the St. John and the
Aroostook.

A section of this line was given in a report to the British commissioner
under the fifth article of the treaty of Ghent by Colonel Bouchette, the
surveyor-general of the Province of Canada. His heights were determined
by the barometer, and estimated from the assumed level of the monument
at the source of the St. Croix.

It would now appear that the section of Colonel Bouchette is very
inaccurate, and that the heights as reported by him are not only much
beyond the truth, but that the continually ascending slope ascribed by
him to the country from the monument at the source of the St. Croix to
the point where the due north line crosses the St. John is entirely
erroneous. He, however, adroitly availed himself of this inaccurate
section to attempt to prove the existence of a continuous chain of
mountains from Katahdin to the Great Falls of the St. John, and thence
around the southwestern branches of the Restigouche until it met the
heights rising from the north shore of the Bay of Chaleurs. For this
reason his view taken from Park's barn and that made by Mr. Odell from
the same point were urged for admission as evidence on oath by the
British agent, and the map of Mr. Johnson, which contradicted this
evidence, was carefully excluded. It can not be concealed that could
Colonel Bouchette's idea founded on erroneous premises have been
established by indisputable facts it would have been the most fatal
argument that has ever been adduced against the American claim, for he
would have argued that the meridian line of the St. Croix would at Mars
Hill have first intersected highlands which, rising from the north shore
of the Bay of Chaleurs, would have appeared to divide until within a few
miles of the Grand Falls of the St. John waters which fall into the St.
Lawrence from those which fall into the Atlantic, and would have been
the south boundary of the Province of Quebec.

Mars Hill would then have appeared to be in truth as well as in claim
the northwest angle of the Province of Nova Scotia; and although the
rest of the line would not have fulfilled the conditions, the United
States might by an arbitrator have been compelled to accept this point
as the beginning of their boundary. Nor, in the unexplored state of the
country, is it by any means certain that the American agent, who does
not seem to have seen the drift of the proceedings of Colonel Bouchette,
would have been prepared with the ad