LECTURES. 115 



republic ; and in the negotiations respecting its limits towards the 

 Mississippi, towards Florida, and towards Canada, both early and 

 recent maps were always in demand, and could sometimes only with 

 difficulty be procured, because there existed no collection or depot for 

 preseryjug and keeping them in order. 



The predominance in America of boundary questions, above all 

 others, strikes us not only in an international point of view, but also 

 when we look into the history of each particular State and province. 

 All the different colonies which the English planted on the eastern coast 

 of America have had, from the beginning, like the Spanish discoverers 

 and conquistadores, quarrels about the degrees of latitude and longi- 

 tude, the rivers and the mountains, to which their territories ought to 

 extend. Disputes of this kind have been innumerable, whilst few or 

 no quarrels from any other cause whatever have arisen to disturb their 

 peaceable relations. Such were the boundary questions between Mas- 

 sachusetts and Rhode Island, between New Hampshire and Maine, 

 between Connecticut and the old Dutch colony on Hudson's river, be- 

 tween Georgia and Florida, between Carolina and Virginia, Pennsyl- 

 vania and Delaware, &c. This last, the Maryland boundary question, 

 commenced with the very foundation of that colony, and gave rise 

 to endless treaties, lawsuits, surveys, measurements of degrees of 

 latitude, and constructions of maps, which occupied more than a 

 century. Nor can it yet be assumed that all the maps illustrating 

 Mason and Dixon's line are superseded, obsolete, and of no further 

 practical use. 



The same may be said in relation to the subdivision of the great 

 colonies and States into counties, and of the further division of these 

 counties, which were at first very large, into smaller counties and into 

 townships. The necessity for consulting old maps and for construct- 

 ing new ones was endless. 



The same peculiarly great importance which maps possess in 

 America, with respect to defining /S'^aife boundaries, they have also 

 with respect to private landed property. In Europe the greater and 

 smaller divisions of landed estate have been from time immemorial 

 included in long known and settled limits, indicated by natural or 

 artificial metes and bounds. Further, such extraordinary and whole- 

 sale grants of land have never been made in Europe as was customary 

 in tliis new world, which has been pa'celled out in lots, sometimes of 

 enormous magnitude. Never was there such a lawsuit in Europe as 

 the celebrated one of the heirs of Lord Stirling, who laid claim at 

 once to as many millions of acres as would be equal to the surface of 

 some European kingdoms ; a suit which was at last decided with the 

 help and by the authority of a geographical map. 



As broad grants of land were once made by the English and French 

 kings in Canada, Virginia, Louisiana, &c., as by those of Spain in 

 Florida, Texas, and the Mississippi valley ; and consequently, to this 

 very day, lawsuits in which some large portion of a city or county is 

 made the object of the claim are here matters of not uncommon 

 occurrence ; and in all these sorts of claims former maps are often 

 the only authoritative documents that can be referred to for a decision. 



Thus it is evident that chartography runs like a colored thread 



