Note 408 — Chapter VII · —Geographical Boundaries

Just beyond the political boundary, where police authority comes to an end and where pursuit is cut short or retarded, the fleeing criminal finds his natural asylum. Hence all border districts tend to harbor undesirable refugees from the other side. Deserters and outlaws from China proper sprinkle the eastern districts of Mongolia.408 Marauding bands of Apaches and Sioux, after successful depredations on American ranches, for years fled across the line into Mexico and Canada before the hammering hoof-beats of Texas Ranger and United States cavalry, until a treaty with Mexico in 1882, authorizing such armed pursuit to cross the boundary, cut off at least one asylum.409 Our country exchanges other undesirable citizens with its northern and southern neighbors in cases where no extradition treaty provides for their return; and the borders of the individual states are crossed and recrossed by shifty gentlemen seeking to dodge the arm of the law. The fact that so many State boundaries fall in the Southern Appalachians, where illicit distilling and feud murders provide most of the cases on the docket, has materially retarded the suppression of these crimes by increasing the difficulty both of apprehending the offender and of subpoenaing the reluctant witness.