282 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
pretation of the treaty as applied to the islands, suggests that the in- 
tention was to divide the Bay of Passamaquoddy equally, and claims 
that the Island of Grand Manan and probably some others belong to 
the United States. In this year (1784), obeying instructions from the 
Massachusetts Committee on Eastern Lands, he surveyed Moose, Dud- 
ley and Fredericks Islands, and the Committee sold Dudley Island to 
John Allan, who settled there, and made improvements. (State Papers, 
I., 95.) I have nowhcre found any statement of the grounds on 
which Massachusetts claimed these islands. Presumably it was on the 
ground above mentioned, namely that Nova Scotia’s legal right to them 
on the basis of the Alexander grant of 1621 was unknown, so that the 
question was supposed to hinge upon jurisdiction, and the Province 
was not known to have exercised jurisdiction over these particular 
islands. Moreover, it cannot be doubted that the authorities perceived 
the necessity of the possession of these islands in order to give the 
United States a right to a navigable channel into the Bay of Passama- 
quoddy, for there is no navigable channel between Moose Island and 
the United States coast. (See Map No. 25). 
In July of the next year (1785), New Brunswick laid formal claim 
to these islands in the warrant or charter erecting the county of 
Charlotte (later to be described under “County Boundaries”), in which 
she made the western boundary of that county “ the River Scoodiac or 
St. Croix and the Western Shore of the Bay of Passamaquoddy, 
including the Island of Grandmanan.” This claim was still further 
emphasized the next year in the Act of January 3 (1786), dividing the 
Province into counties and parishes, in which the Parish of West Isles 
in Charlotte County is erected as follows :— 
The seventh Town or Parish to be called known and distinguished by the 
name of West Isles, to contain Deer Island, Campo Bello Island, Grand Manan 
Island, Moose Island, Frederick Island and Dudley Island, with all the lesser 
Islands contiguous to them not included in the Towns before-mentioned.’ 
In the meantime, however, sometime in August, 1785, the High 
Sheriff of Charlotte County summoned the inhabitants of Moose 
Island to attend the courts of St. Andrews as jurymen, which how- 
ever, under a warning from one James Avery, a local Justice of the 
Peace, who told them they were subjects of Massachusetts, and doubt- 
less also under the influence of John Allan, they refused to do. Avery 
was fully aware of the necessity for holding these islands to secure navi- 

1 An account of this survey is in Bangor Historical Magazine, III., 72. 
2 Governor Bowdoin in a Mesage to the Massachusetts Senate and House 
of Representatives, July 7, 1786, calls this act,—‘‘a most daring insult upon 
the dignity of Massachusetts and the United States” (Boundary MS.) 
