312 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
evidently essential to the future peace and safety of all the British posses- 
sions on this Continent. 
(Copy in possession of W. O. Raymond.) 
Although he here speaks of the north line as striking the river, 
the context shows he means crossing it, for otherwise the communi- 
cation with Canada would not be interrupted, because the river would 
be still passable on the north bank. 
But in another letter to Portland, Jan. 15, 1795, he says:— 
Surveyors on the part of the State of Massachusetts have since my former 
letter respecting the Boundary, been again employed on that service, but still 
without any communication with this Government. The line which they 
have now traced, crosses the River Saint John at a small distance above the 
Madawaska settlement, and though it thus avoids encroaching upon any 
Lands under actual cultivation it still intercepts our communication through 
this province with Canada, and as there is reason to apprehend that this 
boundary would on a strict inquiry be justified by the letter of the Treaty 
it may become a question for national discussion with the American States 
either now or on some future occasion. For it cannot be supposed to have 
been intended, either on their part to claim or on ours to yield a boundary 
which should in fact cut through the provinces it was designed to limit. 
(Copy in possession of W. O. Raymond.) 
The line run by Massachusetts surveyors was not an international 
boundary, but was one of those run in this region in connection with 
land grants made by Massachusetts,’ but the letter shows that Gov- 
ernor Carleton believed the words of the treaty required that the due 
north line should cross the St. John and cut off the communication 
with Canada. 
Further in a letter of Dec. 1, 1798, referring to the decision of the 
St. Croix Commission, he says :— 
By this decision [viz., that the line should start from the source of the 
Chiputnaticook] it is true a considerable tract of land to which I think His 
Majesty’s claim had been clearly ascertained falls into the Territory of the 
United States, and the line if continued due North from the point now 
decidedly adopted as the source of the St. Croix will cross the River St. 
John but little if at all to the westward of the Great Falls, and will there- 
fore intercept our communication with Canada considerably below the 
Madawaska Settlement. The obtaining therefore of some such alteration 
in the course of this line as I have formerly suggested in my letter to Mr. 
Dundas is now an object of immediate importance, and I am happy to ob- 
serve that by the present decision respecting the mouth of the River St. 
Croix, which is declared to be at Joe’s Point a little above the Town of 
Saint Andrews, another very imporiant question is in fact decided and the 
ground is thereby removed on which alone the American States could have 
had a semblance of right to those Islands which they claim and have had 

1 In 1794: described by Gallatin in his Right of the United States, 147, 
and in the Blue Book of 1843, 97. 
