220 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
THE ENGLISH PERIOD. 
1763-1783. 
The words of the Treaty of Paris by which the King of France 
yielded all claim to Acadia and ceded Canada to England occur in Ar- 
ticle IV. and are as follows : — 
His Most Christian Majesty renounces all pretensions which he has here- 
tofore formed, or might form, to Nova Scotia or Acadia, in all its parts, and 
guarantees the whole of it, and with all its dependencies, to the King of Great 
Britain : moreover His Most Christian Majesty cedes and guarantees to His 
said Britannic Majesty, in full right, Canada, with all its dependencies, as 
well as the Island of Cape Breton, and all the other islands and coasts in the 
Gulf and River St. Lawrence. 
Thus came to an end all disputes between England and France 
as to the bounds of Acadia.. 
The Treaty of Paris gave Canada to England, and, later in the 
same year, 1763, it was erected by royal proclamation into a Province 
under the name of Quebec, and its southern boundary was thus de- 
scribed : — 
: crossing the River St. Lawrence and the Lake Champlain, in forty- 
five degrees of north latitude, passes along the Highlands which divide the 
rivers that empty themselves into the said river St. Lawrence from those 
which fall into the sea, and also along the north coast of the Bay des Chaleurs 
and the Coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, to Cape Rosiers. 
These boundaries of Quebec were further established by an act 
passed in 1774 in which they were defined in practically an identical 
manner, as follows : — 
bounded, on the south, by a line from the Bay of Chaleurs along 
the Highlands which divide the rivers that empty themselves into the River 
St. Lawrence from those which fall into the sea, to a point in forty-five 
degrees of northern latitude. 
While for the most part the meaning of these words is clear 
enough,— namely, in establishing a St. Lawrence-Atlantic watershed 
as the southern boundary of Quebec, they contain a remarkable double 
inconsistency, namely, they leave a gap between the eastern end of 
the highlands and the western end of the Bay Chaleur (for the High- 
lands do not and cannot come to the head ‘of such a bay), and second- 
ly, they ignore the river Restigouche, which flows neither into the 
