xxiv INTRODUCTION 



him in favor of the United States, a larger issue 

 was raised over the frontier of Alaska and that 

 newly colonized extreme northwestern region of 

 Canada which we call the Yukon. This was 

 disposed of by a joint commission in 1903. 

 There still remained one small outstanding con 

 troversy about a tiny island, called Pope s Folly, 

 and some fishing-grounds in Passamaquoddy 

 Bay (a large inlet from the Bay of Fundy), 

 through which the international boundary runs. 

 In 1911 an agreement was drafted to refer it 

 to arbitration. When the negotiators, feeling the 

 absurdity of employing the elaborate machinery 

 of a court to determine so trivial a matter, agreed 

 to split the difference, they gave the islet to the 

 State of Maine while the fishing-grounds were 

 assigned to the Canadian province of New Bruns 

 wick. With this there ended the long series of 

 frontier questions that had so often been a 

 source of disquiet, and now every yard of the 

 nearly four thousand miles of boundary has been 

 marked out by scientific surveyors. To have 

 escaped or amicably settled all the grounds of 

 friction which might occur along this line, far 

 longer than any other frontier between civilized 

 nations, is itself an event without parallel in 

 history. 



