A Tale of Two Countries #3 Traditional Geocache
A Tale of Two Countries #3
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Difficulty:
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Size: 
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You are looking for a bison tube at the St. Martin / Sint Maarten border. Please park at the pulloff just north of the cache on the west side and walk back.
Bienvenue en Partie Français
Saint Martin is a Caribbean island. Sint Maarten occupies the southern portion of Saint Martin island and is one of four countries that make up the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Saint-Martin, St. Martin, or Saint Martin (different spellings) occupies the northern portion of Saint Martin island and is part of the French Collectivité de Saint-Martin (together with Île Tintamarre and two others). To further confuse things, for geocachers Sint Maarten has sometimes been treated as part of the defunct Netherland Antilles and sometimes as part of French St. Martin.
All of this confusion started back in 1648. Ask around and you will here different versions of what happened that year. One version recorded in the New York Times on April 24, 2012, reads as follows:
France and the Netherlands sliced the island up at the Treaty of Concordia of 1648. But you can hardly call what happened “going Dutch”: the French ended up with a much larger part of the island. Local legend has it that this resulted from the novel way of deciding upon the border: each side sent out a sailor on a march around the island; the border would then be drawn between their starting point and the place on the other side of the island where they met up again.
One version blames the raw deal for the Dutch on French perfidy: their sailor cheated, literally cutting corners. Another hints that the Dutch themselves are to blame: the Dutchman was more interested in the contents of the bottle of rum he had brought along — or maybe he was distracted by the kind attention of a woman, or both. No points for guessing which side favors which version.
Tricentennial Celebration - 1948
The cache will bring you to the sign welcoming you to French St. Martin. You probably have just completed one of your easiest border crossings ever. Now look behind the sign.
Additional Hints
(No hints available.)