country and the lumberers who search
it for timber as mountains clothed to the summit with wood, which, in
consequence of the rigor of the climate, attains but a feeble growth.
They have an aspect of much greater altitude than they in reality
possess, but their character as highlands is indisputable. This term,
which the first English visitors ascribed without hesitation to the
hills of New Jersey,[36] whose altitude is about 300 feet above the
level of the sea, is much better merited by a group of eminences rising
from 300 to 1,300 feet above a base itself 900 feet in height, and which
exceed in elevation the well-known highlands of the Hudson River.

[Footnote 36: The highlands of Neversink.]

Not to rest merely on instances drawn from the language of those of
English birth who first settled or traded on the coast of the present
United States, there are in the immediate vicinity of the region in
question a range of eminences the highest of which is no more than
1,206 feet above the level of the sea. These, on the authority of a
distinguished officer of Her Britannic Majesty's navy,[37] are named
the "highlands of Bic," and have long been thus known by all the
navigators of the St. Lawrence who use the English tongue.

[Footnote 37: Captain Byfield.]

To sum up the results of the field operations of the commissioners:

(1) The meridian has been traced by astronomic observations from the
monument, established by the consent of both nations in 1798, at the
source of the St. Croix to a point 4 miles beyond the left bank of the
St. John in the neighborhood of the Grand Falls. In the course of this
not only has no highland dividing waters which run into the St. Lawrence
from those which run into the Atlantic been reached, but no common
source or reservoir of two streams running in opposite directions.[38]
No place has, therefore, been found which by any construction proposed
or attempted to be put on the words of the treaty of 1783 can be
considered as the northwest angle of Nova Scotia. This point must, in
consequence, lie in the further prolongation of the meridian line to
the north.

[Footnote 38: The levelings carried along this meridian line by means of
spirit levels, alluded to in the note at bottom of page 121, passed Mars
Hill at a depression of 12 feet _below_ the level of the base of the
monument which stands (except at seasons of extreme drought) in the
water at the source of the St. Croix.]

(2) The stre