BOUNDARY BETWEEN BRITISH GUIANA AND VENEZUELA. COUNTER-CASE presented on the part of the Government of Her Britannic Majesty to the Tribunal of Arbitration constituted under Article I of the Treaty concluded at Washington on the 2nd day of February, 1897, between Her Britannic Majesty and the United States of Venezuela. Her Majesty's Government have therefore abstained in this Counter-Case from discussing the passages cited from the Report of the United States' Commission and of Professor Burr, and 5 have confined themselves to commenting upon the statements made in the Venezuelan Case and the evidence referred to in that Case or contained in the Appendix to it. Geographical Sketch. Two mountain systems are of importance in the present case. The one is the main range of the Imataka, which runs fairly parallel to the coast, from north-west to south-east. It starts 5 from the Orinoco, where that river is joined by the Caroni, and, as a well-marked range, extends to the neighbourhood of the Acarabisi Creek. To the east of this it gives place to a scattered group of hills of low elevation, including 10 the so-called "Blue Mountains," which extends nearly to the point of junction of the Massaruni and Essequibo and down the latter river. The range thus continued separates the two districts called in the Venezuelan Case Case "the coast 15 regions," which lie on its seaward face, between the Orinoco and the lower course of the Essequibo, from the two "interior regions," which lie to the south. The height and consequent importance of the Imataka Range have been 20 much exaggerated, at any rate as regards the part touched by the Schomburgk line. It is only to the westward of that line that there are any mountains worthy of the name, though even there they do not rise to more than between 2,000 and 25 3,000 feet. At the Schomburgk line, and to the east of it, there are merely more or less detached hills, at most not more than 600 feet high. Writing of the range at the point where the Aurama and the Acarabisi rise, the one to join 30 the Waini, the other the Cuyuni system, Schomburgk says "I estimated the highest ridge which separates the two systems at 520 feet above the level of the sea. Heights which really deserve the name of mountains. 35 commence 20 miles further westward." And Barrington Brown writes of the same part : "Between the Cuyuni and Barama Rivers comes the Imataka Range, which terminates near the sources of 40 the Waini River, and is of no considerable extent or height in this part." Case, App., The other mountain system, in some parts of British Countermuch greater altitude, is a much less easily defined group of ranges, covering the country west of 45 the Essequibo, and extending as far to the south as the head-waters of the Trombetas, a large tributary of the Amazon. At its northern ex pp. 405, 408. |