The commission of inquiry was appointed. It promptly began and industriously pursued its investigations for many months, the governments of Great Britain and Venezuela willingly contributing to the success of the commission’s labors by placing at its disposal elaborate statements and all available evidence, while in the archives of Spain and Holland documents were made accessible that threw much light upon the remote origins of the controversy. But before the commission had finished its work, Great Britain and Venezuela, by the treaty of January 2, 1897, agreed to an arbitration. The labors of the commission were not in vain, however. It reached the conclusion that neither the extreme claims of Great Britain nor those of Venezuela were admissible, being unsupported by proofs of title, and the great mass of documentary evidence it had collected was of much use and value for the arbitral tribunal. By the terms of the Pauncefote-Andradé Treaty, signed at Washington January 2, 1897, Great Britain and Venezuela agreed to the appointment of an arbitral tribunal “to determine the boundary line between the colony of British Guiana and the United States of Venezuela.” The tribunal was to “ascertain the extent of the territories belonging to, or that might lawfully be claimed by, the United Netherlands, or by the Kingdom of Spain, respectively, at the time of the acquisition of the colony of British Guiana,” in order to establish the chain of lawful title. Rules of procedure were prescribed in the treaty. Adverse holding for fifty years, or exclusive political control, as well as actual settlement of a district was to be considered as making a good title; recognition and effect were to be given to rights and claims resting on other grounds valid in international law; and such effect was to be given to the occupation, at the time of signing the treaty, of the territory of one of the parties by the citizens or subjects of the other, as the equities of the case and the principles of international law should be deemed to require. It was provided in article II that the tribunal should consist of five jurists. Those named on the part of Great Britain were Baron Herschel, and Sir Richard Collins of the Supreme Court of Judicature. Baron Herschel having died before the convening of the tribunal, Lord Chief-Justice Russell was named to fill the vacancy. On the part of Venezuela, Chief-Justice Fuller of the United States Supreme Court, and Associate-Justice David Brewer of that court, were named. The fifth member of the tribunal named by these four was Frederic de Martens, the Russian jurist, who became president of the tribunal.