The white men were afraid to push on further without permission. They were afraid they would be massacred, so they were obliged to turn back leaving the line incompleted, and many, many years passed by before that line was finally finished.
But Mason and Dixon’s line[5] still marks the boundaries between the three States of Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania, and here and there a stone still stands where they set it up in their “vistoe,” more than a hundred and fifty years ago. One stone is preserved in the rooms of the Delaware Historical Society, at Tenth and Market streets, in Wilmington.
The lines they marked out were those between Pennsylvania on the north, and Delaware and Maryland on the south, and between Maryland and Delaware[6] and they did their work so well that it has never had to be done again.
NOTES
[1] Now New Castle.
[2] Wilmington.
[3] The first settlement in Maryland.
[4] The Six Nations were the tribes of Indians inhabiting that region.