The true mode of determining the most northwesterly of any two given points need no longer be a matter of discussion. It has already been a matter adjudicated and assented to by both Governments, in the case of the Lake of the Woods. The point to be considered as most to the northwest is that which a ruler laid on a map drawn according to Mercator's projection in a direction northeast and southwest and moved parallel to itself toward the northwest would last touch. In this view of the subject the Eastern Branch of the Connecticut, which forms the lake of that name, is excluded, for its source, so far from lying to the northwest of those of the other two branches which have been explored, actually lies to the south of the source of the Indian Stream. The question must therefore lie between the two others, and it is as yet impossible to decide which of them is best entitled to the epithet, as their sources lie very nearly in the same northeast and southwest rhomb line. Another circumstance would, however, render the decision between them easy. The forty-fifth parallel of latitude, as laid out by the surveyors of the Provinces of Quebec and New York in conformity with the proclamation of 1763, crosses Halls Stream above its junction with the united current of the other two. In this case the latter is the Connecticut River of the treaty of 1783, and Halls Stream, which has not yet joined it, must be excluded. The parallel, as corrected by the united operations of the British and American astronomers under the fifth article of the treaty of Ghent, does not touch Halls Stream, and the Connecticut River, to which it is produced, is the united current of the three streams. If, then, the corrected parallel should become the boundary between the United States and the British Provinces, Halls Stream must become one of those the claim of whose source to the title of the north-westernmost head of Connecticut River is to be examined. And here it may be suggested, although with the hesitation that is natural in impeaching such high authority, that the commissioners under the fifth article of the treaty of Ghent in all probability misconstrued that instrument when they reopened the question of the forty-fifth parallel. It can not be said that the forty-fifth degree of latitude had "_not been surveyed_" when it is notorious that it had been traced and marked throughout the whole extent from St. Regis to the bank of the Connecticut River.