The leading English and French general maps showing Acadia at this time are that of America in Bowen’s Complete System of Geography (1747)[1075] and D’Anville’s Amérique Septentrionale (Paris), which was reëngraved, with changes, at Nuremberg in 1756, and at Boston (reprinted, London) 1755, in Douglass’s Summary of the British Settlements in North America. It is here called “improved with the back settlements of Virginia.”[1076]
The varying territorial claims of the French and English were illustrated in a Geographical History of Nova Scotia, published at London in 1749; a French version of which, as Histoire géographique de la Nouvelle Écosse, made by Étienne de Lafargue, and issued anonymously, was published at Paris in 1755, but its authorship was acknowledged when it was later included in Lafargue’s Œuvres.[1077] The Mémoire which Galissonière wrote in December, 1750, claimed for France westward to the Kennebec, and thence he bounded New France on the water-shed of the St. Lawrence and Mississippi.[1078] In 1750-51 Joseph Bernard Chabert was sent by the French king to rectify the charts of the coasts of Acadia, and his Voyage fait par ordre du Roi en 1750 et 1751 dans l’Amérique Septentrionale pour rectifier les cartes des côtes de l’Acadie, de l’îsle Royale, et de l’îsle de Terre Neuve, Paris, 1753, has maps of Acadia and of the coast of Cape Breton.[1079]
In 1753 the futile sessions of the commissioners of England and France began at Paris. Their aim was to define by agreement the bounds of Acadia as ceded to England by the treaty of Utrecht (1713),[1080] under the indefinite designation of its “ancient limits.” What were these ancient limits? On this question the French had constantly shifted their grounds. The commission of De Monts in 1603 made Acadia stretch from Central New Brunswick to Southern Pennsylvania, or between the 40th and 46th degrees of latitude; but, as Parkman says, neither side cared to produce the document. When the French held without dispute the adjacent continent, they never hesitated to confine Acadia to the peninsula.[1081] Equally, as interest prompted, they could extend it to the Kennebec, or limit it to the southern half of the peninsula. Cf. the Mémoire sur les limites de l’Acadie (joint à la lettre de Begon, Nov. 9, 1713), in the Parkman MSS. in Mass. Hist. Soc., New France, i. p. 9.
In July, 1749, La Galissonière, in writing to his own ministry, had declared that Acadia embraced the entire peninsula; but, as the English knew nothing of this admission, he could later maintain that it was confined to the southern shore only. Cf. again Fixation des limites de l’Acadie, etc., 1753, among the Parkman MSS. in Mass. Hist. Soc., New France, i. pp. 203-269.
On this question of the “ancient limits,” the English commissioners had of course their way of answering, and the New England claims were well sustained in the arguing of the case by Governor Shirley, of Massachusetts,[1082] who with William Mildmay was an accredited agent of the English monarch. The views of the opposing representatives were irreconcilable,[1083] and in 1755 the French court appealed to the world by presenting the two sides of the case, as shown in the counter memoirs of the commissioners, in a printed work, which was sent to all the foreign courts. It appeared in two editions, quarto (1755) and duodecimo (1756), in three and six volumes respectively, and was entitled Mémoires des Commissaires du Roi et de ceux de sa Majesté Britannique. Both editions have a preliminary note saying that the final reply of the English commissioners was not ready for the press, and so was not included.[1084] This omission gave occasion to the English, when, the same year (1755), they published at London their Memorials of the English and French commissaries concerning the limits of Nova Scotia or Acadia, to claim that, by including this final response of the English commissioners, their record of the conference was more complete. This London quarto volume[1085] contained various documents.[1086]
In 1757 a fourth volume was added to the quarto Paris edition, containing the final reply of the English commissioners, and completing the record of the two years’ conference. The four volumes are a very valuable repository of historical material; and, from printing at length the documents offered in evidence, it is a much more useful gathering than the single English volume, which we have already described. The points of difference between the two works are these:—
The memorial of Shirley and Mildmay (Jan. 11, 1751), given in French only in the Paris edition, and accompanied by observations of the French commissioners in foot-notes, is here given in French and English, but without the foot-notes. The English memorial of Jan. 23, 1753, lacks the observations of the French commissioners which accompany it in their vol. iv.[1087]
Among the “pièces justificatives” in the London edition, various papers are omitted which are given in the Paris edition. The reason of the omission is that they already existed in print. Such are the texts of various treaties, and extracts from printed books.
The London edition prints, however, the MS. sources among these proofs, but does not give the observations of the French commissioners which accompany them in the Paris edition. Among the papers thus omitted in the London edition are the provincial charter of Massachusetts Bay and Gen. John Hill’s manifesto, printed at Boston from Charlevoix.