The signing of this treaty brings a quarrel to an end that has been going on for upwards of a century.
The boundary line which has been so much disputed has been surveyed several times, but no two surveyors have agreed, and so all the troubles have come about.
The treaty says that the arbitrators are to find out just how much land belonged to the colony of British Guiana at the time it became the property of England, and that they are to work from that point.
The Committee of Arbitration is to meet in Paris, and is to consist of two Englishmen, Baron Herschel, and Sir Richard Henn Collins, a Judge of the English Supreme Court; one American, Judge Brewer; and one member chosen by Venezuela, who is also an American, the Hon. Melville Weston Fuller, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
These four arbitrators are to decide among themselves who shall be the fifth man to join them in their work.
If they have not been able to agree on the fifth man in three months after they meet, our old friend, King Oscar of Sweden, is to step in and fill the vacant place.
The treaty provides that within six months after it is signed the committee must meet in Paris, and that the whole work shall, if possible, be completed within six months after the meeting.
The two copies of the treaty, as soon as they were signed by Sir Julian Pauncefote for England, and Senor José Andrade for Venezuela, were sent off, the one to London, the other to Caracas, to be ratified by the governments of England and Venezuela.
The ratification must be made within six months of the date of signing, and then the work of the committee will begin.