1890-91.] LiEUT.-GovERNOR simcoe's administkatio;*. 287 



The negotiations concerning the boundary question then pending with 

 the United States naturally engaged much of his attention, more partic- 

 ularly as he had been instructed to furnish Mr. George Hammond the 

 British Envoy at Philadelphia with all the information on the subject he 

 could obtain. The menacing movements of successive American armies 

 beyond the Ohio caused him great uneasiness as it was feared, probably 

 with some truth, that their ultimate aim was the capture of the British 

 garrisons on the great lakes. 



One of his first measures was to advise the purchase of a tract of land 

 extending across the Georgian Bay peninsula from Sturgeon Bay to be 

 used as a camping-place by the traders frequenting that part of the 

 country. A map accompanying his letter to Mr. Dundas of the loth 

 March, 1792, indicates that the Indian title had been already extin- 

 guished in the lands included between the Ottawa, Rideau, and St. 

 Lawrence ; in a second tract extending from the Bay of Quinte west- 

 ward, bounded on the north by the chain of smaller lakes and on the 

 west by a line drawn from Lake Simcoe to Lake Ontario, near Toronto, 

 and lastly in all that part of the Province lying south of a line extending 

 from the head of Lake Ontario, to the supposed source of the river Thames 

 and then following that river to its mouth excepting a small Huron 

 reservation on the Detroit, and Brant's grant of 306,250 acres on the 

 Grand. The lands of the Six Nations had been surveyed and the new 

 Governor had assured them solemnly of his intentions of carrying into 

 effect all Lord Dorchester's promises to them, but he remarked in this 

 despatch that it was particularly unfortunate that one of the first acts of 

 his civil administration must be the trial of two Indians closely related to 

 Brant himself on a charge of murder. 



The progress of negotiations with the United States was delayed not 

 only by hostilities with the Indians but by rival commercial interests. 

 Three great fur-trading houses of Montreal warmly protested against the 

 surrender of the four barrier forts of Oswego, Niagara, Detroit, and 

 Mackinac and the concession of the Great Carrying-Place at Sault Ste 

 Marie, which would lie fifteen miles within the proposed boundary line of 

 the United States. Their chief trade-route would be then placed in the 

 hands of their rivals and their trade, they averred, must be ruined in 

 consequence. The annual value of their transactions was estimated by 

 themselves at i^200,ooo and a demand was thus created for a large 

 quantity of bulky British manufactures, upon which the duty alone 

 sometimes exceeded ^30,000 in a single year. Although sympathizing 

 with the views of the merchants on the boundary question and backing 

 up their protest against the advanced position already assumed by 

 ^9 



