Page:New Brunswick Magazine Issue 1.djvu/338

so far from robbing us of what was our due, it really gave us territory not awarded us by the treaty.

My own attention was first turned to this subject through studies upon the early maps of New Brunswick. I noticed that the maps of the last century, almost without exception, sustained the American and not the British claims. I accordingly investigated all other evidence and all documents accessible to me bearing upon the subject, with the result stated above. I have given in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada for 1897 (Section II, page 383) a brief discussion of the evidence. It is a pleasure to be able to add that Mr. James Hannay, in various newspaper writings, has expressed independently substantially the same opinion.

The American claim, it will be remembered, was that the due north line from the source of the St. Croix should cross the River St. John above Grand Falls (instead of stopping as it does at the river) and continue to the highlands just south of the St. Lawrence, and that all west of this line was awarded to them by the treaty of 1783. The British claim, which was first introduced in this century, was that the north line should stop at Mars Hill, south of the Aroostook, and thence run west along the Aroostook–Penobscot watershed. The present line, secured by Lord Asburton, roughly splits the difference between the two claims. It does not give us a convenient nor natural boundary, but tor that the British Commissioners who negotiated the treaty of 1783 should be held responsible and not Lord Asburton, who saved us from a part, though he could not save us from all, of the consequences of their action. Yet for these Commissioners, too, there is excuse, for events and odds were fearfully against them.

The boundary in part between the United States and British America was defined in the treaty of 1783 as follows:—