No. 763.
Mr. Connery to Mr. Bayard.
Mexico, February 6, 1888. (Received February 14.)
Sir: Referring to your No. 240, dated January 16, 1888, I beg leave to report that, having had occasion to confer with Mr. Mariscal about some other matters, I incidentally alluded to the subject of the boundary between the United States and Mexico where it follows the channel of the Rio Grande.
I should first mention that I have not been able to find in the legation any map clearly showing the boundaries between the two countries, and 1 therefore asked Mr. Mariscal if he could allow me the use of such a map for a week or so. He promised to send me the latest issued by the department of public works.
This brought me easily to the subject of the necessity to keep some record of the changes in the channel of the Rio Grande, and I found, on questioning Mr. Mariscal, that his Government kept no such record and had devised no plan for determining questions arising under the last boundary convention. He remarked that the original boundary lines could always be determined by the maps which formed part of all the treaties made since 1848, that of Guadalupe Hidalgo, down to the boundary convention of November 12, 1884. In all those treaties, said Mr. Mariscal, the old Roman principle had been adopted, namely, that the sudden and great diversion of a river course would leave the boundary line where originally fixed by treaty prescriptions, and that only the gradual changes operated by natural causes, through erosion, deposit of alluvium, and such like agencies, could effect an alteration of the boundary lines.
As a matter of course, I made no suggestion or proposition, not even alluding to the difficulties experienced in enforcing the revenue laws on the frontier.
I am, etc.,