[&ANoxG] BOUNDARIES OF NEW BRUNSWICK 251 
drawn, that the north line should start from the head of tide, not from 
the extreme source. I have read through this argument with consider- 
able surprise that such weak, well-nigh groundless and far- 
fetched arguments could be seriously advanced by so great a lawyer, 
and that so many errors of statement could be made by one who was 
no mean historian.1 This argument had evidently been communicated 
earlier to Chipman, for on the same date he files his reply, in which 
he answers clearly enough the points raised by Sullivan, showing the 
identity of the River St. Croix of the treaty with the historic River 
St. Croix of all the earlier periods back to Alexander and Champlain. 
After the filing of these documents, however, two new contribu- 
tions to the evidence of the case became known, both very unfavourable 
to the American claim. The first of these was the testimony of John 
Adams and John Jay, negotiators of the treaty of 1783 as to the St. 
Croix of that treaty. Sullivan had relied much upon the fact that 
Mitchell’s map was known to be the one used by the negotiators 
(though ignoring the fact that the map had no legal or official recog- 
nition in the treaty), and upon the supposition that it was the St. Croix 
of that map (selected because it was the first river west of the St. John, 
chosen after that river first proposed had been abandoned), which the 
negotiators had in mind as the St. Croix of the treaty, hence arguing 
that the St. Croix of Mitchell should be the boundary whether or not 
the old St. Croix. Unfortunately the testimony of Adams and Jay 
by no means sustained this contention, for, as their depositions show 
(given in full by Moore), the St. Croix in the minds of the negotiators 
in 1782 was the St. Croix which formed the boundary of Massachusetts 
Bay, which was assumed to be that marked on Mitchell’s map, but 
no consideration was given to the possibility that Mitchell might be 
mistaken in his location of that river. Sullivan was hence obliged to 
shift his ground upon this question which he did in his later argument. 
The second piece of evidence above referred to was the final identifica- 
tion of the Scoodic with the St. Croix of Champlain. On the visit 
of the commissioners to Dochet Island in October, 1796, they had 
not with them Champlain’s works and maps, but only those portions 
of the narratives contained in the Memorials of the English and French 


1 For instance, he asserts, “‘The River St. Johns, the Penobscott, and the 
Kennebec have all been called the Saint Croix,” but of this there is no his- 
torical evidence whatsoever, aside from the hazy and incorrect assertion to 
that effect made by Pownall in his ‘‘ Topographical Description” of 1776. 
John Adams also adopts the same statement as will appear later. Again, he 
attempts to show that the Nova Scotia of 1621 was not a newly-created pro- 
vince, but an earlier one re-established; but his argument on this point is 
so laboured and devoid of evidence that its introduction must have weakened 
rather than strengthened his cause with the commissioners. 
