In the course of time the question of the disputed boundary between Maine and New Brunswick assumed grave proportions.  By the treaty of 1783, the boundary was to be a line drawn from the source of the St. Croix, directly north to the highlands “which divide the rivers which fall into the Atlantic ocean from those which fall into the river St. Lawrence;” thence along the said highlands to the north-easternmost head of the Connecticut River; and the point at which the due north line was to cut the highlands was also designated as the north-west angle of Nova Scotia.  The whole question was the subject of several commissions, and of one arbitration, from 1783 until 1842, when it was finally settled.  Its history appears to be that of a series of blunders on the part of England from the beginning to the end.  The first blunder occurred in 1796 when the commissioners appointed to inquire into the question, declared that the Schoodic was the River St. Croix mentioned in the treaty.  Instead, however, of following the main, or western, branch of the Schoodic to its source in the Schoodic Lakes, they went beyond their instructions and chose a northern tributary of the river, the Chiputnaticook, as the boundary, and actually placed a monument at its head as a basis for any future proceeding on the part of the two governments.  The British government appear to have been very anxious at this time to settle the question, for they did not take exception to the arrangement made by the commissioners, but in 1798 declared the decision binding on both countries.

Still this mistake might have been rectified had the British government in 1835 been sufficiently alive to British interests in America to have accepted a proposal made to them by President Jackson to ascertain the true north-western angle of Nova Scotia, or the exact position of the highlands, in accordance with certain well-understood rules in practical surveying which have been always considered obligatory in that continent.  It was proposed by the United States to discard the due north line, to seek to the west of that line the undisputed highlands that divide the rivers which empty themselves into the River St. Lawrence from those which fall into the Atlantic Ocean, to find the point in the ‘watershed’ of these highlands nearest to the north line, and to trace a direct course from it to the monument already established.  “If this principle had been adopted,” says Sir Sandford Fleming, the eminent Canadian engineer, “a straight line would have been drawn from the monument at the head of the Chiputnaticook to a point which could have been established with precision in the ‘watershed’ of the highlands which separate the sources of the Chaudiere from those of the Penobscot,—­this being the most easterly point in the only highlands agreeing beyond dispute with the treaty.  The point is found a little to the north and west of the intersection of the 70th meridian west longitude and the 46th parallel of north latitude.”  Had this proposal been accepted England would have obtained without further difficulty eleven thousand square miles, or the combined areas of Massachusetts and Connecticut.