ng the aggression which it is supposed is
meditated from the frontier of the State of Maine, and of both parties
mutually abstaining from any acts which can affect the disputed
territory, as the question of possession is now in the course of
arbitration.

The undersigned reiterates to the Secretary of State the assurances of
his highest consideration.

CHAS. R. VAUGHAN.

[Footnote 14: Omitted.]

_Mr. Van Buren to Mr. Vaughan_.

DEPARTMENT OF STATE,

_Washington, May 11, 1829_.

Right Hon. CHARGES R. VAUGHAN, etc.:

The undersigned, Secretary of State of the United States, has the honor
to acknowledge the receipt of the note which Mr. Vaughan, His Britannic
Majesty's envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary, addressed to
him on the 10th of April, stating upon the authority of a letter from
the governor of New Brunswick, whereof a copy came inclosed in Mr.
Vaughan's note, that it was apparently the intention of the Government
of the United States to carry the road now making through the State
of Maine to Mars Hill over that point, and to occupy Mars Hill as a
military station; and protesting against such occupation upon the ground
that the line drawn by the commissioners of boundary under the treaty of
Ghent due north from the monument which marks the source of the river
St. Croix was not considered by them as correctly laid down, and that it
yet remains to be determined whether Mars Hill is eastward or westward
of the true line.

The undersigned deems it unnecessary upon the present occasion to enter
into an elaborate discussion of the point stated by Sir Howard Douglas,
the lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick, concerning the line referred
to by him, inasmuch as the relative position of Mars Hill to that line
is already designated upon map A, and the line itself mutually agreed
to and sufficiently understood for all present purposes, though not
definitively settled by the convention of Condon of the 29th September,
1827.

The undersigned will therefore merely state that he finds nothing
in the record of the proceedings of the commissioners under the fifth
article of the treaty of Ghent to warrant the doubt suggested by the
lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick whether Mars Hill lies to the
westward of the line to be drawn due north from the monument at the
source of the St. Croix to the highlands which divide the waters that
empty into the river St. Lawrence from those which empty into the
Atla