THE ALASKAN BO UNDAR Y 455 



States and Canada. Soon after the commission met at Quebec 

 on August 23, 1898, it was made known for the first time that the - 

 British government would claim that the boundary line should 

 run from the extremity of Prince of Wales island, along the 

 passage known on modern maps as Pearse canal, to the head 

 of Portland canal, thence directly to the coast, and follow the . 

 nearest mountains to the coast, crossing all the inlets of the sea, 

 up to Mount St Elias. Such a line would give the United States 

 a strip of an average width of less than five miles, broken at short 

 intervals by the arms of the sea, and would transfer the greater 

 portion of all the inlets to British territory (see map No. 12). As 

 the Canadian government, with the consent of the British Foreign 

 Office, has made public the protocol or official journal of the Joint 

 High Commission, showing the result of its deliberations on the 

 boundary* I violate no diplomatic propriety in referring to these 

 facts. The protocol shows that, after sessions of several months, 

 the commissioners were unable to agree. In a failure of concur- 

 rence as to the language of the treaty of 1825, one of the two meth- 

 ods of adjustment was proposed by the British commissioners. 

 The first was a conventional boundary, by which Canada should 

 receive, by cession or perpetual grant, Pyramid harbor, on Lynn 

 canal, and a strip of land connecting it with Canadian territory 

 to the northwest, and the remaining boundary line to be drawn 

 in the main conformable to the contention of the United States. 

 The American commissioners, not being prepared to accept this 

 proposition, the alternative was submitted by the British com- 

 missioners of an arbitration of the whole territory in dispute, in 

 conformity with the terms of the Venezuelan arbitration, and in 

 response to an inquiry from their American colleagues whether 

 the selection of an umpire from the American continent would 

 be considered, the British commissioners replied that they would 

 regard such a selection as most objectionable. 



The American commissioners declined the British plan of 

 arbitration, and stated that there was no analogy between the 

 present controversy and the Venezuelan dispute; that in the 

 latter case the occupation of the territory in question had from 

 the beginning been followed by the constant and repeated pro- 

 tests and objections of Venezuela, and the controversy was one 

 of long standing; but that in the case of the Alaskan territory 



• Fourth session,8th Parliament, 62 Victoria, 1800. Protocol No. LXIII of the Joint 

 High Commission, Washington, respecting the boundary between Alaska and Canada. 

 Printed by order of Parliament, Ottawa, 1899. 



