The peace negotiations were at that time in progress. The commissioners for great Britain were two honest, well-meaning gentlemen, who however knew nothing of the geography of the countries with which they had to deal. The maps at their disposal were wretchedly inadequate. One of them, Farren's, dated 1773, showed the country as far west as the middle of Lake Ontario. Beyond that point the interior was represented as made up of rocks and swamps, and described as uninhabitable. Such maps gave every advantage to one who was personally acquainted with the west, and the United States commissioners had at their service the expert advice of Peter Pond. Had the British possessed the slightest idea of the value of the territories in question, and had they been disposed in the slightest degree to press their claims, they might have insisted on a line drawn due west from the middle of Lake Champlain. Such a division the Americans would have been glad to accept, for it gave them more than they could justly demand. But Pond was at the elbow of the United States commissioners. He suggested to them a line passing through the Great Lakes to the north west corner of the Lake of the Woods, and from thence westward (as he imagined from his own rough surveys) to the head of the Mississippi river. This demand, exorbitant though it was, the British commissioners accepted, and it was confirmed by both nations. Such was the hand (concludes Thompson grimly) that designated the boundary between the dominions of Great Britain and the territories of the United States. The settlement of 1783 was in Thompson's eyes merely the first of a series of unfortunate arrangements, by which the British dominions were robbed of extensive and valuable territory. Edmund Burke had remarked that a malignant fate seemed to attend all the operations of Great Britain on the continent of North America. Thompson, who from his personal experience knew the land and the people who disputed its possession, was able to explain in a less mysterious way the failure of the British to defend their claims against American pretensions. Accordingly, in the summer of 1840, Thompson addressed a number of letters to Sir Robert Peel, Lord Stanley and the Hon. W. E. Gladstone on the subject of disputed points along the border. His object was to urge a prompt and just settlement in each case. Such a settlement, he felt, was important if peace was to be maintained with "so litigious a neighbour." It was vital, if the steady encroachments of that neighbour were to be brought to an end, and Britain was not to be gradually deprived of her hold upon her last possessions in America.