Provinces, was nevertheless at that time the longest road in the world
operating under single control.

The railways brought with them a new speculative fever, a more complex
financial structure, a business politics which shaded into open
corruption, and a closer touch with the outside world. The general
substitution of steam for sail on the Atlantic during this period aided
further in lessening the isolation of what had been backwoods provinces
and in bringing them into closer relation with the rest of the world.

It was in closer relations with the United States that this emergence
from isolation chiefly manifested itself. In the generation that
followed the War of 1812 intercourse with the United States was
discouraged and was remarkably insignificant. Official policy and the
memories of 1783 and 1812 alike built up a wall along the southern
border. The spirit of Downing Street was shown in the instructions given
to Lord Bathurst, immediately after the close of the war, to leave the
territory between Montreal and Lake Champlain in a state of nature,
making no further grants of land and letting the few roads which had
been begun fall into decay thus a barrier of forest wilderness would
ward off republican contagion. This Chinese policy of putting up a wall
of separation proved impossible to carry through, but in less extreme
ways this attitude of aloofness marked the course of the Government all
through the days of oversea authority.

The friction aroused by repeated boundary disputes prevented friendly
relations between Canada and the United States. With unconscious irony
the framers of the Peace of 1783 had prefaced their long outline of the
boundaries of the United States by expressing their intention "that all
disputes which might arise in future on the subject of the boundaries
of the said United States may be prevented." So vague, however, were the
terms of the treaty and so untrustworthy were the maps of the day that
ultimately almost every clause in the boundary section gave rise to
dispute.

As settlement rolled westward one section of the boundary after another
came in question. Beginning in the east, the line between New Brunswick
and New England was to be formed by the St. Croix River. There had been
a St. Croix in Champlain's time and a St. Croix was depicted on the
maps, but no river known by that name existed in 1783. The British
identified it with the Schoodic, the Americans with the Magaguadavi