irst popular British ambassador, now set about
clearing up the problems confronting the two peoples. The first question
which pressed for settlement was one of boundary. It had already taken
ninety years to draw the line from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and now
the purchase of Alaska by the United States had added new uncertainties
to the international boundary. The claims of both nations were based on
a treaty of 1825 between Great Britain and Russia. Like most attempts
to define boundaries running through unexplored territories, the treaty
terms admitted of two interpretations. The boundary line from Portland
Channel to Mount St. Elias was stipulated to run everywhere a distance
of ten marine leagues from the coast and to follow its sinuosities. This
particular coast, however, is bitten into by long fiords stretching far
into the country. Great Britain held that these were not part of the sea
in the sense of the treaty and that the line should cut across them ten
marine leagues from the outer coast line. On the other hand, the United
States held that the line should be drawn ten marine leagues from the
heads of these inlets.

The discovery of gold on the Yukon in 1897 made this boundary question
of practical moment. Action now became an immediate necessity. In 1899
the two countries agreed upon a modus Vivendi and in 1903 arranged an
arbitration. The arbitrating board consisted of three members from each
of the two nations. The United States appointed Senator Henry Cabot
Lodge, ex-Senator George Turner, and Elihu Root, then Secretary of
War. Great Britain appointed two Canadians, Louis A. Jette and A.
B. Aylesworth, and Lord Alverstone, Chief Justice of England. Their
decision was in accordance with the principle for which the United
States had contended, though not following the actual line which it had
sketched. It gave the Americans, however, full control of the coast and
its harbors, and the settlement provided a mutually accepted boundary on
every frontier.

With the discovery of gold in the far North, Alaska began a period of
development which is rapidly making that territory an important economic
factor in American life. Today the time when this vast northern coast
was valuable only as the breeding ground for the fur seal seems long
past. Nevertheless the fur seal continued to be sought, and for years
the international difficulty of protecting the fisheries remained.
Finally, in 1911, the United States entere