river, as its course from the height of land into Lake Superior is short, and the current strong. Having reached the summit and passed the portage, which separates the streams that flow in opposite directions, the canoes proceed down the western stream, through the Rainy Lake, and the Lake of the Woods, into Lake Winnepeg. From the north-western point of the Lake of the Woods, a line drawn due west could never strike the Missisippi, which rises far to the southward. So that at this end of the boundary line the uncertainty of it is so great, that, had not hostilities intervened, it would in course of time have become necessary to resume the discussion of the boundaries, and fix them in a more intelligible and defined manner.

Thus, however, it stands at present. A new boundary line i therefore necessary, were it simply to define geographical limits, and remedy the errors we have pointed out. But it is more imperiously requisite, in a political point of view, to give permanent security to our North American possessions, and effectually to curb the avowed ambition, and encroachments of the Americans.

The great feature of this new line, strenuously to be insisted on, ought to be the exclusion of the Americans from the navigation of the St. Lawrence, and all its congregation of tributary seas and waters. They are the natural patrimony of the Canadas. Water communications do not offer either a natural or secure boundary. Mountains separate, but rivers approximate mankind. Hence the prominent boundary should be the heights of land separating the respective territories. If this basis were adopted, the advantages of it, on looking at the map, will be obvious to the most superficial observer. We should have possession of Lake Champlain, and the waters descending into it; of an adjacent country, and of the southern shores of all the great lakes, of which we have now only the northern coasts; together with the whole of Lake Michigan, from which, through a series of the same watercourse, we are wholly excluded. In this quarter, the heights of land separate the waters that flow into the great lakes, from those that take their course towards the Missisippi; and as, by the eighth article of the treaty of 1783, we are entitled to the free navigation of that important river, so essential an advantage should not be neglected to NO. IX. VOL. V. H

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be ensured to us, and a point of contact of our territories with a navigable part of that river, secured by a line down one of the rivers running into it in these regions, or along a height of land between two of them.

No arguments need be used to illustrate the extreme importance of this last object, which is obvious; and if we should not be able to obtain the heights of land as a new line of boundary throughout, and should be obliged to be content with a line passing through the several watercourse communications from Lake Ontario to Lake Huron; at all events, instead of proceeding through the Straits of St. Mary into Lake Superior, it should go from Lake Erie up the Sandusky River to the nearest waters falling into the Ohio, and from thence down that river into the Missisippi; thus according with the spirit of the eighth article of the treaty of 1783, and giving us a point of contact with the Missisippi in a navigable part, which the second article, defining the boundaries, meant to bestow upon us, but failed of doing from its geographical inaccuracy.

Again, whether we procure the heights of land as a boundarybasis or not, we ought to insist on all the islands in the River St. Lawrence and the Lakes, and the islands of St. Pierre and MiqueJon; at least, no one of them should be ceded without previously ascertaining, by commissioners duly qualified from residence in the country, their locality and importance.

It has been suggested, that it should be stipulated that no vessel belonging to the Americans, exceeding a certain burthen, twenty or thirty tons, which is a size quite adequate to the trade of those regions, should be suffered to navigate any of the lakes, and that no fortifications of any kind should be erected upon their borders, or the borders of the St. Lawrence, or upon any of the waters that fall into them from the American side; whilst the right of the British in these respects should be reserved to be exercised without restriction: because one of the avowed and main objects of the American government, in this war, being the conquest of the Canadas, and the object of Great Britain merely the security of these provinces against aggressiou,—it is indisputable, that no peace can he safe or durable, without providing ample security against attacks

of that nature in future. It is equally important that the new claim set up by the United States to the whole of the north-west coast. of America, as far as the Columbia River, in consequence of their possession of Louisiana, should be set at rest, and extinguished for

ever.

Before dismissing the subject of our own boundary line, it may be well to advert to the limits as now existing between New Brunswick and the United States; and if we cannot get to the Penobscot, at least let some route or line be drawn, by which we may be enabled to have a free communication between Canada and Nova Scotia. And it is also, perhaps, the more requisite to insist upon the necessity of our resuming the islands in Passamaquoddy Bay, (and why they have not been taken possession of since the war cannot easily be explained,) as, by the unratified convention of 1803, it was most unaccountably agreed to cede them to the United States, this government being, it is presumed, ignorant not only of their importance, but of their having been for many years part of the parish of West Isles, in the county of Charlotte (the southernmost county of New Brunswick,) paying the rates, and acknowledging the municipal regulations incident upon such an appropriation.

Large quantities of lumber, furnished from the neighbouring parts of the province, are purchased by the Americans and carried to these islands, which are paid for in prohibited articles from the United States; and they in the same manner engross almost the whole of the produce of the fisheries, which is equally paid for in such articles: thus precluding the West India Islands, in a great measure, from receiving those supplies of fish and lumber in British bottoms, and introducing large quantities of contraband goods into the colony, to the serious injury of the manufacturing interests of the mother country. The situation of these islands also enables their inhabitants to engross a very great proportion of the trade in gypsum, which is now become an object of great demand, and, in some degree, of necessity, in the United States. In 1806, upwards of 40,000 tons were exported from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia; and, if the contraband trade in this article in Passamaquoddy Bay was suppressed, the export of it to the United

States would annually employ 10,000 tons of British shipping. The United States must also, in a very few years, resort to these provinces for coal, as other kinds of fuel have become scarce and dear in the Eastern States; and in the same manner as the carrying trade in gypsum is intercepted by these islands, would that in the coal be, if they were to continue in the possession of the Americans. It would, therefore, be the height of indiscretion to give up these Islands to the United States, exclusive of the difficulty of approach which it would occasion to the ports of New Brunswick, within Passamaquoddy Bay, the Americans having already erected a battery on one of these islands.

The next important point to be attended to in a treaty of peace with the United States, is a new boundary for the Indians.

The boundary line which appears best for the protection of Indian rights, and which would add to the security of Canada, would be to run a line from Sandusky, on Lake Erie, to the nearest waters falling into the Ohio; then down that river, and up the Missisippi, to the mouth of the Missouri; thence up the Missouri to its principal source, confining the United States to the Rocky mountains, as their western boundary, and excluding them from all the country to the northward and westward of the lines here designated, which, from those lines to that which should be agreed on as the British boundary of Canada, should remain wholly for the Indians as their hunting-grounds. The boundary between the United States and the Indians, as fixed by the treaty of Greenville, before alluded to, would perhaps answer as the new boundary line for the protection of the Indians, if extended so as to run up the Missouri and to the Rocky mountains, provided that all the reservations and conditions in that treaty relative to the various tracts of ground within that line, for the advantage of the United States, and all the other conditions attached to them by it, be wholly done away, and the American government (and probably also reciprocally the British), excluded from having any forts, military posts, territorial jurisdiction, or public property of any kind, within the Indian line: but the bonâ fide property of white people, in lands within that boundary, where the Indian titles shall have been fairly extinguished

previous to a new treaty with America, might perhaps be safely allowed under the territorial jurisdiction of Great Britain.

This would of course obviate the necessity of any reservation as to the right of the British to carry on trade with the Indians, whose independence being thus established, they would have the right to admit or interdict whom they please; and we well know to whom they would, both from inclination and interest, give the preference. This is the more desirable, as the intercourse with the Indians of that quarter by the British, being carried on by permission, as it were, of a jealous and hostile nation, has been the fruitful source of innumerable exactions, continued disputes, and incessant broils.

For men, whose friendship has been recently shown to be of such great importance to us, we cannot do too much. We should see all their wrongs redressed, their territory restored to them, and themselves rendered for ever secure from American encroachment. But the independence of the Indians cannot be effectually preserved, by the articles of any treaty, which shall provide security for Indian territory or Indian rights, unless, what is indispensable for their due execution, Great Britain become the avowed guarantee and protector of those rights and that territory, so as to have both the right and the power of instant interference, in case of any encroachment or violation, and not, as hitherto, be a silent spectator of wrongs and injustice, more immediately injurious to the aborigines, but eventually as ruinous to the security of the Canadas.

In illustration of the injuries the independent Indians have sustained from the Americans, and which have excited those apprebensions of extermination so generally entertained by the natives, we shall give the substance of the speech of the sagacious and brave TECUMSECTH,' at his interview with the lamented GENERAL BROCK, whom he came to aid, in his expedition to repel HULL's invasion of Upper Canada.

This illustrious chief having been wounded in one of the late actions in Upper Canada, was found by the Americans in the field, and afterwards taken to their quarters, and FLAYED.