[GANONG ] BOUNDARIES OF NEW BRUNSWICK 343 
the lateness of the season before their arrival. On their return, they 
presented to the government their well-known report, published in 
1840, as a blue-book of 57 + 37 pages, with two maps. While it had 
little effect upon the final settlement of the controversy, this report 
is of considerable value from the point of view of local geography. It 
is throughout as strongly partizan a document as could possibly be 
produced. It reviews fully the historical documents bearing upon 
the controversy, reproducing certain old maps, but always in the man- 
ner of the special pleader of the side of Gréat Britain. They con- 
clude that the Scoodic should have been the boundary, and even go so 
far as to suggest the reopening of the St. Croix controversy. ‘They 
argue that the north line should have been drawn not due north from 
the source of the St. Croix, but north-west, on the ground that the 
septentrionem of the Alexander grant, being used for the north-west 
line across the Bay of Fundy must also have meant north-west in the 
line from the source of the St. Croix. Finding that a line north-west 
from the source of the Scoodic meets the highlands near the source 
of the Chaudière they conclude that the framers of the original 
charters had a more accurate knowledge of the country than had been 
supposed, and meant this line as the western boundary of Nova Scotia, 
and hence it should have been adopted by the treaty of 1783. But 
the most important feature of their report is the fact that they report 
a line of highlands, or rather “an axis of maximum elevation” pre- 
cisely where the second part of their instructions required them to 
look, namely, about on the line between the head of Bay Chaleur and 
the head of Connecticut River, running very directly, and mostly south 
of the Arostook, but in places north of it. These highlands are shown 
upon their map extending in a remarkably straight line north-east 
and south-west through Maine and New Brunswick. They thus find 
them somewhat farther north than the highlands claimed by the 
British agent in 1826, for the latter were on the watershed between 
the Penobscot and the St. John waters. On the other hand they find 
no highlands at the termination of the north line, but erroneously as 
it was later proved, consider that part to be not over 400 feet above 
the sea. The report is accompanied by valuable appendices giving 
the details of measurements made with mercurial barometers in Maine 
and New Brunswick, results which have been much used by local 
students and which are still valuable,t and which fully exposed the 
grotesque errors of Bouchette of 1817. 


1 They all have, however, a common error of over 100 feet, caused by 
an error in the levels on which the height of their base station was founded. 
‘The question is discussed in the Bulletin of the Natural History Society of 
New Brunswick, XVIII., 233. 
