Great Britain, after a successful war, found herself in possession of the whole eastern side of the continent of North America.  So much of this as lay to the south of the St. Lawrence and the forty-fifth parallel of north latitude had been previously made the subject of charters from the British Crown under a claim of right from priority of discovery.[46] The possession of this wide tract was not uncontested, and various other European nations had attempted to found settlements within the limits of the British charters.  In such cases it was held as a matter of law that where the occupation or defense of the territory granted had been neglected the right had ceased, and the country, when recovered by conquest or restored by treaty, was again vested in the Crown, to be made the subject of new grants or governed as a royal colony.  Thus, when the settlements made by the Dutch and Swedes, which by the fortune of war had become wholly vested in Holland, were reduced, the Crown exercised its rights by conveying them to the Duke of York, although covered in a great part, if not wholly, by previous charters; and when these countries were again occupied by the Dutch and restored by the treaty of Breda it was thought necessary that the title of the Duke of York should be restored by a fresh grant.  In both of these charters to that prince was included the Province of Sagadahock, within whose chartered limits was comprised the territory at present in dispute.  This Province, confined on the sea between the rivers St. Croix and Kennebec, had for its opposite limits the St. Lawrence, or, as the grant expresses it, “extending from the river of Kenebeque and so upward by the shortest course to the river Canada northward.”  The shortest course from the source of the Kennebec to the St. Lawrence is by the present Kennebec road.  This grant therefore covered the whole space along the St. Lawrence from about the mouth of the Chaudiere River[47] to the eastern limit of the grant to Sir William Alexander.  By the accession of James II, or, as some maintain, by the act of attainder, it matters not which, this Province reverted to the Crown, and was by it granted, in 1691, to the colony of Massachusetts.  In the same charter Nova Scotia also was included.  This has been called a war grant, as in fact it was, and the colony of Massachusetts speedily availed themselves of it by conquering the whole of the territory conveyed except the island of Cape Breton.  The latter, too, fell before the unassisted arms of the New England Provinces in 1745, at a time when Great Britain was too deeply engaged in the contest of a civil war to give aid either in money or in men to her transatlantic possessions.

[Footnote 46:  Sebastian Cabot, in the employ of Henry VII, discovered the continent of North America 24th June, 1497, and explored it from Hudsons Bay to Florida in 1498.  Columbus discovered South America 1st August, 1498, while the voyage of Vespucci, whose name has been given to the continent, was not performed until 1499.—­HUMBOLDT.]