Foreign
fishermen were to be at liberty to go into any waters where the bay was
more than ten miles wide at the mouth, but certain bays, including the
Bay of Chaleurs, were expressly excepted in the interests of Canada from
the operation of this provision. The United States did not attempt to
acquire the right to fish on the inshore fishing-grounds of Canada--that
is, within three miles of the coasts--but these fisheries were to be
left for the exclusive use of the Canadian fishermen. More satisfactory
arrangements were made for vessels obliged to resort to the Canadian
ports in distress; and a provision was made for allowing American
fishing-vessels to obtain supplies and other privileges in the harbours
of the Dominion whenever congress allowed the fish of that country to
enter free into the market of the United States, President Cleveland in
his message, submitting the treaty to the senate, acknowledged that it
"supplied a satisfactory, practical and final adjustment, upon a basis
honourable and just to both parties, of the difficult and vexed
questions to which it relates." The republican party, however, at that
important juncture--just before a presidential election--had a majority
in the senate, and the result was the failure in that body of a measure,
which, although by no means too favourable to Canadian interests, was
framed in a spirit of judicious statesmanship.

As a sequel of the acquisition of British Columbia, the Canadian
government was called upon in 1886 to urge the interests of the
Dominion in an international question that had arisen in Bering Sea. A
United States cutter seized in the open sea, at a distance of more than
sixty miles from the nearest land, certain Canadian schooners, fitted
out in British Columbia, and lawfully engaged in the capture of seals in
the North Pacific Ocean, adjacent to Vancouver Island, Queen Charlotte
Islands, and Alaska--a portion of the territory of the United States
acquired in 1867 from Russia. These vessels were taken into a port of
Alaska, where they were subjected to forfeiture, and the masters and
mates fined and imprisoned. Great Britain at once resisted the claim of
the United States to the sole sovereignty of that part of Bering Sea
lying beyond the westerly boundary of Alaska--a stretch of sea extending
in its widest part some 600 or 700 miles beyond the mainland of Alaska,
and clearly under the law of nations a part of the great sea and open to
all nations.