The pledge of the United States for Cuban independence had hardly been fulfilled when another Latin Republic became involved in trouble. Venezuela, torn by war, had incurred obligations to European creditors, and had defaulted in the payments upon them. In December, 1902, Great Britain and Germany announced a blockade of the Venezuelan ports in retaliation, and they were soon joined by other Powers with similar claims. Disclaiming intent to protect Venezuela in defaulting, Roosevelt urged the European claimants to abandon force for arbitration. Under his leadership joint commissions were finally established, and in 1903 the legal technicalities involved were sent to The Hague. The episode involved a new interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine, making it clear that unless the United States wished to protect the South American Republics in the evasion of their debts it must assume some responsibility for the honest settlement of them. The boundary of Alaska next became a subject for arbitration. Since the valley of the Yukon had attracted its first great migration in the summer of 1897 the mining-camps had steadily increased in importance. Many of these were on the Canadian side of the meridian of 141 deg., and all were reached either by the river steamers or the trails from the south. The most important ports of entry were Dyea and Skaguay, at the head of the Lynn Canal, a long fiord projecting some ninety miles into the continent. From these ports the prospector plunged inland, climbed the Chilkoot or the Chilkat Pass, and followed one of several overland trails to the Upper Yukon. The importance given to Dyea and Skaguay revived the question of their ownership and with this the boundary of Alaska. When Seward bought Alaska for the United States in 1867 he received it with the boundaries agreed upon at St. Petersburg between England and Russia in 1825. These followed the meridian of 141 deg. from Mount St. Elias to the Arctic Ocean, and followed the irregularities of the shore-line southeast from that mountain to the Pacific at 54 deg. 40', North Latitude. The narrow coast strip was described as following the windings (_sinuosites_) of the shore, bounded by the shore mountains if possible, but in no case to be more than thirty miles wide. The narrow Lynn Canal pierces the thirty-mile strip, and the dispute turned chiefly upon interpretation: whether the canal should be regarded as a _sinuosite_ of the shore, around which the boundary must go, or as a stream which it might properly cross.