Mr. Hay to Sir Mortimer Durand.

No. 143.]

Excellency: I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your note No. 176 of October 1 last, with which is inclosed a copy of a report by Messrs. Tittmann and King, the commissioners appointed to carry out the delimitation of the Alaskan boundary, so far as it was left undefined by the London tribunal.

In this report the commissioners recommend that the boundary between the points “P” and “T,” mentioned in the award of the tribunal, “be marked by the summits where geographical coordinates are given in the attached table (also inclosed with your note), with the proviso that between the points 7 and 8, and 8 and T, where the distances between the peaks given in the table exceed the probable limit of intervisibility, power be granted to the commissioners, after they have secured sufficient data, to select additional and intermediate peaks, no such peak to be more than twenty-five hundred meters from the straight line joining peaks 7 and 8 or 8 and T of the attached table.”

You state that the Canadian government are satisfied with the proposed line, which they consider follows sufficiently closely the straight line joining the points designated as “T” and “P” in the Alaska boundary award and on the map accompanying it, and which is approximately parallel with the coast; and that they have expressed the wish that the United States Government should be approached with a view to obtain their formal agreement to that line as an international boundary.

You, therefore, by direction of the Marquess of Lansdowne, inform me that His Majesty’s Government are ready to accept this line as satisfactory, and inquire whether the Government of the United States also agree to it; and, if so, whether the formal agreement between the two countries should be arranged by means of a convention or by an exchange of notes.

In reply I have the honor to state that the Government of the United States is likewise ready to accept the proposed line as satisfactory, and considers that it will be sufficient for the two Governments to accept formally the recommendation of the commissioners by an exchange of notes.

I have, etc.,

John Hay.