dividing it from the adjoining one; this division was specified in old patents, and confirmed by analogy. All at once, however, our new tenants at will made a discovery, or rather had a revelation, purporting, that there was a twenty mile line, as they called it, which, in old times, had been carried thus far beyond the Connecticut River, into the bounds of what had ever been esteemed the province of New-York. It had become extremely fashionable to question the limits of individual property, but for so bold a stroke at a whole province, people were not prepared. The consequence of establishing this point was, that thus the grants made by the province of New-York, of lands not their own, could not be valid; and thus the property which had cost the owners so much to establish and survey, reverted to the other province, and was no longer theirs. This was so far beyond all imagination, that though there appeared not the smallest likelihood of its succeeding, as the plea must, in the end, be carried to Britain, people stood aghast, and saw no safety in living among those who were capable of making such daring strides over all established usage, and ready, on all occasions, to confederate where any advantage was in view, though ever engaged in litigious contentions with each other in their original home. This astonishing plea, during its dependence, afforded these dangerous neighbours a pretext to continue their usurped possession, till it should be decided to which province the lands really belonged. They even carried their insolence so far, that when a particular friend of my father’s, a worthy, upright man, named Munro, who possessed a large tract of land adjoining to his; when this good man, who had established a settlement, saw-mills, &c. came to fix some tenants of his on his lands, a body of these incendiaries came out, armed, to oppose them, trusting to their superior numbers and the peaceable disposition of our friend. Now, the fatal twenty mile line ran exactly through the middle of my father’s property. Had not the revolution followed so soon, there was no doubt of this claim being rejected in Britain; but in the mean time it served as a pretext for daily encroachment and insolent bravadoes. Much of my father’s disorder was owing to the great conflict in his mind. To give up every prospect of consequence and affluence, and return to Britain, leaving his property afloat among these ungovernable people, (to say no worse of them,) was very hard. Yet to live among them, and by legal coercion, force his due out of their hands, was no pleasing prospect. His good angel, it would seem in the sequel, whispered to him to return. Though, in human prudence, it appeared a fatal measure to leave so valuable a property in such hands, he thought, first, that he would stay two or three years; and then, when others had vanquished his antagonists, and driven them off the lands, which they, in the mean time, were busily