Canadian interests the services of her most astute and learned
statesmen and diplomatists.

This commission was called upon to consider a number of international
questions--the Atlantic and inland fisheries, the Alaska boundary, the
alien labour law, the bonding privilege, the seal fishery in the Bering
Sea, reciprocity of trade in certain products of the two countries, and
other minor issues. For the reasons given in a previous part of this
chapter (page 269), when referring to the commercial policy of the
Laurier government, reciprocity was no longer the all-important question
to be discussed, though the commissioners were desirous of making fiscal
arrangements with respect to lumber, coal, and some other Canadian
products for which there is an increasing demand in the markets of the
United States. The long and earnest discussions of the commission on the
various questions before them were, however, abruptly terminated by the
impossibility of reaching a satisfactory conclusion with respect to the
best means of adjusting the vexed question of the Alaska boundary, which
had become of great international import in consequence of the discovery
of gold in the territory of Alaska and the district of Yukon in Canada.

The dispute between Great Britain and the United States has arisen as to
the interpretation to be given to the Anglo-Russian treaty of 1825,
which was made forty-two years before Russia sold her territorial rights
in Alaska to the United States, that sale being subject of course to the
conditions of the treaty in question. Under the third article of this
treaty[10]--the governing clause of the contract between England and
Russia--boundary line between Canada and Alaska commences at the south
end of Prince of Wales Island, thence runs north through Portland
Channel to the fifty-sixth degree of north latitude, thence follows the
summit of the mountains situated parallel to the coast of the continent,
to one hundred and forty-one west longitude and thence to the frozen
ocean. That part of the line between fifty-six north latitude and one
hundred and forty-one west longitude is where the main dispute arises.
Great Britain on behalf of Canada contends that, by following the
summits of the mountains between these two points, the true boundary
would cross Lynn Canal, about half way between the headlands and
tide-water at the head of the canal, and leave both Skagway and
Dyea--towns built up chiefly by United States c