c.
Arbitration in 1798 upheld the British in the contention that the
Schoodic was the St. Croix but agreed with the Americans in the
secondary question as to which of the two branches of the Schoodic
should be followed. A similar commission in 1817 settled the dispute as
to the islands in Passamaquoddy Bay.

More difficult, because at once more ambiguous in terms and more vitally
important, was the determination of the boundary in the next stage
westward from the St. Croix to the St. Lawrence. The British position
was a difficult one to maintain. In the days of the struggle with
France, Great Britain had tried to push the bounds of the New England
colonies as far north as might be, making claims that would hem in
France to the barest strip along the south shore of the St. Lawrence.
Now that she was heir to the territories and claims of France and
had lost her own old colonies, it was somewhat embarrassing, but for
diplomats not impossible, to have to urge a line as far south as the
urgent needs of the provinces for intercommunication demanded. The
letter of the treaty was impossible to interpret with certainty. The
phrase, "the Highlands which divide those rivers that empty themselves
into the river St. Lawrence from those which fall into the Atlantic
Ocean," meant according to the American reading a watershed which was a
marshy plateau, and according to the British version a range of hills to
the south which involved some keen hairsplitting as to the rivers they
divided. The intentions of the parties to the original treaty were
probably much as the Americans contended. From the standpoint of
neighborly adjustment and the relative need for the land in question, a
strong case in equity could be made out for the provinces, which would
be cut asunder for all time if a wedge were driven north to the very
brink of the St. Lawrence.

As lumbermen and settlers gathered in the border area, the risk of
conflict became acute, culminating in the Aroostook War in 1838-39,
when the Legislatures of Maine and New Brunswick backed their rival
lumberjacks with reckless jingoism. Diplomacy failed repeatedly to
obtain a compromise line. Arbitration was tried with little better
success, as the United States refused to accept the award of the King
of the Netherlands in 1831. The diplomats tried once more, and in
1842 Daniel Webster, the United States Secretary of State, and Lord
Ashburton, the British Commissioner, made a compromise by wh