<P> The posts set up on the passes by the NWMP were effective in the short term, as the provisional boundary was accepted, if grudgingly . In September 1898, serious negotiations began between the United States and Canada to settle the issue, but those meetings failed . </P> <P> The treaty of 1825 was drawn in French and the 1903 English advocates discussed the meaning of words like "côte - coast", "lisière strip" and "crête - crest". The maps of George Vancouver, which were used as a fixing line by the commission of 1825, showed a continuous line of mountains parallel to the coast--however, the mountain range is neither parallel to the coast nor continuous . </P> <P> Finally, in 1903, the Hay - Herbert Treaty between the United States and Britain entrusted the decision to an arbitration by a mixed tribunal of six members: three Americans (Elihu Root, Secretary of War; Henry Cabot Lodge, senator from Massachusetts; and George Turner, ex-senator from Washington), two Canadians (Sir Louis A. Jette, Lieutenant Governor of Quebec; and Allen B. Aylesworth, K.C., from Toronto), and one Briton (Baron Alverstone). All sides respected Root, but he was a member of the U.S. Cabinet . Canadians ridiculed the choice of the obscure ex-Senator Turner and, especially, Lodge, a leading historian and diplomatic specialist whom they saw as an unobjective . </P> <P> The tribunal considered six main points: </P>

Which agreement settled a boundary dispute between british canada and the united states