202 U.S. Argument for Defendant. Swamp Acts and it was granted to Louisiana by the Government. In 1839 a survey of the Mississippi coast was made pursuant to an act of its legislature. This survey and the report accompanying the same show the deep water channel and credit the territory south of it to Louisiana. The official maps made and supplied by the State to county officers pursuant to the acts of 1866 and 1871 are to the same effect. See also map published by the board of immigration and agriculture of Mississippi under act of 1882. The doctrine of ownership by prescription is fully sustained by the writers on international law and by the decisions. Pradier Fodéré, tome II, p, 337, citing and reviewing all the authorities; the Delagoa Bay dispute, State Papers, vol. 66, 1874, 1875, p. 554; the Great Britain-Venezuela dispute, Moore's Int. Arb. vol. 5, p. 5017; Keyser v. Coe, 9 Blatch. 32; Rhode Island v. Massachusetts, 4 How. 638; Missouri v. Kentucky, 11 Wall. 403; Kentucky v. Indiana, 136 U. S. 511; Virginia v. Tennessee, 148 U. S. 522. Mr. Hannis Taylor, Mr. J. N. Flowers and Mr. Monroe McClurg, with whom Mr. William Williams, Attorney General of the State of Mississippi, was on the brief, for defendant: The action of Congress from 1812 to 1819 in carving out of the Louisiana Purchase and the Mississippi Territory the States of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, giving each a portion of the sea front shows the execution of a common design. The different acts so far as they may be in apparent conflict, must be construed together. 26 Am. & Eng. Ency. of Law, 2d ed. 620; Alexander v. Alexandria, 5 Cranch, 8; Patterson v. Winn, 14 Pet. 366; United States v. Freeman, 3 How. 563; Converse v. United States, 21 How. 463; United States v. Walker, 22 How. 299; Ryan v. Carter, 93 U. S. 78; Vane v. Newcombe, 132 U. S. 220. In connection with the foregoing the court must apply the equally important rule that, where a particular construction of Argument for Defendant. 202 U. S. a statute will occasion great inconvenience or produce inequality and injustice, that view is to be avoided if another and more reasonable interpretation is present in the statute. Bate Refrigerating Co. v. Sulzberger, 157 U. S. 37; Wilson v. Rousseau, 4 How. 646, 680; Bloomer v. McQuewan, 14 How. 539, 553; Blake v. National Banks, 23 Wall. 307, 320; United States v. Kirby, 7 Wall. 482, 486; Knowlton v. Moore, 178 U. S. 77. All laws should receive a sensible construction. General terms should be so limited in their application as not to lead to injustice, oppression, or absurd consequence. It will always, therefore, be presumed that the legislature intended exceptions. to its language, which would avoid results of this character. The reason of the law, in such cases, should prevail over its letter. United States v. Kirby, 7 Wall. 482. In order to understand the controlling reason underlying the three acts in question considered as one connected whole, there must be taken into consideration the physical conformation and relative extent of the sea front, which they attempted to apportion, as equally as possible, among the States of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. It is well settled that courts will take judicial notice of the prominent geographical facts and features of the country. The Apollon, 9 Wheat. 362; The Montello, 11 Wall. 411. A court will also take judicial notice of the positions of islands off the coast of a State. State v. Wagner, 61 Maine, 178. The court has therefore complete judicial knowledge of the geography of the sea front in question, and of the positions of the islands adjacent thereto, to whose partition the three related acts must be applied. To the States of Mississippi and Alabama were given, in identical language, all islands "within six leagues of the shore," and to Louisiana "all islands within three leagues of the coast," the conclusion is irresistible that the wider zone of islands given to the States first named was intended to compensate for the fact that the latter has more than four times as long a sea front as both combined. Everything indicates the intention of Congress to give to each of the three States in question the islands directly in front of it; and to the first two a zone of islands twice as wide as that given to the latter for the reason stated. The rule of construction which provides that statutes shall be so construed that they shall not "produce inequality and injustice" is based upon the assumption that legislatures always intend by their acts to establish equality and justice. In this case full justice and equality could not be accorded either to Mississippi or Alabama, even by the grant of the wider zones of islands, because of the far more extended sea front of Louisiana. There is a well defined international rule which provides that where there is more than one channel in a river dividing coterminous States, the deepest channel is the mid-channel or thalweg for the purposes of territorial demarcation. Grotius, De Jure Belli ac Pacis, II, c. 3, sec. 17; Vattel, Droit des Gens, Bk. I, c. XXII, sec. 26. This general rule has no application. to a case governed by a special rule established by convention, or by a special right based on prior possession. Twiss, Int. Law, p. 127; 1 Halleck, Int. Law (Baker's ed.), p. 171. It appears from these authorities that the rule in question is confined to the mid-channel or thalweg of rivers, or to a midchannel which forms the line of separation through the bays and estuaries through which the waters of the river flow into the sea. The moment the sea is reached, or a body of water which is a part of the sea, the rule is at end. The attempt to extend the rule beyond the estuaries of the river into the open sea, that is, into the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico, cannot be supported either by reason or authority. Not by reason, because the wide expanse of water, unconfined between banks, utterly fails to serve as a boundary; not by authority, because there is no precedent for such an extension of the rule in any work on international law. Whenever it is necessary for two contiguous States to run a water boundary through an archipelago of islands off their coasts it is only possible to do so by convention, as international law provides no rule upon the subject. For that reason Argument for Defendant. 202 U.S. Great Britain and the United States, in the famous treaty of 1846, stipulated that the line between them should be continued westward along the forty-ninth parallel of north latitude "to the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver's Island, and thence southerly, through the middle of said channel and of Fuca's Straits to the Pacific Ocean." The Emperor of Germany was called upon, as arbitrator, to decide "whether the boundary line which, according to the Treaty of Washington of June 15, 1846, after being carried westward along the forty-ninth parallel of northern latitude to the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver's Island is thence to be drawn southerly through the middle of the said named channel and of the Fuca Straits to the Pacific Ocean, should be drawn through the Rosario Channel as the Government of Her Britannic Majesty claims, or through the Haro Channel as the Government of the United States claims." There was no pretense of the existence of any such general rule of international law or "custom" as complainant claims in this case. Only the conventional rule laid down in the treaty was contended for by either side, and its construction was the only subject of the award. By the express terms of the acts, Congress established a definite land boundary for the State of Louisiana. A special rule having been thus established by competent authority, a general rule, even if such a one existed could not be invoked. General rules of international law are never applied under such circumstances. See Grotius, De Jure Belli ac Pacis, II, c. 3; Bluntschli, XV, 2; Martens, Precis, sec. 119, p. 320; Calvo, Droit Int., I, sec. 19, p. 109; Phillimore, Int. Law, I, pp. 44, 45 (2d ed. London); 1 Twiss, Law of Nations, pp. 130, 131; Lawrence's Wheat., p. 28; 1 Halleck, Int. Law, (Baker's ed.), p. 50; Lorimer, Ins. of Int. Law, I, p. 43. Physical geography simply reproduces the actual coast lines of maritime States, as they are defined by nature at the point of contact of the sea with the land, while the political coast line, superimposed upon it by operation of international law, 202 U.S. Argument for Defendant. is vastly shorter by reason of the fact that the artificial and imaginary line cuts across the heads of bays and inlets. The natural coast line, as known to physical geography, exists primarily for the purposes of boundary. The artificial coast line, as known to international law, exists only for the purposes of jurisdiction. Rivier, Principes du Droit des Gens, vol. I, pp. 145, 146, 170. Both in their popular and technical senses "coast" and "shore" are identical and convertible terms. 4 Am. & Eng. Ency. of Law, 2d ed. p. 818. See United States v. Pacheco, 2 Wall. 587; Farnham on Waters, vol. 2, p. 1463 and vol. 1, p. 227. The word "shore" is also used in admitting Alabama. An island is a body of land surrounded by water. 17 Am. & Eng. Ency. of Law, 2d ed. p. 530. A body of land continually covered by water is not an island. Weber v. Pere Marquette Boom Co., 62 Michigan, 626. It does not lose its character by being almost submerged at high tide. De Guyer v. Banning, 167 U. S. 723. As to erosion and submergence, see Widdicombe v. Rosemiller, 118 Fed. Rep. 295. It is necessary that a strip of navigable water should separate it from the mainland. Dumphry v. Williams, 2 Pugsley (N. B.), 350; King v. Young, 76 Maine, 76; American River Water Co. v. Amsden, 6 California, 443; Attorney General v. Woods, 108 Massachusetts, 436; Grand Rapids v. Powers, 89 Michigan, 94; Bamphrey v. State, 52 Minnesota, 181. The business of a cartographer, or map-maker, is to describe land forms, not to settle titles of particular sovereignties to particular parts of the earth's surface. The value of every map depends upon two factors: first, the completeness of the data out of which it is constructed; second, the skill of the cartographer in working such data into an harmonious whole. Early maps, which are necessarily based upon incomplete data, are almost invariably misleading guides. For that reason, international jurists generally regard such maps as of little or no value in boundary controversies. The great English jurist, Sir Travers Twiss, in speaking of the uselessness of maps in the |