[GANONG ] BOUNDARIES OF NEW BRUNSWICK 307 
in question, it was almost unknown and no economic interests were 
at stake. Indeed, throughout the controversies which followed it 
is plain that there was never any comparison as to the relative value 
of this region to the two nations, for while the territory in dispute 
was of great actual value to Great Britain because including her 
invaluable line of communication, it was never of any great positive 
value to the United States, its value being mainly potential, as a 
possibility of annoyance to her enemy in time of war. It was not 
until after the St. Croix question was settled in 1798 that the subject 
began to receive attention in the United States. Indeed, until that 
question was settled, discussions as to the position of the north-west 
angle of Nova Scotia could not be much more than speculative, since 
its position depended upon the position of the source of the River 
St. Croix, undetermined until that year. It was, however, in the 
course of the arguments made before the St. Croix commission by 
the agents that the question was for the first time formally raised. 
The British agent in his efforts to secure the Scoodic or West Branch 
instead of the Chiputneticook or North Branch of the St. Croix 
as the boundary, made it an argument that the treaty of 1783 
required the boundary of the United States to begin at the north- 
west angle of Nova Scotia ; that this north-west angle must lie where 
a due north line from the source of the St. Croix meets with high- 
lands separating rivers which flow into the River St. Lawrence from 
those flowing into the Atlantic Ocean ; that a line drawm due north 
from the source of the Chiputneticook branch would not meet such 
highlands and hence would not fulfil the conditions of the treaty, but 
that a line drawn due north from the source of the Scoodic would 
meet such highlands and fulfil the requirements of the treaty ; and 
that hence the western source of the Scoodic must be chosen. As 
a matter of fact this argument is invalid, as our present correct know- 
ledge shows, for the line from the Scoodic meets with the same high- 
lands as does the line from the Chiputneticook, namely, highlands 
separating St. Lawrence from Bay Chaleur waters, but the argument 
was supposed at the time to be topographically sound and was a very 
powerful point in support of the British claim. To meet it the 
American agent was obliged to discredit not only the importance 
but the very possibility of fixing the position of the north-west angie 
of Nova Scotia, and this he does in his arguments. In one place he 
indulges in the following flight of eloquence : — 
. . the northwest angle of Nova Scotia. That imaginary point, that 
area in the clouds, that boundary established on a fog bank. . . . It has 
already as the agent for the United States believes, been fully shown, that 
such an angle has been conceived, but has never yet had birth. That it has 
