond the line of their actual occupation.

There is another rule of law closely related to the rule we have been discussing. It is the rule that gives to the nation owning the banks of a stream, and as appurtenant to that ownership, the delta region found at its mouth. This rule is not at all based on the idea that the soil of these delta formations has been carried from the banks of the river itself, or from other lands owned by the nation claiming the delta region. Indeed, when it can be positively shown that the alluvion has been torn from one bank and deposited upon the other, the rule is still applied. Between indi

vidual owners the rule is based upon considerations relating to land boundaries; but, as applied to a nation, it is rather a specific application of the rule of security. It is the relation of these delta regions to the control of the mouth of the river, and to the security of the settlements on the river, that fixes their status.

It is wholly immaterial where the detritus came from-whether down the Orinoco, or down the Essequibo and by the ocean currents to the mouth of the former river. These deposits are caused by a loss of velocity in the current carrying the silt. The Orinoco loses its flow in the sea and drops its silt. It also checks and deflects the flow of the ocean currents across its mouth towards the west, and causes that current to drop some of its silt at points to the eastward of the main channel of the Orinoco. As the delta formation grew, this effect would be increased. The coast region to the east of the Boca de Navios, as far as Cape Nassau, is undeniably alluvion; and if, by the deposit of silt coming from the eastwhether influenced by the Orinoco or not-the Barima and the Waini now communicate with the Orinoco, while maintaining, through the Mora passage, another entrance to the sea, the delta region has become one.

Boats may pass from the Orinoco through the Barima and the Waini to the sea by natural channels. The tide flows in and out of the Barima, at the Orinoco and at the Mora passage. At the time of the discovery of Guiana, this inland water way from the Moruca was the safest and quickest route for boats between the Essequibo and the Orinoco. Other mouths of the Orinoco flowing through the delta towards the Gulf of Paria, or towards Trinidad, bore independent names, just as these do, and were similarly used as outlets to the west. In whatever manner, then, as a scientific problem, it came about, we find the Waini and the Barima to be parts of the delta water system of the Orinoco. The mouth of a stream is "where the points of the coast project no further."

Lord Stowell, in Twee Gebroeden (3 Rob., 34), says:

"The embouchure or mouth of a river is that spot where the river enters the open space to which the sea flows, and where the points of the coast project no further."

The rule of law applicable to delta regions is thus stated by Twiss (Law of Nations, Sec. 131):

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'Upon like considerations of security, islands which have been formed by the accumulation of mud at the mouth of a river, and which keep sentinel as it were over the approaches to the mainland, are regarded as necessary appendages of the coast on which they border and from which they are formed."

The rule is rested by this author upon considerations of security. The relations of these islands to the river mouth, as we find them, is the determining thing. How they came there is wholly unimportant to the jurist. Lord Stowell's opinion in The Anna (3 Ch. Robinson, 395) makes this clear.

"Consider," he says, in the case of certain islands at the entrance of the river Mississippi, "what the consequences would be, if lands of this description were not considered as appendant to the mainland and as comprised within the bounds of territory. If they do not belong to the United States of America, any other Power may occupy them; they might be embanked and fortified. What a thorn would this be in the side of America! It is physically possible at least that they might be so occupied by European nations and then the command of the river would be no longer in America, but in such settlements. The possibility of such a consequence is enough to expose the fallacy of any arguments that are addressed to show that these islands are not to be considered as part of the territory of America."

The delta regions on the east of Boca de Navios, in the control of another nation, would be a thorn in the side of the nation owning the Orinoco river; would give a sentry post to an enemy quite as much as those on the west. There is no part of the entire delta region of the Orinoco to which the reasoning applies more strongly

than to the Waini-Barima region. Indeed, if we give to Great Britain this region, the guards of the Orinoco mouth might almost as well be withdrawn; for she will have secured a water inlet that isolates them. The reason of this rule certainly includes as delta islands all of the lands on the ocean side of any waterway flowing through the alluvion, that may be entered from the main river and followed to the sea.

The British interest in this territory is not its value for settlement, or as necessary to the defense of their settlements, but as giving them control of the mouth of the Orinoco, the basin of which is, and always has been, Spanish.

Schomburgk has this to say of this region (B. C., VII, p. 34): "The peculiar formation of the fluvial system of the coastland between the Barima and the Essequibo admits an inland navigation, in punts and barges, to Richmond Estate, on the Arabisi Coast of the Essequibo, which with a few improvements might vie with any of the interior canals of England."

That is to say, the possession of this "fluvial system" would establish at least a joint use and control of the Orinoco, and with Barima Point would dominate that river. This brings the river fully within the reasoning of Twiss and of Lord Stowell.

These rules based upon the right of the first settler to be secure in his possessions are controlling. All other rules, based upon convenience and kindred considerations, are in abeyance until there has been set apart to the first comer all places that may be reasonably necessary to his present and prospective security. We cannot for a moment doubt that a stretch of country to the east of the Orinoco, extending on the coast to a point that will include the water sheds of all streams entering the Orinoco, was reasonably necessary to the security of the Spanish settlements on the Orinoco. The question of the line of safety, in the interior, involves a consideration of the Spanish interior settlements, which we do not enter upon here.

CHAPTER XIX.

WATERSHED.

Great Britain puts forward a claim to the constructive possession of the whole watershed of the Essequibo, including its great tributaries, the Mazaruni and the Cuyuni. The area of this basin, treating it as one, is about 67,000 square miles. We are not definitely informed as to when it is claimed this title attached, though that date is a very important factor in determining whether it ever attached. These extracts from the British Case (p. 161) perhaps give us the scope of the British contention, as first propounded:

"It is not disputed that the Dutch and the British have for centuries been in full possession of a very considerable territory on both sides of the Essequibo below the point where it is joined by the Massaruni. It is submitted that, according to every principle of international law, this carries with it the right to the whole basin of the Essequibo and its tributaries, except in so far as any portion of that basin may have been occupied by another Power.

"The Power in control of so large an extent of territory round the lower course of a river such as the Essequibo, to which no other Power has ever had any access, and where no dominion other than that exercised by the Dutch and the British has ever existed, has a primâ facie right to the whole of the river basin. Such right can only be rebutted by proof of actual occupation by another Power."

And again:

"The title of the British to the basin of the Essequibo and its tributaries is greatly strengthened by the fact that the only permanent means of access to by far the greater part of the upper portion of this basin is by these streams themselves. The Power in control of the lower portion of the Essequibo therefore commands the whole of the basin of that river and its tributaries."

The first of these paragraphs seems to make the river basin attendant upon settlements on the lower tide water banks of the Essequibo, without any further occupation of the coast