No. 267.
Mr. Hoffman to Mr. Frelinghuysen.
St. Petersburg, March 27, 1882. (Received April 13.)
Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your No. 120, with its inclosures, in reference to our Pacific coast fisheries. Your dispatch reached me yesterday, and to-day I have written to Mr. de Giers upon the subject, and I propose to call upon him upon his first reception day. In the meantime, and until further information, I do not see that any new orders necessarily affecting our fishermen have been issued by the Russian Government. Messrs. Lynde & Hugh have apparently given insufficient attention to the words “Russian waters.” These waters are defined in the notice published by the imperial vice-consulate at Yokohama as follows:
Fishing, &c., on the Russian coast or islands in the Okhotsk and Behring Seas, or on the notheastern coast of Asia, or within their sea boundary line.
If I recollect correctly, the information given me by Mr. Smith upon this subject, referred to in my No. 44, of June, 1878, and in my No. 207, of this month, the cod banks lie in the open Sea of Okhotsk, many marine leagues off the southwestern coast of Kamschatka. I observe that Messrs. Lynde & Hugh state that their vessels fish from ten to twenty-five miles from the shore. At that distance in an open sea they cannot be said “to fish upon the coast.”
[Page 451]I do not think that Russia claims that the Sea of Okotsk is a mare clausum, over which she has exclusive jurisdiction. If she does, her claim is not a tenable one since the cession of part of the group of the Kurile Islands to Japan, if it ever were tenable at any time.
I may add that, according to the information given me four years ago, Russia opposes no objections to foreign fishermen landing in desert places on the coast of Kamtschatka, far from the few villages which are found on that coast, for the purposes of catching bait and procuring fresh water; but she does object to all communication between trading and fishing vessels and the inhabitants, alleging that these vessels sell them whisky, upon which they get drunk and neglect their fishing, their only means of livelihood, and then, with their wives and children, die of starvation the ensuing winter.
I am, sir, &c.,