[GANONG ] BOUNDARIES OF NEW BRUNSWICK 363 
in the office of the Provincial Secretary at Fredericton), where it is 
thus described :* 
: to the South by a Line in the. Center of the Bay of Fundy from 
the River Saint Croix aforesaid to the Mouth of the Musquat River by the 
said. River to its Source, and from thence by a due East Line across the 
Isthmus into the Bay Verte. . . . À 
This statement of the line is the legal foundation of the present 
boundary. It had, however, been somewhat differently described a 
few months earlier in a letter of date May 29, 1784, from Lord Sydney, 
Secretary of State, to Governor Parr (Archives, 1894, 419), in which, 
after mentioning the proposed separation of New Brunswick, he says : 
The line of separation, is intended to be drawn from the mouth of the 
Musquat or Mesequash river in the Bay of Fundy to its source and from 
thence across the Isthmus into the nearest part of the Bay Verte. 
It will be seen that in this description the line from the source 
of the Misseguash was to run to the nearest part of Bay Verte, while 
in the later official description it was to run due east to Bay Verte. 
Curiously enough, as we shall see, this first description of the 
boundary was long afterwards followed on maps instead of the later 

1T have found later that this Commission has been published in full in 
the ‘‘Statement on the Part of the United States,” 1829, Appendix, 38. 
* This was, however, by no means the first reference to a boundary 
between the two provinces. The Hon. Edward Winslow, to whom early New 
Brunswick owes more, perhaps, than to any other man, and who was a 
pronounced and powerful advocate, of the separation, thus wrote to his 
friend Chipman, April 26, 1784 (Winslow Papers, 193) : — 
“T am so confident of your success in the business [effecting the separa- 
tion] that I have been enquiring where will probably be the boundaries of 
our province. I find there are three opinions on this subject, [i.e., apparently 
in Halifax from which the letter is written] . . . . Some assert that the 
peninsula of Nova Scotia should run nearly in a straight line from the Bay 
of St. Mary’s to Tatamagouche Bay in the Gulf of St. Lawrence—this would 
throw all the country to the west of Onslow into the new province, & leave 
all the southern part of the peninsula & the island of Cape Breton in the 
old Province; and this ’tis said would .be sufficiently extensive, and leave 
them more than an equal proportion of navigable harbours. Others say 
that the line should strike,across the narrow isthmus which runs between 
the Bays of Verte and Chignecto, & (by including the Island of St. John’s) 
sink the expense of that abortion of a government. . . . . . Others con- 
tend that the river Peticoudiac should be the boundary, and that Cumber- 
land & the other places must remain in the old province. One or the other 
of these three will probably be the line.” The first of the lines mentioned by 
Winslow ,would appear to have been intended to give Cumberland County 
to New Brunswick. The second line was that afterwards adopted and now 
in effect. The third (or nearly that) was subsequently contended for, without 
success, by Nova Scotia. 
