Although the justice of her claim was upheld by the Commissioners of New Haven and Plymouth, Massachusetts refused to accept the decision as binding, and threatened retaliation, which, in 1649, took the form of an import duty on all goods from the three colonies entering at Boston Harbor, which was then the main channel through which all business was conducted with Europe.[597] The wording of the act made it obvious that it was to punish the three smaller colonies for not having agreed with herself; and the Confederacy's delegates resolved that “how fare the premisses agree with the lawe of love and with the tenure and import of the articles of Confederation, the Commissioners tender and recomend to the serius Concideration of the Generall Court of the Massachusits.” Wearied with her continuous rejection of their valid rulings for five years, they also added that they “desire to bee spared in all further agitations Concerning sprinkfield.”[598] Apparently, however, the pertinacity of Massachusetts won the struggle, to which bitterness was added by her persistent refusal, for seventy years, to acknowledge the real location of her southern boundary line, which she had extended slightly into Connecticut territory.[599] That “line” she had had surveyed, in 1642, by the somewhat odd method of having two “skillful artists,” as she called them, locate a point three miles south of the Charles River, and then, in order to avoid the long walk across country, sail around by the Sound, and ascend the Connecticut River to a point which they agreed was in the same latitude as that from which they had started. A map, a pen, and a ruler completed this arduous bit of surveying work in the wilderness.[600] Unfortunately, it did not satisfy Connecticut. Footnote 597: _Massachusetts Records_, vol. II, p. 269. This had been anticipated by Connecticut; _Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll._, Series IV, vol. VI, p. 383. Footnote 598: _Acts United Colonies_, vol. I, p. 158. Footnote 599: _Ibid._, vol. I, pp. 151 _f._ Footnote 600: C. W. Bowen, _The Boundary Disputes of Connecticut_ (Boston, 1882), pp. 19, 53 _ff._