miles in a northeasterly direction to its mouth;
and this deflexion in the current caused the dispute. The difference
between the actual and the supposed direction was a matter of little
practical importance so long as the neighboring territory remained
unsettled, or so long as the two provinces were essentially under one
government; but as the population increased it became an exciting and
vexatious question. Towns were chartered by Massachusetts in territory
claimed by New Hampshire, and this action led to bitter feeling and
provoking legislation. Massachusetts contended for the land "nominated
in the bond," which would carry the line fifty miles northward into the
very heart of New Hampshire; and on the other hand that province
strenuously opposed this view of the case, and claimed that the line
should run, east and west, three miles north of the mouth of the river.
At one time, a royal commission was appointed to consider the subject,
but their labors produced no satisfactory result. At last the matter was
carried to England for a decision, which was rendered by the king on
March 5, 1739-40. His judgment was final, and in favor of New Hampshire.
It gave that province not only all the territory in dispute, but a strip
of land fourteen miles in width, lying along her southern border, mostly
west of the Merrimack, which she had never claimed. This strip was the
tract of land between the line running east and west, three miles north
of the southernmost trend of the river, and a similar line three miles
north of its mouth. By the decision twenty-eight townships were taken
from Massachusetts and transferred to New Hampshire. The settlement of
this disputed question was undoubtedly a public benefit, although it
caused, at the time, a great deal of hard feeling. In establishing the
new boundary Pawtucket Falls, situated now in the city of Lowell, and
near the most southern portion of the river's course, was taken as the
starting-place; and the line which now separates the two States was run
west, three miles north of this point. It was surveyed officially in the
spring of 1741.

The new boundary passed through the original Groton grant, and cut off a
triangular portion of its territory, now within the limits of Nashua,
and went to the southward of Groton Gore, leaving that tract of land
wholly in New Hampshire.

A few years previously to this time the original grant had undergone
other dismemberment, when a slice of its t