Page:New Brunswick Magazine Issue 1.djvu/342

Society of Canada, recently issued, (III, section II, page 378). Now the watershed intersected by the line drawn north from the source of the St. Croix on that map does separate rivers flowing into the St. Lawrence from those flowing into the Atlantic Ocean, and this is not only true on Mitchell's map, but also on most others of that time. Of course the maps were wrong in this, but nobody then knew it, and hence the commissioners gave a perfectly correct description of the "Northwest angle of Nova Scotia" as it would appear if drawn out on Mitchell's map and in the only way in which it could be known to them. In the face of these facts I cannot see any escape from the truth and justice of the Maine claim that the commissioners meant to make the boundary line between Maine and Nova Scotia run north to the highlands just south of the St. Lawrence.

There is yet other evidence of the right of the American claim. Not only did England never dispute it until well into this century, and perhaps then, (as has been suggested) only because the war of 1812 showed how the communication between eastern and western British America would be cut off if the American claim were admitted, but documents are extant showing that the American claim was recognized and admitted as a matter of course by at least two of the ablest lawyers and most devoted loyalists in New Brunswick's early history. One of these was Ward Chipman, the elder, whose part in the foundation of New Brunswick and services in connection with the settlement of the boundaries are well known. In several of his letters in 1796–99 to the authorities in England (of which his own manuscript copies are now in my possession) he refers to the north line as crossing the St. John and cutting off communication with Canada, and to the need there will be for a future negotia-