[GANONG ] BOUNDARIES OF NEW BRUNSWICK 141 
INTRODUCTION. 
A. THE PERSONAL EQUATION IN BOUNDARY STUDIES. 
The histories of the boundary lines of different countries are won- 
derfully diverse. On the one hand, as in western provinces or terri- 
tories, a region may be established from the publie land by legislative 
enactment, with all its boundaries straight lines running north and 
south and east and west. Such boundaries are not an evolution ; they 
are a special creation, and anyone may tell without prejudice the plain 
and simple facts of their origin. From this there are all gradations up 
to the other extreme, such as New Brunswick shows, in which the 
boundaries are of the most diverse ages and origins, and in which they 
are bound up with events which have aroused strong, and even violent, 
partizan feeling. Such boundaries are an evolution, in the elucidation 
of the factors of which the historian has to face two sets of difficulties, 
first, the obscurity or absence of records as to first evolutionary origin, 
and second, the existence of partizan prejudice in himself or his readers. 
As to the nature of the records, much will be said later in this paper. 
But as to partizan prejudice something should be noted here. 
There is, perhaps, no subject, excepting religion and politics, more 
difficult for most people to discuss without prejudice than disputed 
boundary lines, and certainly there is none about which nations are 
more ready to go to war or individuals to law. This is of course natural 
enough, for the prize of a temporary struggle is the lasting possession 
of that tangible, permanent, and necessary object,—land. It is, I 
believe, axiomatic in historical investigation that no one can justly esti- 
mate events which arouse strong feeling in which he has himself shared. 
It is natural, then, that men not accustomed to calm deliberation should 
be prone to extreme partizanship in such matters, and also that they 
should be loth to accept the conclusions of investigators which do not 
happen to coincide with their own views. After all, regretfully though a 
student must say it, unreasoning partizanship is the natural condition 
of the human mind ; it is the condition of least resistance, the condi- 
tion of relaxation to which the mind always reverts when preoccupied 
with other matters. The judicial, non-partizan condition is the un- 
natural condition, the condition of tension which can be maintained 
only by constant effort. It is so much easier, and therefore more agree- 
able, to believe one’s enemy wholly wrong and one’s self wholly right, 
than to try to determine whether the enemy may not in something 
