[Illustration:  MAP OF THE NORTH-EASTERN BOUNDARY AS ESTABLISHED IN 1842.]

For several years after this settlement was suggested a most serious conflict went on between New Brunswick and the state of Maine.  The authorities of Maine paid no respect whatever to the negotiations that were still in progress between the governments of Great Britain and the United States, but actually took possession of the disputed territory, gave titles for lands and constructed forts and roads within its limits.  Collisions occurred between the settlers and the intruders, and considerable property was destroyed.  The legislature of Maine voted $800,000 for the defence of the state, and the legislature of Nova Scotia amid great enthusiasm made a grant of $100,000 to assist New Brunswick in support of her rights.  Happily the efforts of the United States and British governments prevented the quarrel between the province and the state from assuming international proportions; and in 1842 Mr. Alexander Baring, afterwards Lord Ashburton, was authorised by the ministry of the Earl of Aberdeen to negotiate with Mr. Daniel Webster, then secretary of state in the American cabinet, for the settlement of matters in dispute between the two nations.  The result was the Ashburton Treaty, which, in fixing the north-eastern boundary between British North America and the United States, started due north from the monument incorrectly placed at the head of the Chiputnaticook instead of the source of the true St. Croix, and consequently at the very outset gave up a strip of land extending over some two degrees of latitude, and embracing some 3000 square miles of British territory.  By consenting to carry the line due north from the misplaced monument Lord Ashburton ignored the other natural landmark set forth in the treaty:  “the line of headlands which divide the waters flowing into the Atlantic from those which flow into the St. Lawrence.”  A most erratic boundary was established along the St. John, which flows neither into the St. Lawrence nor the Atlantic, but into the Bay of Fundy, far east of the St. Croix.  In later years the historian Sparks found in Paris a map on which Franklin himself had marked in December, 1782, with a heavy red line, what was then considered the true natural boundary between the two countries.  Mr. Sparks admitted in sending the map that it conceded more than Great Britain actually claimed, and that “the line from the St. Croix to the Canadian highlands is intended to exclude [from the territory of the United States] all the waters running into the St. John.”  Canadians have always believed with reason that that portion of the present state of Maine, through which the Aroostook and other tributaries of the St. John flow, is actually British territory.  If we look at the map of Canada we see that the state of Maine now presses like a huge wedge into the provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec as a sequence of the unfortunate mistakes of 1796, 1835, and 1842, on the part of England and her agents.  In these later times a “Canadian short line” railway has been forced to go through Maine in order to connect Montreal with St. John, and other places in the maritime provinces.  Had the true St. Croix been chosen in 1796, or President Jackson’s offer accepted in 1835, this line could go continuously through Canadian territory, and be entirely controlled by Canadian legislation.