In the Bay of Fundy the boundary line between British and American territory was, by the terms of the 1783 Treaty, to be drawn due East from the mouth of the St. Croix river, assigning to the United States all islands within twenty leagues of the shore to the South of the line,
‘excepting such islands as now are or heretofore have been within the limits of the said province of Nova Scotia.’
Here was a further ground of dispute, touching the ownership of the islands in Passamaquoddy Bay. Geographically they would belong to the United States, unless they could be shown to have been within the limits of Nova Scotia. The Convention of 1803, which has already been mentioned as never having been ratified, in the First Article prescribed the boundary; and the Treaty of Ghent in the Fourth Article referred the matter to two Commissioners on precisely the same terms as were adopted by the next Article of the Treaty in the case of the North-West angle controversy, i.e., each nation was to appoint an arbitrator, and, if the two arbitrators failed to agree, separate reports were to be made to the two governments, and the final decision was to be left to some friendly sovereign or state. Fortunately the two arbitrators came to an agreement, delivering their award on the 24th of November, 1817. Three little islands in the Bay of Passamaquoddy, named Moose Island, Dudley Island, and Frederick Island, were allotted to the United States, and the rest of the islands in the bay, together with the island of Grand Manan, lying further out in the Bay of Fundy, were assigned to Great Britain. The actual channel, however, was not delimited; and though many years afterwards, under a Convention of 1892, Commissioners were appointed for the purpose, they failed to come to a complete agreement; this small question therefore between the two nations is still awaiting settlement under the Treaty for the delimitation of International Boundaries between Canada and the United States which was signed on 11th April, 1908.[236]
The line from the North-Westernmost head of the Connecticut river to the St. Lawrence.
From the point where the boundary line struck the North-Westernmost head of the Connecticut River, the Treaty of 1783 provided that it should be carried
‘down along the middle of that river to the forty-fifth degree of North latitude, from thence by a line due West on said latitude until it strikes the river Iroquois or Cataraquy’.
Iroquois or Cataraquy was the name given to the St. Lawrence between Montreal and Lake Ontario, and the First Article of Lord Ashburton’s Treaty, identifying the North-Westernmost head of the Connecticut River with a river called Hall’s Stream, re-affirmed in somewhat different words the provision of the older Treaty as to this section of the boundary. Here there was no dispute. The line had already been laid down in the Proclamation of 1763 and the Quebec Act of 1774. In the words of the Ashburton Treaty it was the line
‘which has been known and understood to be the line of actual division between the States of New York and Vermont on one side and the British province of Canada on the other’.
The line up the St. Lawrence and the lakes.
From the point where the 45th parallel intersected the St. Lawrence, the line was, under the Treaty of 1783, to be carried up the middle of the rivers and lakes to the water communication between Lake Huron and Lake Superior, with the necessary result that Lake Michigan was entirely excluded from Canada. By the Sixth Article of the Treaty of Ghent two Commissioners were to be appointed to settle doubts as to what was the middle of the waterway and to which of the two nations the various Islands belonged: and, as in other cases, if the Commissioners disagreed, they were to report to their respective governments with a view to arbitration by a neutral power. A joint award was given,[237] signed at Utica on the 18th of June, 1822, the boundary being elaborately specified and the report being accompanied by a series of maps.