e this neutral district was established in
the thirteenth century.[405] The frontier communities of the Russian
Cossacks in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were regular
asylums for runaway serfs and peasants who were fleeing from taxation;
their hetmans were repeatedly fugitive criminals. The eastern border of
Russia formed by the Volga basin in 1775 was described as "an asylum for
malcontents and vagabonds of all kinds, ruined nobles, disfrocked monks,
military deserters, fugitive serfs, highwaymen, and Volga
pirates"--disorderly elements which contributed greatly to the
insurrection led by the Ural Cossacks in that year.[406] "The Debatable
Land," a tract between the Esk and Sark rivers, formerly claimed by both
England and Scotland, was long the haunt of thieves, outlaws and
vagabonds, as indeed was the whole Border, subject as it was to the
regular jurisdiction of neither side.[407]

[Sidenote: Asylums beyond the border.]

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.

[Sidenote: Border refugees and ethnic mingling.]

Dissatisfied, oppressed, or persecuted members of a political community
are prone to seek an asylum across the nearest border, where happier or
freer conditions of life are promised