massacre, but Verandrye feared the consequences of such a 

 movement and declined the offer. 



Charles Lindsey in his " Report on the Boundaries of 

 Ontario" says : " The Lake of the Woods is memorable in 

 geogra])hical and diplomatic history. It has been the starting 

 point in every treat}^ of the boundary line between the 

 Dominion of Great Britain and the territories of tlie United 

 States. 



No doubt in this statement Lindsey had reference to the 

 settlement of the boundaiy by the treaty of 1783. At that 

 time the British commissioners in Paris had few maps, and 

 these very imperfect, of the country west of Toronto. The 

 American commissioners had at their elbow a fur trader, Peter 

 Pond, an American by birth, who had been in the employ of 

 the Montreal fur merchants, and had charge of a post in the 

 far distant Athabasca. It is said that Pond " designated a 

 boundary line through the middle of the ui)i)er St. Lawrence 

 and the lakes and througli the interior countries to the north- 

 west corner of the Lake of the Woods, and thence west to the 

 Mississippi." The northwest angle of the Lake of the Woods 

 has consequently ever since been a notable point. 



The impossibility of a line westward irom the northwest 

 angle of the Lake of the Woods to the Mississippi led to the 

 agreement in Jay's Treaty of Amity and Ct)mmerce of 1794 

 " to survey the upper Mississippi in order to fix the boundary 

 in that region." In 1816, at the Treaty of Ghent, promise 

 was made for a commission to settle the boundary to the Lake 

 of the Woods, east and west. At the convention of London, 

 in 1818, the commissioners appointed under the terms of the 

 Treaty of Ghent succeeded in closing the matter. It Avas 

 agreed to draw a line north and south from the northwest 

 angle of the Lake of the Woods until it met the 49th parallel. 

 An unexpected and amusing result of this mode of settlement 

 is that a small peninsula of Canadian territory has a portion 

 of the extremity cut off by this line, and this small section is 

 American territory, being surrounded by American waters. 



The Lake of the Woods became the highway for almost all 



