324 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
gress to a minister appointed to negotiate a peace with Great Bras, 
and that in those instructions oceur these words :— 
The boundaries of these States are as follows, viz.: These States 
are bounded North, by a line to be drawn from the northwest angle of Nova 
Scotia along the highlands which divide those rivers which empty them- 
selves into the River St. Lawrence from those which fall into the Atlantick 
Ocean to the northwesternmost head of Connecticut River . . . and East 
by a line to be drawn along the middle of St. Johns River from its source to 
its mouth in the Bay of Fundy 
(Statement of 1829, 251.) 
These instructions were confirmed with slight alterations in 1781 
and again in 1782, and were the instructions under which the negotia- 
tors acted in 1782-1783. They show, said Chipman, that congress had 
no idea of a boundary extending anywhere north of the St. John, and 
that hence the intention of the negotiators could not have been to make 
the boundary run north of that river. He then takes up another argu- 
ment, and one of those on which he lays most stress. The treaty refers 
to highlands separating rivers flowing into the River St. Lawrence 
from those flowing into the Atlantic Ocean. Now, he says, no such 
highlands can occur along the line of the due north line in this region 
because there is along it no river falling into the Atlantic Ocean in the 
sense meant by the treaty. The St. John does not, for it is every- 
where in the treaty made to fall into the Bay of Fundy, and the treaty 
makes a clear distinction between the Bay of Fundy and the Atlantic 
Ocean. But somewhere must exist such highlands as are mentioned by 
the treaty, and to find these we must go west of the St. John, and we 
find them in the range extending between the head of Connecticut 
River and the source of the St. John (compare map No. 30). 
This range he maintains does not stop here, but continues eastward 
through the center of Maine, and crosses the St. John River at Mars 
Hill. The branch of it which extends north of the St. John forming 
the watershed between it and the St. Lawrence has by no means the 
characteristic demanded by the expression highlands in the treaty. Mars 
Hill therefore is part of a range of highlands which does separate rivers 
flowing into the St. Lawrence from those falling into the Atlantic Ocean, 
and the only range which does so ; accordingly it fulfills the require- 
ments of the treaty ; the north line should stop here ; and here is the 
north-west angle of Nova Scotia. Another argument he derives from 
occupation and jurisdiction in the Madawaska region. Not only was 
the Seigniory of Madawaska, always under the control of Quebec, south 
of the highlands claimed by the United States, but Quebec had exercised 
jurisdiction over the Madawaska settlement, certain cases of which he is 
