[GANONG ] BOUNDARIES OF NEW BRUNSWICK 301 
In the former case the words of the treaty and of the Act of 1774 
amount almost to identity, with the exception of the substitution of 
Atlantic Ocean for sea, so that we cannot doubt that the words of the 
treaty were taken from the words of the Act. In the second case the 
description has been rearranged in the treaty as compared with the Act, 
but the same words and phrases occur too frequently to allow us to doubt 
that they have been drawn from the same sources. 
We consider next the use of the expression north-west angle of 
Nova Scotia, and the description of it given by the treaty. This 
phrase appears to have originated in 1779, and occurs first in the in- 
structions to a minister to negotiate a peace with Great Britain, drawn 
up by a committee of Congress. As used by them, however, it did not 
at all apply to the place assigned it by the treaty of 1783. Its first 
occurrence is as follows :— 
These States are bounded North, by a line to be drawn from the north- 
west angle of Nova Scotia along the highlands which divide those rivers 
which empty themselves into the River St. Lawrence, from those which 
fall into the Atlantick Ocean, to the northwesternmost head of Con- 
necticut River . . . .Hast by a line to be drawn along the middle of St. 
John’s River from its source to its mouth in the Bay of Fundy. 
(Secret Journals of Congress, cited in the ‘‘ Statement’”’ of 1829, 251.) 
These instructions were reaffirmed in 1780 and in 1782, and were 
those by which the negotiators were guided in framing the treaty, though, 
as we have seen, they departed from them in places as they were 
expected to do when it seemed best. In them the term “ north-west 
angle of Nova Scotia,” was applied, not as in the treaty and later, 
but obviously to that point where the source of the St. John meets 
with the Highlands, namely, far westward in Maine (compare the 
Map No. 30). The instructions thus place the north-west angle of 
Nova Scotia precisely where the Nova Scotia Government placed the 
north-west corner of Sunbury County in 1770 (compare page 226 and 
Map No. 16). There is, however, no evidence whatever, that the one 
action suggested the other, for the several documents extant 
(given in the “Statement” of 1829, 252-255), show that the 
St. John was proposed as a boundary through its whole length because 
it formed a convenient natural boundary, and not because it was con-' 
sidered as undoubtedly the ancient boundary between Nova Scotia and 
Massachusetts! The negotiators, however, found it impossible to 
secure the St. John as a boundary, and as we have seen, adopted 
instead the old boundaries between Massachusetts and Nova Scotia. 

1 The framers of the instructions do indeed try to make out a case for 
the St. John as a legal boundary, but it is very weak, as they, indeed, 
acknowledge. 
