s; neither is it true that that measure has been adopted for
other purposes than to maintain the security of the customary line of
communication and to protect the buildings, stores, and accommodations
provided for the use of Her Majesty's troops when on march by that
route; and it was with a view to correct misapprehensions which appeared
to exist upon these points, and thus to do away with one needless
occasion of dispute, that the undersigned conveyed to the United States
Government the information contained in his note of the 26th of January.

With regard again to the construction of barracks and other buildings
and the preserving them in an efficient state of repair and defense, a
similar degree of error and misapprehension appears still to prevail in
the minds of the American authorities.

The erection of those buildings within the portion of the disputed
territory now referred to, for the shelter of Her Majesty's troops while
on their march and for the safe lodgment of the stores, is no new act
on the part of Her Majesty's authorities. The buildings in question have
been in the course of construction from a period antecedent to the
provisional agreements of last year, and they are now maintained and
occupied along the line of march with a view to the same objects above
specified, for which the small detachments of troops also referred to
are in like manner there stationed.

The undersigned will not refrain from here remarking upon one point
of comparison exhibited in the present controversy. It is admitted by
the United States authorities that the armed bands stationed by the
government of Maine in the neighborhood of the Aroostook River have
fortified those stations with artillery, and it is now objected as
matter of complaint against the British authorities with reference
to the buildings at Lake Temiscouata, not that those buildings are
furnished with artillery, but only that they are defended by palisades
capable of resisting artillery. It would be difficult to adduce stronger
evidence of the acts on the one side being those of aggression and on
the other of defense.

The fact, shortly, is (and this is the essential point of the
argument) that Her Majesty's authorities have not as yet altered their
state of preparation or strengthened their military means within the
disputed territory with a view to settling the question of the boundary,
although the attitude assumed by the State of Maine with reference to