40 tittmann: our northern boundaries 



the line along the 45th parallel, called for by the treaty, it was 

 discovered that the 45th parallel was about three-quarters of a 

 mile south of the Valentine-Collins line and that the United States 

 had built a fort costing about a million dollars at Rouses Point, 

 north of the 45th parallel and therefore under the treaty defini- 

 tion in British territory. This discovery was made in 1818 and 

 caused a dispute which was settled by the Webster-Ashburton 

 treaty of 1842 under which the Valentine-Collins line was adopted 

 by a compromise in regard to other disputed parts of the boundary. 



Here I may digress from my subject for a moment to interject 

 the remark that the Commissioners under the Treaty of Ghent 

 missed their opportunity of demonstrating the great practical 

 value of one of the most useful and precise astronomical instru- 

 ments, the Zenith telescope. For they were equipped with one, 

 but failed to use it, because its verticality was dependent on a 

 plummet. A similar instrument, which however was equipped 

 with a level, was in the possession of the Coast Survey and this 

 was transferred, ''ceded" as Superintendent Hassler said, to Lieut. 

 Talcott for the purpose of another boundary survey in 1833 and 

 to him fell the distinction of developing and applying the method 

 of determining latitudes with the Zenith telescope. 



We may resume the story of treaties based on incorrect maps, 

 at the northwestern angle of the Lake of the Woods. The Treaty 

 of 1783 provided that the boundary should run from the north- 

 westernmost point of the Lake of the Woods, on a due west 

 course to the Mississippi. A glance at the map will show the 

 impossibility of such a line and the fact was recognized in the 

 Treaty of 1794 by the admission that the course and location of 

 the Mississippi was uncertain and, in the Treaty of 1818, it was 

 provided that if the northwesternmost point of the Lake of the 

 Woods was not on the 49th parallel, a line should be drawn north 

 or south to the 49th and the boundary should run from their inter- 

 section due west to the Stony Mountains. By the time of the 

 Webster-Ashburton Treaty in 1842 it was known that the north- 

 westernmost point of the Lake of the Woods was north of the 49th 

 parallel and the description of the boundary was accordingly 

 modified. 



