The map of L'Escarbot, quoted by Messrs. Mudge and Featherstonhaugh, illustrates both this point and the second instance in which the term "versus septentrionem" is employed. On that map, due north of the Bay of St. Marys, a deep inlet of the Bay of Fundy is represented, and, continuing in the same direction, a deep inlet of the St. Lawrence is figured. The latter does not exist, but this map shows that it was believed to exist at the time of the grant, and must be the "statio navium" of that instrument.
This inlet of the Bay of Fundy occupies the position of the St. John, which is almost due north by the most recent determination from St. Marys Bay, and is so represented on their own map. That the St. John was by mistake arising from this cause taken for the St. Croix in the charter to Alexander is obvious from its being described as lying between the territories of the Etchemin and Souriquois. Now Etchemin, or canoe men, is the name given by the Micmac Indians to the race of the Abenakis, from their skill in the management of the canoe; and this race has always inhabited the river, whence one of their tribes is still called St. John's Indians. The language of this tribe, although they have lived apart for many years, is still perfectly intelligible by the Indians of the Penobscot, and those in the service of the commission conversed with perfect ease with the Indians of Tobique. Massachusetts, then, was right in claiming to the St. John as the eastern limit of the grant to Sir William Alexander, being the stream understood and described in it under the name of St. Croix, and wholly different from the river known to the French under that name. If, therefore, Great Britain should insist that the question in relation to the St. Croix shall be reopened, the United States would be able to maintain in the very terms of the original grant to Alexander (on which the British argument in 1797 rested) that the St. John is the St. Croix, and the boundary will be that river to its most northwestern source, the Asherbish, which flows into the upper end of Lake Temiscouata. Nova Scotia will then have recovered her lost northwest angle, which can not be found in any of the many shapes under which the British argument has been presented, although it forms the place of beginning of what is called a grant to the United States.
Note VI.
The fact that a line drawn from the source of the Kennebec to the mouth of the Chaudiere or thereabout must be one of the boundary lines of the grant to the Duke of York has not escaped the notice of Messrs. Featherstonhaugh and Mudge; but they have not derived the true result from this discovery. The Kennebec being the western limit of the grant, the line in question bounds the territory on the southwest, while they infer that it bounds it on the northeast. In making this inference they appear to have forgotten that the St. Croix is the eastern boundary of the grant. By their argument the grant to the Duke of York is blotted wholly from the map, or, rather, becomes a mathematical line which is absurd.
Note VII.
No name which has ever been applied to any part of North America is as vague as that of Acadie. The charter to De Monts in 1604 extended from the fortieth to the forty-sixth degree of north latitude; that is to say, from Sandy Hook, at the mouth of the Hudson, to the peninsula of Nova Scotia. It therefore included New York, parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and all the New England States, but excluded the disputed territory. His settlement was at the mouth of the St. Croix, but was speedily removed to Port Royal. The latter place was soon after destroyed by an expedition from Virginia under Argall. Under the title derived from this conquest it would appear probable that the celebrated grant to Sir William Stirling was made; but when his agents attempted to make settlements in the country they found that the French had preoccupied it. Although the son of Alexander succeeded in conquering the country granted to his father, and even beyond it to the Penobscot, it was restored to France by the treaty of St. Germains in 1634, and the Alexanders were indemnified for the loss by the Crown of England.
In the subsequent cessions to France after its occupations by the arms of Massachusetts, and in its final cession to Great Britain by the treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the country ceded is described as Acadie or Nova Scotia, with its ancient bounds (cum finibus antiquis). The uncertainty arising from this vague description became in 1750 a subject of controversy between France and England, and was one of the causes which led to the war of 1756. In this discussion both parties admitted that the names Acadie and Nova Scotia were convertible terms. England maintained that the territory thus named extended to the St. Lawrence; the French, on the other hand, insisted that their Acadie had never extended more than 10 leagues from the Bay of Fundy; while by geographers, as quoted by the British commissioners, the name was limited to the peninsula which forms the present Province of Nova Scotia.[62] If Acadie had been limited to the north by the forty-sixth degree of north latitude, as expressed in the charter of De Monts, that parallel is to the south of Mars Hill. The British Government, therefore, derives no title to the disputed territory from this source, as the title of Massachusetts and of Maine as her successor is admitted to all country south of that parallel.[63]
It is very easy to tell what country was actually settled by the French as Acadie. Its chief town was Port Royal, now Annapolis, at the head of the Bay of Fundy. Nearly all the settlements of the Acadians were in that vicinity, and for the most part within the peninsula.
From these seats they were removed in 1756 by Great Britain, and to them a remnant was permitted to return. The most western settlement of Acadians was on the St. John River near the present site of Fredericton, and no permanent occupation was ever made by them of country west of the St. Croix. It is even doubtful whether the settlement near Fredericton was a part of French Acadie, for it seems to have been formed by persons who escaped from the general seizure and transportation of their countrymen.
This settlement was broken up in 1783, and its inhabitants sought refuge at Madawaska; but it can not be pretended that this forced removal of Acadians subsequent to the treaty of 1783 was an extension of the name of their country. The whole argument in favor of the British claim founded on the limits of ancient Acadie therefore fails: