198 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
documents of the Boundary Commission, — but thereby hangs an his- 
torical tale, which must be briefly related 
The Treaty of Paris in 1783, which formally closed the unhappy 
war of the Revolution, established the St. Croix river from its source 
to its mouth as a part of the International Boundary between the 
United States and the British Possessions. This was the natural 
international boundary in this region, for it was the old boundary 
between Massachusetts, then including Maine, which had led the Revo- 
lution, and Nova Scotia, then including New Brunswick, which had 
remained loyal to Great Britain. The Treaty was not a year old, 
however, before disputes arose locally as to the identity of the River 
St. Croix of the Treaty, the British residents claiming the present 
river of that name, and the American residents claiming the Magagua- 
davic. Its seems strange to us, with our accurate modern historical 
and geographical knowledge, that there could have been any doubt 
upon the subject, but if we view it in the light of the imperfect 
knowledge of that time, the origin of the controversy becomes clear. 
All that was definitely known about the River St. Croix was that it 
was one of the rivers emptying into Passamaquoddy Bay which had 
been named by the French when they settled there. But all tradition of 
de Monts’ settlement had long since vanished, and there was nothing 
known to the residents to enable them! to determine which of the 
several rivers emptying into Passamaquoddy was the true St. Croix, 
or even how the identity of the river was determined. The earlier 
attempts which had been made to identify the river when it was the 
boundary between Massachusetts and Nova Scotia only confused the 
issue, and the best maps of the time threw no light upon it. Thus, 
in 1764, when John Mitchel was sent by the Governor of Massachu- 
setts to identify the River St. Croix, he was told by the Indians that 
the Magaguadavic was the river so called by them. This testimony 
of the Indians was valueless, for we now know that the St. Croix 
was not the Magaguadavic, and, moreover, the Indians the very next 
year, 1765, told Morris, a Nova Scotia surveyor, that the Cobscook 
was known to them as the St. Croix. Nevertheless, their statement 
to Mitchel, apparently confirmed as it was by the maps of the time, 
naturally enough, led the people of Massachusetts, and, after 1783, the 
people of the United States, to believe that the Magaguadavic was 
the St. Croix, and hence, should form the International Boundary. 
The best maps of that time gave a certain support to this-view, for 
they showed two large rivers emptying into what was supposed to 

1 This subject is treated fully in the writer’s ‘‘ Monograph of the Evolution 
of the Boundaries of the Province of New Brunswick,” in the preceding. 
volume of these Transactions. 
