The treaty does not speak of mountains nor even hills, but of
"highlands" that divide rivers flowing different ways. It was well known
that rivers did fall into the St. Lawrence and into the Atlantic, that
these rivers would run _down_ and not _up_, and it was consequently
inferred that the _land_ from whence these _rivers_ flowed must of
necessity be _high_, and unless there are to be found in that region
_geological phenomena_ which exist nowhere else on the face of the globe
this inference is irresistible.
The truth is that these highlands have been known and well understood by
the British themselves ever since the grant of James I to Sir William
Alexander, in 1621. The portion of the boundary there given which
relates to this controversy is "from the western spring head of the St.
Croix, by an imaginary line conceived to run through the land northward
to the next road of Ships River or Spring discharging itself into the
great river of Canada, and proceeding thence _eastward_ along the shores
of the sea of the said river of Canada to the road, haven, or shore
commonly called _Gaspeck_" (Gaspe).
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