412 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
position and her later incorrect one, surely a piece of good fortune for 
her. But no sooner was this question decided in 1842 than New 
Brunswick again suddenly reversed her position, returning to her old 
contention ; and, ignoring her stand on the international question, 
again claimed a boundary on the northern watershed. It would have 
been a perfectly logical and natural result of her attitude in the inter- 
national controversy had her northern boundary been fixed on the high- 
lands south of the Tobique, and that her northern boundary does not 
run so to-day is her greatest piece of good fortune of all. When the 
international north line was run out, moreover, it happened that, be- 
cause of the error of the earlier surveyors, while she lost a short nar- 
row strip of land, there fell to her a goodly strip in form of a triangle 
half a mile on the base, and fifty miles on the sides. The interpro- 
vincial question was settled by a compromise by which she gave up 
some territory north of the Restigouche (which, indeed, she had practi- 
cally yielded to Quebec long before), and received over half of the ter- 
ritory saved to Great Britian by the decision of 1842, and to which she 
had previously no legal title, and this territory was many times over 
more valuable than that which she yielded to Quebec. The boundary 
was drawn in a manner convenient to her, but when it came to be sur- 
veyed, while she lost a small strip east of the St. Francis, she gained 
an area many times larger and more valuable between Tracys Brook 
and the Patapedia. Finally came the Nova Scotia boundary. The 
obvious original intention was to make the narrow part of the Isthmus. 
of Chignecto the boundary, but yet again the failure of the legal 
boundary to fit the topography of the country turned out in her favour, 
for it gave her a long strip of the south shore of Baie Verte, a part of 
which she was able to exchange for land more valuable to her at the 
western part of the east line. Moreover, in surveying the line, if 
Wilkinson is correct, an error was made which was in New Brunswick’s 
favour. 
Surely New Brunswick has cause to be content with the results of 
her boundary disputes. And her historians have to thank those same 
disputes for the preservation of much historical material which would 
otherwise be inaccessible or lost, and her geographers for many accurate 
surveys which would ‘otherwise not yet have been made. 
Such boundary disputes have, also, much interest for the psycholo- 
gist. Nowhere, perhaps, in human affairs is better displayed the readi- 
ness of mankind to see duty where inclination points, and to form 
opinions as interest bids. In the records of such controversies, too, 
lie some of the lessons of history, though, alas, no lessons are less 
taken to heart. 

