The tribunal assembled in Paris on January 25, 1899. After various and necessary adjournments, it began the formal consideration of the case on June 15. After seven weeks of painstaking toil, in which the story of Spain’s earliest search for the gold of the West, the terms of the treaty of Münster, the law and practice of nations in respect to discovery, occupation, and settlement, and an intolerable mass and multitude of documentary and legal details pertaining to each and all of these matters, had been minutely examined and expounded for the information, but certainly not the edification, of the five learned jurists sitting in judgment in the case, the evidence of nervous strain and irritation to which I have referred in the beginning of this article was apparent. On the forty-seventh day Sir Richard Webster sarcastically invited the attention of ex-President Harrison to certain comments of Sir Travers Twiss on the Oregon case. “I had read Twiss on the Oregon case through long before I had the privilege of seeing you,” replied Mr. Harrison. “This investigation has been long and wearisome,” said General Tracy, but he reminded the tribunal that it involved the “investigation of four hundred years of history.” And on the fiftieth day Mr. Harrison, in closing his argument, said: “Counsel who addresses this tribunal comes to his work in a frame of weariness of mind and body, and he addresses judges who are weary.” It was on the fifty-sixth day that the tribunal announced its award. The true divisional line, as determined by the unanimous decision of the five jurists, gave sanction, as has been said, to the extreme pretensions of neither party. A large area west of the Essequibo River, to which Venezuela, without warrant, had laid claim, was held to be British territory; but, on the other hand, valuable tracts within the Schomburgk Line were awarded to Venezuela, the most important being the region of which the coast-line runs from Barima Point, at the mouth of the Orinoco, to Point Playa. The confirmation of the title to this territory, as to which Great Britain had firmly refused arbitration, gave Venezuela exclusive control of the mouth of her great river and of both its banks. The vast area, including the rich gold-mines, which Great Britain had belted about by the audacious westward extension of her claims, went altogether to Venezuela. [Illustration: From London “Punch” for December 28, 1895 “THE COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON!!” ~President Cleveland~: “Waal, Salisbury, sir, whether you like it or not, we propose to arbitrate on this matter ourselves, and, in that event, we shall abide by our own decision.”