310 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
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ing to the words of the treaty, must cross the St. John and run to the 
northern highlands, as the Americans claimed, cutting off the comuni- 
cation by the Madawaska. This apparently illogical and irreconcilable 
attitude is however easily explained, for in New Brunswick, while the 
American claim was granted, it was both hoped and expected that some 
special negotiation would so alter the line as to preserve the communi- 
cation with Canada, and in this case it was of course desired and 
thought right that the territory thus to be acquired should fall to New 
Brunswick, and the value of an early and emphatic claim in helping 
to secure it was of course clear. 
The most conspicuous admission of the correctness of the Ameri- 
can claim, that the highlands of the treaty were north of the St. 
John, made by a New Brunswicker, was by Ward Chipman before the 
St. Croix Commission in 1797, when he said :— 
“A line due north from the source of the western or main branch of the 
Schoodiac or St. Croix will fully secure this effect [to keep sources of rivers 
within territory through which they empty] to the United States in every 
instance, and also to Great Britain in all instances except in that of the 
River St. John, where it becomes impossible by reason that the source of this 
River is to the westward not only of the Western Boundary Line of Nova 
Scotia, but of the sources of the Penobscot and even of the Kennebec, so that 
this north Line must of necessity cross the River St. John, but it will cross 
it in a part of it almost at the foot of the highlands, and where it ceases to 
be navigable. But if a north line is traced from the source of the Cheputna- 
kook, it will not only cross the River St. John within about fifty miles from 
LE 
Fredericton. 
(Boundary MS.) 
This position seemed to be necessary at that time to help secure 
the western branch of the St. Croix for the boundary, and, being thus 
an argument of an advocate in a controversial case, may be thought 
not to represent Chipman’s private opinion, the more especially as it 
was afterwards in another argument repudiated by him. We turn, 
therefore, to his private letters, Chipman’s own copies of which exist 
in the Chipman papers, many of which are in possession of Rev. W. O. 
Raymond, in St. John, and a few of which I possess. The following 
references are all from these papers, unless otherwise stated. In a 
letter to William Knox of Oct. 19, 1796, he says :— 
with regard to the principal question it is to be lamented that by the most 
favorable decision we can obtain, that is, a boundary line running due north 
to the Highlands from the source of the western branch of the Schoudiac 
River, our communication with Canada by the River St. John will be inter- 
rupted, as that line will probably strike the River St. John upwards of fifty 
miles on this side of the grand Portage somewhere near a very valuable set- 
tlement called the Madawaska, which is a circumstance not generally known, 
and some future negotiation will probably become necessary to preserve that 
