en organized as a distinct Province, then including what are now
Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and this angle was referred to as a
boundary without hesitancy or doubt. Indeed, the treaty itself, as if
to make assurance doubly sure, fixed it where a due north line from the
source of the St. Croix will intersect those highlands which divide
the rivers which flow into the _river_ St. Lawrence from those which
flow into the Atlantic Ocean. This source of the St. Croix has been
determined and a monument fixed there by the commissioners under the
fifth article of the treaty of 1795 (Jay's). Now the assumption that the
north line from this monument will intersect or meet no such highlands
is entirely gratuitous.

The treaty does not speak of mountains nor even hills, but of
"highlands" that divide rivers flowing different ways. It was well known
that rivers did fall into the St. Lawrence and into the Atlantic, that
these rivers would run _down_ and not _up_, and it was consequently
inferred that the _land_ from whence these _rivers_ flowed must of
necessity be _high_, and unless there are to be found in that region
_geological phenomena_ which exist nowhere else on the face of the globe
this inference is irresistible.

The truth is that these highlands have been known and well understood by
the British themselves ever since the grant of James I to Sir William
Alexander, in 1621. The portion of the boundary there given which
relates to this controversy is "from the western spring head of the St.
Croix, by an imaginary line conceived to run through the land northward
to the next road of Ships River or Spring discharging itself into the
great river of Canada, and proceeding thence _eastward_ along the shores
of the sea of the said river of Canada to the road, haven, or shore
commonly called _Gaspeck_" (Gaspe).

The cession of Canada by France made it necessary to define the limits
of the Province of Quebec, and accordingly His Britannic Majesty, by his
proclamation of 7th October, 1763, is thus explicit as to what affects
this question: "Passing along the highlands which divide _the rivers_
that empty themselves into the said _river_ St. Lawrence from those
which fall into _the_ sea, and also _along the north coast of the Bay
de Chaleurs_ and the coast of the _Gulf_ of the St. Lawrence to _Cape
Rosiers_" etc.

The act of Parliament of the fourteenth George III (1774) defines thus
the south line of Canada: "South by a line fr