[Ganon] DOCHET (ST. CROIX) ISLAND 209 
some early trading post of Razilly or other early Seignior; and second, 
he maintained that in any case the subject was not important to the 
question at issue since it was not the St. Croix of de Monts and 
Champlain that was meant by the Treaty, but the St. Croix of the 
maps used by the negotiators of the Treaty of 1783, which St. Croix 
he held to be the Magaguadavic. The commissioners, however, unani- 
mously agreed that the St. Croix of the Treaty could be traced back 
continuously to the St. Croix of de Monts and Champlain, and that the 
two were one and the same river. Hence Isle St. Croix proved the iden- 
tity of the river.! Their opinion as to the. value of the evidence con- 
tained in the above cited testimony can best be given in the words 
of the third commissioner, Egbert Benson, who, in a report? to the 
President of the United States, explaining the decision, says :— 
Subsequent to the View of the mouths of the Rivers in question, and the 
adjacent Objects, by the Commissioners, at the instance of the Agents, in the 
Fall of 1796, the Edition of Champlain, of 1613, was procured from Europe, con- 
taining a Map of the Isle Sainte Croix, a copy of which is hereunto annexed, 
and a Search having then been made by digging into the Soil on the Island 
called Bone, or Docias, Island, Bricks, charcoal, spikes and other artificial 
articles have been found, and evident foundations of buildings have been 
traced. Whoever will compare these proofs with the Bay of Passamaquady, 
including the Islands and Rivers in it, will perceive that they result in 
demonstration that the Island St. Croix, and the River Saint Croix, meant by 
them, are respectively Bone Island, and the River Scudiac, comprehending in 
the latter the arm of the Bay, or as it is expressed by Lescarbot, Sea. 
Thus was the evidence as to the identity of the River St. Croix, 
based upon the discovery of the ruins of de Monts’s settlement on St. 
Croix Island, together with the comparisons between the ancient and 
modern maps, accepted by the commissioners as final and unquestion- 
able. On October 25, 1798, they rendered a unanimous decision in 
which they declared the Scoodic, or present St. Croix, to be the River 
St. Croix truly intended by the Treaty of 1783, and it thus became the 
International Boundary as we know it to-day. 
Such was the part played by Dochet Island in the Ann 
controversy. It is too much to say that upon it alone depended the 
identification of the river and hence its selection as the boundary, 
for there was probably enough other evidence to have produced the 
some result. But, on the other hand, it is very probable, since one 


* It is no wonder that Chipman in one of his letters (of Mar. 27, 1798) to 
Jonathan Odeli (MS. in possession of the author) speaks affectionately of “ My 
little Isle St. Croix.” With its identity established he easily won his case: 
without it this would have been dificult enough. 
* The Report is printed in full in Moore’s ‘‘ History and Digest of the 
International Arbitrations to which the United States has been a Party,” 
Vol. I., 33-43, and reference is there made (page 32) to other publications of it. 
