Transcriber’s Note:
This ebook was created in honour of Distributed Proofreaders’ 20thAnniversary.
TWENTY UNSETTLED MILES
IN THE
NORTHEAST BOUNDARY.
[From the Report of the Council of the American Antiquarian Society,presented at the Annual Meeting held in Worcester,October 21, 1896.]
Worcester, Mass., U. S. A.
PRESS OF CHARLES HAMILTON.
311 Main Street.
1897.
For nearly three hundred years, and almost without cessation,there has raged a conflict of jurisdiction over territorylying near to what is known as the Northeast Boundary ofthe United States. It has been generally assumed, however,that the Webster-Ashburton treaty of 1842, togetherwith the Buchanan-Packenham treaty of 1846, settled alloutstanding differences with Great Britain in the matter ofboundaries, and few people are aware that there is animportant failure in these and earlier treaties, to describeand define all of the line which extends from ocean to oceanand fixes the sovereignty of the adjacent territory. Fromthe mouth of the St. Croix River to the ocean outsideof West Quoddy Head is a distance of about twenty-onemiles, if the most direct route through Lubec Channelbe taken. Somewhere, from the middle of the river at itsmouth to a point in the ocean about midway between theisland of Campobello and Grand Menan, the boundary betweenMaine and New Brunswick must go, and, inferentially,for about one mile of this distance it is tolerably wellfixed. But this is only an inference from the generallyaccepted principle that where two nations exercise jurisdictionon opposite sides of a narrow channel or stream ofwater, the boundary line must be found somewhere in thatstream. That this has not been a universally accepted principle,however, will appear later. Throughout the remainingtwenty miles, the territory under the jurisdiction of theUnited States is separated from that under the dominion of[4]Great Britain by a long, irregularly shaped estuary, almosteverywhere more than a mile in width and over a large partof its length opening into Passamaquoddy Bay and otherextensive arms of the sea. This large body of water, withan average depth of twenty-five fathoms and everywherenavigable for vessels of the largest size, flows with the alternationsof the tides, the rise and fall of which is here eighteento twenty feet, now north, now south, with a current inmany places as swift as five and six miles per hour. Nothinglike a distinct channel or “thread of stream” exists, andit can in no way be likened to or regarded as a river. Whenonce the mouth of the St. Croix is reached, the boundaryline is defined by the treaty of 1783 to be the middle ofthat river, up to its source, but literally, as well as figuratively,we are at sea as to its location from that point to theopen ocean. It is the purpose of this paper to give someaccount of the circumstances which gave rise to such acurious omission; the incidents which led to a diplomaticcorrespondence and convention relating to the matter, in1892, between the two governments interested; and theattempt which was made d