fixed
the boundaries between that country and British North America, and led
to serious international disputes which lasted until the middle of the
following century. Three of the ablest men in the United
States--Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay--succeeded by their
astuteness and persistency in extending their country's limits to the
eastern bank of the Mississippi, despite the insidious efforts of
Vergennes on the part of France to hem in the new nation between the
Atlantic and the Appalachian Range. The comparative value set upon
Canada during the preliminary negotiations may be easily deduced from
the fact that Oswald, the English plenipotentiary, proposed to give up
to the United States the south-western and most valuable part of the
present province of Ontario, and to carry the north-eastern boundary up
to the River St. John. The commissioners of the United States did not
accept this suggestion. Their ultimate object--an object actually
attained--was to make the St. Lawrence the common boundary between the
two countries by following the centre of the river and the great lakes
as far as the head of Lake Superior. The issue of negotiations so
stupidly conducted by the British commissioner, was a treaty which gave
an extremely vague definition of the boundary in the north-east between
Maine and Nova Scotia--which until 1784 included New Brunswick--and
displayed at the same time a striking example of geographical ignorance
as to the north-west. The treaty specified that the boundary should pass
from the head of Lake Superior through Long Lake to the north-west angle
of the Lake of the Woods, and thence to the Mississippi, when, as a
matter of fact there was no Long Lake, and the source of the Mississippi
was actually a hundred miles or so to the south of the Lake of the
Woods. This curious blunder in the north-west was only rectified in
1842, when Lord Ashburton settled the difficulty by conceding to the
United States an invaluable corner of British territory in the east (see
below, p 299).

[Illustration: INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARY. AS FINALLY ESTABLISHED IN 1842 AT
LAKE OF THE WOODS]

The only practical advantage that the people of the provinces gained
from the Treaty of Ghent, which closed the war of 1812--15, was an
acknowledgment of the undoubted fishery rights of Great Britain and her
dependencies in the territorial waters of British North America. In the
treaty of 1783 the people of the United States obtained th