F.] PROOFS AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 4e)7 



other British and French colonies in those parts.' Commissaries were 

 accordingly appointed by each power, who executed the stipulations of 

 the treaty, in establishing the boundaries proposed by it. They fixed the 

 northern boundary of Canada and Louisiana by a line beginning on the 

 Atlantic, at a cape or promontory in 58 degrees 30 minutes north latitude, 

 thence south-westwardly to the Lake Mistissin, thence farther south-west 

 to the latitude of 49 degrees north from the equator, and along that line 

 indefinitely." 



Mr. Monroe does not give his authority for the assertion respecting the 

 adoption of this line by the commissaries ; he, however, most probably 

 derived his information from the map of America attached to Postle- 

 thwayt's Dictionary of Commerce, published in 1751, to which he alludes 

 in other parts of his correspondence, and in which a line appears nearly 

 as described by him, with a note on the map, saying, " The line that parts 

 French Canada from British Canada teas settled by commissaries, after 

 the peace of Utrecht, making a curve from Davis's Inlet, in the Atlantic 

 Sea, down to the 49£A degree, through Lake Abitibis, to the Worth-West 

 Ocean." In the Dictionary to which this map is attached, the limits of 

 these territories are expressly declared to be undetermined. The map of 

 North America, by Palairet and Delaroche, published at London in 1765, 

 also gives the same line, without any note as to the manner in which it 

 was adopted. In the map of the British Possessions in America, pub- 

 lished by Bowen and Gibson in 1775, and in one or two other inferior 

 maps, the 49th parallel is given as the southern limit of the Hudson's 

 Bay Company's territories, from the vicinity of Lake Superior, westward 

 to Red River, down which the boundary is continued to Lake Winnipeg. 

 These are the only authorities, as yet discovered, for the belief that the 

 49th parallel was adopted as a boundary by commissaries appointed ac- 

 cording to the treaty of Utrecht. 



On the other hand, Mitchell's great map of America, published in 

 1755 at London, under the patronage of the colonial department, presents 

 a line drawn around Hudson's Bay, at the distance of about one hundred 

 and fifty miles from its shore, as " the bouAds of Hudson's Bay by the 

 treaty of Utrecht;" and the same line appears on the map of America 

 accompanying Smollett's History of England, published in 1760, on that 

 of Bennet, published in 1770, on that of Faden, in 1777, and on some 

 other maps of that period. 



No line of separation whatsoever, between the Hudson's Bay territories 

 and the French possessions in America, is to be found on the large and 

 beautiful map of America by Henry Popple, published in 1738, also under 

 the patronage of the colonial department, and bearing the stamp of the 

 approbation of Dr. Halley, which is particularly minute in all that relates 

 to the territories in question ; or on any of the maps in the atlas of Max- 

 well and Senex, published in 1721, or in any of those attached to the 

 volume of Boyer's Political State for 1721 — to the History of Hudson's 

 Bay, by Dobbs — to the American Traveller, by Cluny — to the History 

 of the British Empire in America, by Wynne — to Alcedo's Dictionary 

 of America, or on many other maps, of inferior merit, which might be 

 named. 



These discrepancies should not excite surprise ; for maps, and books 

 of geography, which are most frequently consulted in relation to bounda- 

 ries, are, or rather have been, the very worst authorities on such subjects ; 



