1798-1815. THE ISLANDS IN PASSAMAQUODDY BAY.

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ment made by De Monts more than one hundred and ninety years before. To "particularize the latitude and longitude" of the source of the St. Croix was not an easy matter. From this duty the commission was therefore relieved, by an explanatory article added to the treaty of 1798, and to-day the spot agreed on as the source is marked by a monument resembling those it used to be customary to erect in country churchyards.

And now a new difficulty arose. The treaty of 1783 set forth that the mouth of the St. Croix was in the Bay of Fundy. The commission fixed it in Passamaquoddy Bay,† and by so doing left the ownership of the group of islands-Dudley, Moose, and Frederick-to be settled some time in the future. Once, in 1803, and again in 1806 it seemed as if a settlement was about to be reached. But it was not till the great adjustment of old disputes in 1815 that a provision for a commission to decide who owned the islands was made part of a ratified treaty; and it was not till 1817 that, under the decision of the commission, Moose, Dudley, and Frederick were assigned to the United States, and all other islands in Passamaquoddy Bay and Grand Menan, in the Bay of Fundy, were awarded to Great Britain. +

The river St. Croix once agreed on, and its source discovered and plainly marked, the location of the remainder of the eastern boundary seemed to present no difficulty. The line was to be a true meridian from the source of the St. Croix to the highlands separating the waters flowing into the St. Lawrence from those which made their way into the ocean. But the determination of these highlands, on which so much depended, proved far from a simple matter, delayed the settlement of the boundary nearly fifty years, provoked bad feeling between the contending parties, and more than once called forth from Maine and Massachusetts the assertion of a doctrine dangerous to the safety of the Union. The idea

* Details and Documents may be found in International Arbitrations, J. B. Moore, vol. i, pp. 1-43. For Benson's Report, see pp. 33-43.

At Joe's Point, latitude 45° 5' 5" north, longitude 67° 12' 30" west from Greenwich.

For all the details see International Arbitrations, Moore, vol. i, pp. 45–64.

that highlands meant mountains was early formed and held to persistently. No such mountainous ridge appears on the map used by the treaty makers in 1783. But it does on later maps, and not till 1802 did the Government become aware that nothing of the sort existed.

In that year the Governor of Massachusetts assured the Secretary of State that commissioners had traversed the country in vain to find the highlands designated in the treaty; that south of the St. Lawrence there were no mountains; that the country was a great morass; that the rivers rising in it flowed many miles apart in opposite directions, some to the St. Lawrence and some to the Atlantic; and that, in his opinion, a commission should be appointed to ascertain and mark the northwest angle of Nova Scotia.

Influenced by this advice and information, Madison promptly instructed Rufus King to begin negotiations for the settlement of the Maine boundary, and bade him secure, if possible, a commission similar to that of 1795 to determine a point most proper to be substituted for that called in the treaty of 1783 the northwest angle of Nova Scotia. Mr. King did as commanded, and in the convention of 1803, which the Senate amended and Great Britain never ratified, was an article providing for the desired joint commission. Like provision was again made in the treaty concluded by Monroe and Pinkney in 1807. But this never reached the Senate, and when the peace commissioners met at Ghent in 1814 the boundary of Maine, from the source of the St. Croix to the head waters of the Connecticut, was still undetermined. Then, however, full provision was made, and in the summer of 1817 the work of surveying began in earnest. The country to be explored was a vast wilderness, uninhabited save by a few Indians and in one place by a few Frenchmen. The survey proved much more difficult, slow, and costly than had been expected, so that May, 1821, came before the board of commissioners met at New York to hear the arguments of the agents of the two contending governments. Starting at the source of the St. Croix river, the meridian as traced by the surveyors reached a high elevation at Mars Hill, descended thence into the valley of the St. John river,

1821.

THE NORTHWEST ANGLE OF NOVA SCOTIA. 469 crossed that stream, rose again to the summit of a ridge parting waters flowing into the St. John from those which reached the Restigouche, and one hundred and forty-three miles from the point of beginning, met a ridge on the north slope of which are the head waters of the river Metis, which enters the St. Lawrence. Where the meridian crossed the crest of this ridge was, the Americans held, the long-sought northwest angle of Nova Scotia.

From this the British agent dissented, and gave two reasons. In the first place, the ridge, he said, was a mere watershed, and had neither such elevation nor such continuity as would justify him in accepting it as the highlands meant by the treaty. In the second place, it parted the Metis, which fell into the St. Lawrence river from the Restigouche, which entered the Bay of Chaleurs, and could not, therefore, be said to "divide those rivers which empty themselves into the river St. Lawrence from those which fall into the Atlantic Ocean," as the treaty required. The words of the treaty "north to the highlands" meant that the meridian should end at the first highlands which "in any part of their extent" divided waters falling into the St. Lawrence from those falling into the Atlantic, and such a highland was Mars Hill. The hill, in truth, parted no such waters; but he held to his view, and as the north boundary of Maine and New Hampshire drew a line from Mars Hill to what he claimed as the northwesternmost head of the Connecticut river. Here, again, he took issue with the American agent, whose line met the head of Hall's stream. From the point where the Connecticut river crossed the forty-fifth parallel of north latitude the boundary line ran due west to the St. Lawrence. But the astronomers, to their dismay, found that the parallel had been wrongly marked by the old-time surveyors; that just east of Lake Champlain the true line lay three fourths of a mile south of the false one; and that on the territory belonging to Great Britain the United States had built one great fort at Rouse's Point and near by was rapidly finishing another.

As the result of the long and costly survey, the commissioners were called on to settle three questions: Where is