It was resolved to create another office, until then unknown in America, called a surveyorship. The duties of the surveyor in England are the same as those of the inspector in the Canadian or United States services, and call for a general control over the postal service within certain defined limits. The office of surveyor was established in 1772, and Finlay was appointed to the position. He was allowed to retain his charge of the post office in Canada, though his salary here underwent an abatement. The first duty assigned to Finlay as post office surveyor was to explore the uninhabited country beyond the last settlements on the river Chaudiere extending over the height of land into New England.[77] The purpose of the trip was to ascertain the practicability of a direct road between Quebec and New England. The merchants of Quebec had made much complaint of the slowness and irregularity of the ordinary communication with New York, which was by way of Montreal, and they hoped that the proposed road would materially shorten the journey to the principal places in the northern colonies. The road which the merchants of Quebec desired to see built was a project which had occupied public attention at various times for over a century before this time. When Louis XIV, Colbert his minister, and Talon the intendant, were devising schemes for the creation of a New France in North America, they observed that the long Canadian winters, which shut up the port of Quebec, made it desirable that there should be free access to an ocean port. The treaty of Breda confirmed England in 1667 in its possession of New York and New Jersey, and also established the right of France to Acadia, which in the French view comprised not only Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, but also that section of the state of Maine which lies east of the Kennebec river. In 1671[78] the king directed Talon to see what could be done towards constructing a road between the mouth of the Chaudiere and fort Pentegoet at the mouth of the Penobscot, which was the headquarters of the French governor in Acadia. The purposes of the king were not unlike those of the fathers of the present confederation. Canada was French and so was Acadia, and the association of the inland with the maritime settlements could not but be productive of good. The populations were small: Canada had six thousand seven hundred, and Acadia four hundred and forty-one,[79] but, for a short period, imperial ideas prevailed.