sources of such rivers as the Connecticut and the St. John must lie in a country sufficiently elevated to be entitled to the epithet of highlands, although it should appear on reaching it that it had the appearance of a plain.  Nay, it was even concluded, although, as now appears, incorrectly—­and it was not feared that the conclusion would weaken the American argument—­that the line from the northwest angle of Nova Scotia, at least as far as the sources of Tuladi, did pass through a country of that description.  Opposite ground was taken in the argument of Great Britain by her agent, but however acute and ingenious were the processes of reasoning by which this argument was supported, it remained in his hands without application, for the line claimed by him on the part of his Government was one having the same physical basis for its delineation as that claimed by the agent of the United States, namely, one joining the culminating points of the valleys in which streams running in opposite directions took their rise.  The argument appears to have been drawn while he hoped to be able to include Katahdin and the other great mountains in that neighborhood in his claimed boundary, and he does not appear to have become aware how inapplicable it was in every sense to the line by which he was, for want of a better, compelled to abide.  The British Government, however, virtually abandoned the construction of their agent in the convention signed in London the 27th September, 1827.[55]

[Footnote 55:  See Note IX, p. 148.]

In this it was stipulated that Mitchell’s and Map A should be admitted to the exclusion of all others “as the only maps that shall be considered as evidence” of the topography of the country, and in the latter of these maps, constructed under the joint direction of the British and American negotiators by the astronomer of the British Government, it was agreed that nothing but the water courses should be represented.  Finally, it was admitted in the report of Messrs. Featherstonhaugh and Mudge that the terms highlands and height of land are identical.  The decision of the King of the Netherlands, to which Great Britain gave her assent in the first instance, recognizes the correctness of the views entertained in the American statements.[56] All discussion on this subject is, however, rendered unnecessary by the knowledge which the undersigned have obtained of the country.  The line surveyed by them not only divides rivers, but possesses in a preeminent degree the character by which in the British argument highlands are required to be distinguished.

[Footnote 56:  See Note X, pp. 148, 149.]