The territory of the former duchy of Schleswig comprises the portion of the peninsula of Jutland lying between the Danish frontier on the north and the River Eider and the Kiel Canal on the south. Called by the Danes South Jutland (Sönderjylland), it is similar in most respects to Denmark, being chiefly agricultural, with a fishing population on the Frisian islands to the west and a considerable shipping industry in its principal town, Flensburg, a town of 63,000 at the head of the Flensburg fiord. The region has an area of 3385 square miles, and 474,355 inhabitants, not far from twice the extent and population of the state of Delaware. About one-third of the people speak Danish; these are chiefly in the northern portion of the province. The rest, save for an isolated group of Frisians on the west coast, speak German. The earlier history of Schleswig would take us into the tangled history of the Schleswig-Holstein question, which is for present purposes unnecessary. Suffice it to say that, whatever the previous rights of the king of Denmark may have been, the attempt to unite the duchy of Schleswig fully to the kingdom of Denmark by the constitution of 1863 led in the following year to war with Austria and Prussia and to the defeat of Denmark, whose king, by the treaty of Vienna, renounced all rights over Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg. In 1866, at the conclusion of the war between Austria and Prussia, the treaty of Prague transferred the rights of Austria to the king of Prussia, with the reservation that the “inhabitants of North Schleswig shall be again reunited with Denmark if they should express such a desire in a vote freely given.” Nothing could be clearer, and nothing more ineffective, for the article was contained in a treaty between two powers neither of which had the slightest interest in the performance of the obligation. As a matter of fact, the provision had been suggested by Napoleon III, but the interested parties, Denmark and the inhabitants of the district, were not put in a position to secure its execution. Bismarck, who seems at first to have expected a referendum, maintained in 1867 that the people as Prussian subjects had no right to demand it, the only right to such a demand resting with the emperor of Austria. Prussia made no effort to put the article into effect, and in 1878 it was abrogated by agreement with Austria.