408 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
1855, this mistake was discovered,’ but as Tracy’s brook does not reach 
to the 48 parallel, the Patapedia was necessarily selected, thus giving 
to New Brunswick the territory between its lower course and the Pata- 
pedia, a distinct even though not very great, windfall for her, in line 
with her usual luck in the matter of her boundaries. This selection of 
the Patapedia by the commissioners was confirmed in 1857 by an Act 
of Parliament which decreed that the River Mistouche of the former 
Act shall be the stream which crosses the forty-eighth parallel, and is 
otherwise called the Patapedia. Thus the reasons for the peculiarities 
of our northern boundary seem to be plain. 
Only one step remained to be taken for the completion of the 
boundary ; it was still to be marked out on the ground. For this pur- 
pose a new commission was appointed, composed of Hon. A. E. Bots- 
ford, to represent New Brunswick, Jos. Bouchette, jr., to represent 
Canada, and Major Robinson, member of the commission of 1848, as 
third member. This commission marked the line in 1853-55, and 

exhibit its source is Bouchette of 1831 (an excellent and authoritative map) 
who lays down the source very correctly, obviously from the boundary sur- 
veys of the due north line. In laying it down, however, he makes it empty 
by the Mistouche (misspelled Mistoue), and obviously for the reason that 
he naturally inferred that the first large stream having its source east of the 
Kedgewick must be the same as the first large stream having its mouth 
east of that river, the more especially as the position of source of the Pata- 
pedia and mouth of the Mistouche are such (Supposing them to belong to 
the same river) on his map as to preserve the general parallelism of the 
rivers in this region. This mistake was a most natural one when the stream 
had not been followed through its length, and when the mouth of no other 
stream appeared until very far to the eastward. This map appears to have 
been generally followed by subsequent maps (including the Baillie and Ken- 
dall map of 1832, which, however, replaces the name Mistouche by Petawi- 
quck, viz., Patapedia,) down to and including that of the Arbitrators of 1851, 
and the first map to correct it was that of the Commissioners of 1855. 
Wilkinson, 1859, applies both names to the Patapedia, but since then the 
name Mistouche has been dropped, and replaced by Tracy Brook. 
It is, by the way, one of those sarcasms in which history occasionally 
indulges, that it was an error on his own map of 1831 which caused Joseph 
Bouchette, the Canadian Commissioner of 1855, to be obliged to see a large 
block of territory taken from the country he represented and handed over 
to that of his opponent. 
* As shown in the report of 1855, the Canadian Commissioner (Bouchette) 
declined to accept the Patapedia as the Mistouche, and proceeded to a stream 
farther westward, of course Tracy Brook, the true Mistouche. Finding that 
it did not, however, extend to the 48th. parallel he returned to the Patapedia. 
and afterwards proceeded to Quebec for instructions. But the other two com- 
missioners had power to settle such questions and it was settled favourably 
to New Brunswick. 
