[GANONG ] BOUNDARIES OF NEW BRUNSWICK 311 
communication unbroken. Tho the line will unfortunately run in this man- 
ner, it cannot be supposed to have been intended when the Treaty of Peace 
was formed, either on the part of the United States to claim or on ours to 
yield a boundary which should in fact cut through the provinces it was 
designed to limit. 
But that his private opinion was the same after as before his 
argument is shown by his letter of July 9, 1799, to Governor Carleton, 
in which, after discussing the right of Great Britain to the Passama- 
quoddy Islands, and maintaining that a right of navigation through 
them can be had by the United States only as a concession on the part 
of Great Britain, he says it becomes a matter of favor to be obtained 
from His Majesty, and a concession so important to the United States 
would perhaps alone be deemed an equivalent for such an alteration in 
the interior line of boundary from the source of the St. Croix River 
to the Highlands, as would secure to His Majesty an unbroken com- 
munication between the Province and Canada by the present route 
along the River St. John. 
Chipman thus believed in 1796, 1797 and 1799, that the north line 
must cross the River St. John. But earlier than this Governor Carle- 
ton had expressed the same conviction, for in one of his letters to 
Dundas of July 4, 1794, he writes :— 
But even that line [viz., the western boundary of the Province established 
by Treaty] there is reason to believe would be found, by accurate survey to 
strike the River Saint John below the settlement of Madawaska and conse- 
quently to interrupt the communication between these provinces. 
As therefore the settling of this boundary may now be one of the points 
to be discussed between Great Britain and the United States I beg leave to 
suggest an arrangement which would preclude any further doubt or alterca- 
tion on this head, and which I presume cannot be liable to any reasonable 
objection on the part of the United States. 
Let us be bounded by the River Scudiac or Saint Croix, from its mouth 
to the source of its western branch, and from thence by a line running north- 
west to the southern boundary of Canada.* 
By such an arrangement the States would in fact relinquish nothing but 
a tract of wilderness land on which they have never attempted any settle- 
ment; whereas on our part it involves an object of serious and interesting 
[sic] importance—not only to secure a number of British subects [the Mada- 
waska settlers] in the possession of lands on which they have bestowed great 
labor under the patient endurance of many difficulties and in the fullest 
confidence of their being clearly within the limits of this province; but also 
to realize and secure that unbroken communication with Canada, which is 

+ This proposal was afterwards cited with approbation by Ward Chipman, 
and is nearly the line upon which emphasis was laid in their Report of 1840 by 
Featherstonhaugh and Mudge. Unquestionably it would have made an ex- 
cellent international boundary. 
