The Commission held prolonged sittings, first at Quebec and later at Washington, and reached tentative agreement on nearly all of the troublesome questions at issue. The bonding privileges on both sides the border were to be given an assured basis; the unneighborly alien labor laws were to be relaxed; the Rush-Bagot Convention regarding armament on the Great Lakes was to be revised; Canadian vessels were to abandon pelagic sealing in Bering Sea for a money compensation; and a reciprocity treaty covering natural products and some manufactures was sketched out. Yet no agreement followed. One issue, the Alaska boundary, proved insoluble, and as no agreement was acceptable which did not cover every difference, the Commission never again assembled after its adjournment in February, 1899. The boundary between Alaska and the Dominion was the only bit of the border line not yet determined. As in former cases of boundary disputes, the inaccuracies of map makers, the ambiguities of diplomats, the clash of local interests, and stiff-necked national pride made a settlement difficult. In 1825 Russia and Great Britain had signed a treaty which granted Russia a long panhandle strip down the Pacific coast. With the purchase of Alaska in 1867 the United States succeeded to Russia's claim. With the growth of settlement in Canada this long barrier down half of her Pacific coast was found to be irksome. Attempt after attempt to have the line determined only added to the stock of memorials in official pigeonholes. Then came the discovery of gold in the Klondike in 1896, and the question of easy access by sea to the Canadian back country became an urgent one. Canada offered to compromise, admitting the American title to the chief ports on Lynn Canal, Dyea and Skagway, if Pyramid Harbor were held Canadian. She urged arbitration on the model the United States had dictated in the Venezuela dispute. But the United States was in possession of the most important points. Its people believed the Canadian claims had been trumped up when the Klondike fields were opened. The Puget Sound cities wanted no breach in their monopoly of the supply trade to the north. The only concession the United States would make was to refer the dispute to a commission of six, three from each country, with the proviso that no area settled by Americans should in any event pass into other bands. Canada felt that arbitration under these conditions would either end in deadlock, leaving the United States in possession, or in concession by one or more of the British representatives, and so declined to accept the proposed arrangement.