Mr. Robertson’s Observations , &c. 
349 
proof to establish it. This, I flatter myself, I am able to 
effect, to the certainty of demonstration itself : but, in doing 
so, I am under the necessity of being more tedious than I 
could wish, in order to describe fully the data, on which the 
inference is founded. 
I resided at Jamaica, as a King’s Surveyor of Land, upwards 
of 20 years. Disputes at law about boundaries of lands are 
there decided by ejectments, in the Supreme Court of Judica- 
ture, by the evidence and diagrams of King’s surveyors of land. 
This is different from the practice in England, because the 
manner in which grants of land from the Crown are made, in 
the two countries is different. In Jamaica, to every grant of 
land a diagram thereof is annexed to the patent. This dia- 
gram is delineated from an actual survey of the land to be 
granted, having a meriodional line, according to the mag- 
netical needle, by which the survey was made, laid down in 
it. No notice is taken of the true meridian. The boundary 
lines of the land granted are marked on earth, (as it is deno- 
minated, ) by cutting notches on the trees between which the 
line is run through the woods. These trees being mostly of 
hard timber, the notches will be discernible for 30 years, or 
more. By repeated re-surveys these lines are kept up : and, 
when the cultivation, on both sides, renders it necessary to 
fell the marked trees, ( which can only be done by mutual 
consent, it being otherwise death by the law,) logwood 
fences are planted in the lines dividing the properties thus 
cultivated : and many of these fences have been regularly 
repaired, and kept up, to the present time. Lands were 
granted from the Crown soon after the Restoration, in 1660 ; 
and every succeeding year the number of patents increased,. 
