stefansson-wrangel-09-37-011

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zation, are to be regarded largely as degrees of occupation;
and exploration seems an extension of discovery. With ac-
cretion our interests are not involved; for any accretion
to a territory of the character under discussion would seem
to be parcel of the territory, and to be governed by the
fate of the territory. Conquest we may ignore: it settles
the question of dominion. Cession, too, is of minor im-
portance; for the validity of any cession of territory, it
would seem reasonable to say, must be determined by the
rights of the ceding country; and those rights in turn, are
not governed by the principles which govern cession. Finally,
prescription may be left out of consideration. The three
remaining possible ways in which rights in territory may be
acquired, therefore, are abandonment, continuity, and con-
tiguity.

In 1 Hydge, 197, we find the following statement;
"Rights of property and control become extinct when, by a
process known as abandonment, a state, as an incident of
losng possession, gives them up, and no immediate successor
is at hand to keep them alive. In such case the territory
becomes res nullius, and is there upon opened to occupation
by any other state.

In 1895 the occupation by Great Britain of the island
of Trinidad was made the subject of protest by the govern-
ment of Brazil, on the ground that the latter's right of
ownership of the island had not been given up. Abandon-
ment, it was declared by the Brazilian Minister of Foreigi
Affairs: 'Depends on the intention of relinquishing, or
on the cessation of physical power over the thing, and must
not be confounded with simple neglect or desertion. A
proprietor may leave a thing neglected or deserted and still
retain his ownership. The fact of legal possession does not
consist in actually holding the thing, but in having it at
one’s free disposal. The absence of the proprietor, neglect,
or desertion, does not exclude free disposal, and hence
animo retinetur possessio’----Mr. Carvalho, Brazilian Min -