must relate to the beginning of the controversy. If one party has already, over the protest and insistence of the other, split the difference for himself by pushing forward his occupation to the middle distance, it would be an intolerable suggestion that an arbitration tribunal should again give him a middle distance. The rule as to natural boundaries was much, and very strangely, made use of by Schomburgk in his reports, and is still invoked to justify large Dutch and British encroachments. As applied to the British claims here, the rule is of very narrow application, and has relation rather to the field work of the surveyor than to the apportionment of large territories. It assumes that the line of right is approximately on the ridge, or watershed, or river, and that natural line is adopted rather than the nearby artificial one--because it furnishes a more permanent marking than the surveyor's posts. The use of the rule by Schomburgk is very extraordinary. Before he entered upon his survey he had selected his natural boundaries for British Guiana, and distinctly upon the principle that every point of advantage must fall upon the British side of the line. One is filled with wonder as he reads Schomburgk's letter to Governor Light, of July 16, 1839 (B. C. VII, pp., 2-7), to see the partiality shown by the Creator towards Great Britain. Every range and river was so located as to give to her a strategic point and to leave her neighbors defenseless. In every instance the "natural boundaries" beckoned Great Britain forward. If she claimed to one river, the one beyond was the "natural boundary"! If rapacity and injustice could ever be humorous, that letter of Schomburgk would give him new and unsought fame. He solemnly deprecates the "political motives" of the Brazilians, and appropriates the Amacura "to insure the political importance which always would be attached to the mouth of the Orinoco." He criticizes a boundary survey by the Brazilians, because the other Powers interested were not present in order to give their consent to the "extraordinary pretensions" of the one-sided and self-elected Brazilian Boundary

Commissioners, and forthwith sets about doing the same thing. He determines that Great Britain must have the command of the Orinoco, and must secure the savannahs about the Rupununi, in order to "command an inland navigation which may be extended to the Pacific Ocean." "A glance at the map of South America," he says, "is sufficient to show what advantages Great Britain may expect from these boundaries." He concludes that it is entirely "practicable to run and mark the limits of British Guiana on the system of natural divisions, and that the limits thus defined are in perfect unison with the title of Her Britannic Majesty to the full extent of that territory." What a rare and felicitous happening! Great Britain's rights and her wants accord! But the accord is not casual; her rights were fitted to her needs. Schomburgk, before going to Barima, had given to Great Britain the command of the Orinoco, and his observations there are to be taken in the light of that fact.

It was of this sort of use of the rule of natural boundaries that Phillimore wrote the phrase "has been much used by powerful military states to cover the unjust spoliation of their weaker neighbors."

Natural boundaries that mark a geographical unit may be properly taken account of in determining the limits of a constructive occupation. But in the case in hearing, a line of right must be found, and when it is found no considerable amount of territory, and no strategic point can be taken from one and given to another by this rule. Only unimportant deviations may be made, and these may not all be at the cost of one party.

SUMMARY.

Thus far, in the discussion of the question of limits upon the theory of Great Britain that all of the disputed territory was, when the Dutch came to Essequibo, terra nullius; or, if not, that by the Treaty of Munster the Dutch obtained an equal right with Spain

to appropriate it by settlement-we have treated chiefly of the principal original settlements of each.

It remains now to see what was done by the Dutch in the way of advancing their settlements within the disputed limits.

We affirm, first, that no Dutchman was ever authorized to settle on the coast west of the Moruca, or upon any river entering that coast or the Orinoco, and that no Dutch colony or settlement was ever established there. No colony or settlement of Dutchmen could have been founded there without the authorization of the Dutch West India Company. No Dutchman had any right to go into that region, or to sojourn or trade there without the authorization of that Company. If, without this, he went there he was a trespasser against Dutch law, and could acquire no landed rights; for the West India Company had, as against all Dutchmen, an exclusive right to trade and to plant settlements there. This right the Company strenuously asserted against the Surinam Dutch. The Essequibo and the Pomeroon settlements were authorized by the Zeeland Chamber, but no settlement in the Waini-Barima region was ever authorized. A trade there was authorized and was conducted in large part with the Spaniards, but no act was ever done or authorized looking to colonization in the region we are speaking of. The Dutch records have been remarkably well kept, and they show that the Governor of Essequibo was required to record and to report with commercial exactness his receipts and expenditures. His pay rolls contain a list of all officers and employees, and these were very carefully scrutinized and supervised at home. An attempt by the Governor to found a new settlement without the previous authorization of the Chamber would have promptly ended his career. A new settlement implied a large expenditure a fort, a garrison and civil officers. The home authorities and the Governor were not clear whether they could claim this region. They were fruitlessly asking each other where the boundary was.

But there is more than an absence of authorization to any Dutchman to settle there; there is an affirmative statement of what was authorized there. It was a "shelter" and not a post or a settlement. It did not contemplate the use of the soil, or the gathering of settlers about it; and in its very nature was a disclaimer of any purpose to hold the locality against the Spaniards. It had relation to trade only, and to a trade that was not seated, but fugitive. The name and the character of these stationary umbrellas was familiar; and Queen Elizabeth, in 1580, told the Spanish Ambassador that these "shelters" could not confer territorial rights (B. C.-C. App., p. 317). What England then denied to Spain, she now allows to herself.

No Dutchman was ever authorized to go to, or to remain for a season in the Waini-Barima region except for trade or to catch fish or slaves; and, save this temporary "shelter" there never was west of the Moruca any authorized Dutch post, house or structure of any sort.

In 1766 the Court of Policy "forbade that any one hereafter stay in Barima" (V. C., vol. ii, p. 165). In 1768 the Dutch Director-General reported the robbing of "the Widow la Riviere " by Spaniards; and added that "this did not matter very much, because I had strictly forbidden Jan la Riviere to settle between Essequibo and Orinocque, and for greater security, I had this inserted in his pass; he was also forbidden by the Court to settle in Barima." (V. C., vol. ii, p. 176:) And, in 1769, he wrote that the widow of Jan la Riviere, "who against the absolute prohibition of the Court had gone with his slaves to live in Barima,” having died there his widow had been "robbed " of everything by the Spaniards, and had returned to Essequibo. (V. C., vol. ii, p. 187.)

We know that smugglers and other disorderly people-some of them probably Dutch-were there for a time. We know that Surinam Dutch went there to trade against the protest of the Commandeur in Essequibo. How many seasons any of these sorts of visitors remained hidden on some one of the interlacing water

ways, we do not know, but we do know that neither the West India Company nor any other Dutch governmental authority ever authorized any Dutchman to settle or to appropriate lands there, and that if any one did so his act was not only unauthorized, but in opposition to Dutch authority.

But, if the signs and traditions found by Schomburgk are fully accepted, it remains to be proved that the Dutchman was an Essequibo or Pomeroon Dutchman authorized to be there; for, if he was a fugitive, or a Surinam Dutchman, he had no Dutch right to be there. He was an intruder or a smuggler, whose presence could not create a settlement of the West India Company, or in any way affect the boundary question. The utter lack of any reliable knowledge as to who he was, how he came there, or how long he remained, leads most strongly to the conclusion that he was one who felt that his presence needed to be concealed. Upon such evidence as this a title by settlement certainly cannot be founded. The most westerly Dutch settlement on the coast then was on the Pomeroon river.

In 1802 the English Commandant of Berbice, Demerary and Essequibo speaks of the "River Pomaroon, at the entrance of which is the furthest military post, called the post of Morrocco.” (B. C. V, p. 172.)

This condition was continued under the British until 1884. There was not the slightest semblance of British influence west of the Moruca until after 1839, about which time the Postholder in the Moruca began to make casual visits to the Barima-Waini region.

The British claim to the coast region west of the Moruca cannot be rested upon an actual occupation by settlement.

We turn now to the interior, to see what part of the disputed territory there, if any, was ever settled or actually occupied by the Dutch. We affirm with confidence that nothing that can, by any stretch of consideration, be properly called a settlement was ever established by the Dutch above the lowest falls of the