Note 663 — Chapter XI · —The Anthropo-Geography Of Rivers

When the middle and upper course of a river system are shared by several nations, their common interest demands that the control of the mouth be divided, as in the case of the La Plata between Argentine and Uruguay; or held by a small state, like Holland, too weak to force the monopoly of the tidal course. The Treaty of Paris in 1856 extended the territory of Moldavia at the cost of Russia, to keep the Russian frontier away from the Danube.663 Her very presence was ominous. The temptation to giant powers to gobble up these exquisite morsels of territory is irresistible. Hence the advisability of neutralizing small states holding such locations, as in the case of Roumania; and making their rivers international waterways, as in the case of the Orinoco,664 Scheldt, Waal, Rhine and Danube.665 The Yangtze Kiang mouth, where already the treaty ports cluster thick, will probably be the first part of China to be declared neutral ground, and as such to be placed under the protection of the combined commercial powers,666 as is even now foreshadowed by the International Conservancy Board of 1910.667 The United States, by her treaty with Mexico in 1848, secured the right of free navigation on the lower or Mexican course of the Colorado River and the Gulf of California. The Franco-British convention, which in 1898 confirmed the western Sudan to France, also conceded the principle of making the Niger, the sole outlet of this vast and isolated territory, an international waterway, and created two French enclaves in British Nigeria to serve as river ports.668