Page:New Brunswick Magazine Issue 1.djvu/339

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THE ASHBURTON TREATY.

299

"Art. II. And that all disputes which might arise in future on the subject of the boundaries of the said United States may be prevented, it is hereby agreed and declared, that the following are and shall be their boundaries, viz.: From the North-west Angle of Nova Scotia, viz., that angle which is formed by a line drawn due North from the source of St. Croix river to the Highlands, along the said Highlands, which divide those rivers that empty themselves into the River St. Laurence, from those which fall into the Atlantic Ocean, to the North-Westernmost Head of Connecticut river." (Here is the description of the remaining boundaries of the United States, of no importance to our present subject until the following occurs.) "East, by a line to be drawn along the middle of the river St. Croix from its mouth in the bay of Fundy to its source, and from its source directly North to the aforesaid Highlands which divide the rivers that fall into the Atlantic Ocean from those which fall into the river St. Laurence, comprehending all islands," etc. (Murdoch, Nova Scotia III, 24, 25).

Though drawn up in good faith and apparently with unmistakable clearness, this description of boundaries fitted so badly the country it tried to describe that it gave rise to over half a century of international disputes, so bitter as to bring the two nations near to the verge of war, so important as to require successive weighty Commissions for their settlement, and so lasting that their final echoes have hardly yet died away. This entire subject of the evolution of our boundaries has not been adequately treated by any New Brunswick writer, and it yet awaits a thorough and judicial treatment. But so far as our present subject is concerned we have to deal with only one phase of the disputes, that which has to do with the length of the due North line from the source of the St. Croix, and the resultant position of the "Northwest angle of Nova Scotia."^[1]

↑ Two subordinate questions not directly connected with the present subject are yet of sufficient interest and importance to deserve mention here,—namely, the identity of the River St. Croix and the choice for the boundary of the East instead of the West branch of that river. It has been claimed by most American writers that the Magaguadavic should have been made the boundary, on the ground that the river named St. Croix on Mitchell's map (the map used by the Commissioners in their negotiations) was really meant for the Magaguadavic. I have been able to prove that the St. Croix of Mitchell's map is really the present St. Croix and not the Magaguadavic, (in Magazine of American History, XXVI, 261 and XXVII, 72) for the name applied on that map to the lake at its head is the Indian name of Grand Lake of the Chiputnaticook Chain. The position of the mouth of that river is altogether inconclusive, since by a mistake of Mitchell in copying an earlier map of Southack it empties by Letite Passage and not

[p299-1] Two subordinate questions not directly connected with the present subject are yet of sufficient interest and importance to deserve mention here,—namely, the identity of the River St. Croix and the choice for the boundary of the East instead of the West branch of that river. It has been claimed by most American writers that the Magaguadavic should have been made the boundary, on the ground that the river named St. Croix on Mitchell's map (the map used by the Commissioners in their negotiations) was really meant for the Magaguadavic. I have been able to prove that the St. Croix of Mitchell's map is really the present St. Croix and not the Magaguadavic, (in Magazine of American History, XXVI, 261 and XXVII, 72) for the name applied on that map to the lake at its head is the Indian name of Grand Lake of the Chiputnaticook Chain. The position of the mouth of that river is altogether inconclusive, since by a mistake of Mitchell in copying an earlier map of Southack it empties by Letite Passage and not

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