Office of the Historian

Mr. Tower to Mr. Hay.

British Embassy,
Newport, R. I., August 27, 1899.

Sir: I had the honor to receive your note, No. 1529, dated the 3d, on the 6th instant, and immediately brought its contents to the knowledge of the Marquis of Salisbury by telegraph, specifying the alternative proposals put forward by you for a provisional boundary line in Alaska, viz:

(1)
The line to be drawn from the peak west of Porcupine Creek marked 6500, across the Klehini River to the peak 5025, and thence to the junction of the Chilkat and Klehini rivers.
(2)
The line to be drawn from 6500 in the direction of 5025, but to stop at the Klehini and follow its course to its junction with the Chilkat; thence to the summit of the peak 5490.

In explaining the above I reported your statement that the former proposal would still leave many Americans under Canadian jurisdiction in the more northerly regions of the trail.

I am now in receipt of telegraphic instructions from the Marquis of [Page 325] Salisbury to communicate to you the reply received from the Canadian government, to the following effect:

The government of the Dominion of Canada will agree to the second line of the proposal, but suggest a slight modification.

Instead of following the course of the Klehini River, it is proposed that the line should follow the high bank of the river. This would appear to obviate many of the objections which have been previously raised to the river being taken as the boundary, and it the more necessary as the river flows through many channels over a bed of gravel, sometimes filling the whole bed and sometimes shrunk to the dimensions of a small stream. On account of its gravelly bottom the river course is shifting from year to year.

In submitting to you the above slight modification of the second alternative proposed by your note, No. 1529, I am directed to express the hope of Her Majesty’s Government that it may now be possible to come to a settlement of the provisional boundary question as above indicated, marking the line upon the ground by the erection of monuments.

I have, etc.,

Reginald Tower.