s to abandon force for arbitration. Under his
leadership joint commissions were finally established, and in 1903 the
legal technicalities involved were sent to The Hague. The episode
involved a new interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine, making it clear
that unless the United States wished to protect the South American
Republics in the evasion of their debts it must assume some
responsibility for the honest settlement of them.

The boundary of Alaska next became a subject for arbitration. Since the
valley of the Yukon had attracted its first great migration in the
summer of 1897 the mining-camps had steadily increased in importance.
Many of these were on the Canadian side of the meridian of 141 deg., and
all were reached either by the river steamers or the trails from the
south. The most important ports of entry were Dyea and Skaguay, at the
head of the Lynn Canal, a long fiord projecting some ninety miles into
the continent. From these ports the prospector plunged inland, climbed
the Chilkoot or the Chilkat Pass, and followed one of several overland
trails to the Upper Yukon.

The importance given to Dyea and Skaguay revived the question of their
ownership and with this the boundary of Alaska. When Seward bought
Alaska for the United States in 1867 he received it with the boundaries
agreed upon at St. Petersburg between England and Russia in 1825. These
followed the meridian of 141 deg. from Mount St. Elias to the Arctic
Ocean, and followed the irregularities of the shore-line southeast from
that mountain to the Pacific at 54 deg. 40', North Latitude. The narrow
coast strip was described as following the windings (_sinuosites_) of the
shore, bounded by the shore mountains if possible, but in no case to be
more than thirty miles wide. The narrow Lynn Canal pierces the
thirty-mile strip, and the dispute turned chiefly upon interpretation:
whether the canal should be regarded as a _sinuosite_ of the shore,
around which the boundary must go, or as a stream which it might
properly cross.

For thirty years after 1867 the British and Canadian government maps
treated the Lynn Canal and other similar fiords as American, but it
became convenient for Canada, after 1897, to urge that the boundary
should cross the canal and leave Dyea and Skaguay on British soil. A
Canadian and American Joint High Commission, meeting in 1898, had been
unable to adjust the controversy. In 1903 it was submitted to a
tribunal, three to a side, which