158 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
of its discovery by Cabot, while under the same right, colonies were 
chartered by Queen Elizabeth to settle under Ralegh’s auspices in Vir- 
ginia. This first Virginia charter was without geographical boundaries, 
but gave permission 
to discouer, search, finde out, and view such remote, heathen and barbarous 
lands, .countreis, and territories not actually possessed by any Christian 
prince, nor inhabited by Christian people. : 
(Sir Walter Ralegh, Prince Society, 95.) 
The English now began to pay greater attention to colonization, and 
various voyagers and traders visited Virginia and the coast of Maine. 
Such was the condition of affairs, from our present point of view, when 
the vear 1603 opened, an important year in the study of the evolution 
of our boundaries. The English were in formal and undisputed pos- 
session of Newfoundland and of the North American coast from an 
undefined region in Maine to south of Virginia, while the French had 
a claim to the basin of the St. Lawrence, with an altogether indefinite 
boundary between them and the English to the southward. AI claims 
of Spain and Portugual to any of this territory had lapsed never to 
reappear. 
In the year 1603 the King of France determined to explore and 
secure by settlement that portion of country between the St. Lawrence 
Basin and the settlements of the English on the south, a region called 
on the Italian maps of the period, Acadia,’ and accordingly he pre- 
pared to send out the Sieur de Monts with a considerable expedition to 
found a permanent settlement. In the commission to De Monts definite 
boundaries, the first assigned by France in the new world, are set to his 
command, in the following words :— 
Vous commettons, ordonnons, faisons, constituons et établissons 
nôtre Lieutenant general, pour representer nôtre persone aux pais, territoires, 
côtes et confins de la Cadie, à commencer dés le quarantiéme degré jusques au 
quarante-sixiéme ; Et en icelle étendue ou partie d’icelle. 
TRANSLATION. 
We . . . . do commit, ordain, make, constitute and establish you, our 
Lieutenant-General, for to represent our person in the countries, territories, 
coasts and confines of La Cadia, to begin from the 40th degree to the 46th 
and in the same distance or part of it. 
(Original and translation from Bourinot’s “ Builders of Nova Scotia.’’) * 
Projected upon a modern map (see map No. 4), these boundaries 
would cut southern Pennsylvania on the south and Cape Breton Island 

1 On the origin and cartographical history, see later in this paper, foot- 
note on page 161. 
* This document is given by Bourinot in full in original and translation. 
