With much ingenuity, however (as it seems to me), the American Commission was induced to accept three islands, definitely named and pointed out, as their share, while the Englishmen, with characteristic modesty, contented themselves with everything left. Of the sovereignty of Moose, Dudley and Frederick Islands, there was hardly room for discussion, notwithstanding the three or four years’ occupancy of the town of Eastport by British troops after the War of 1812. Our being worsted in the matter, as we unquestionably were, is to be attributed to the general indifference of the great majority of our people to the future value of outlying territory, the resources of which have not yet been explored. This unfortunate indifference is quite as general today as it was a century ago, and is in marked contrast with the policy of our English ancestors. It is important to note that this partition of the islands in Passamaquoddy Bay, unfair as it unquestionably was, gave no definition of the boundary line from the mouth of the St. Croix to the sea, except inferentially. In the absence of description it must be inferred that the boundary is to be drawn so as to leave on one side all territory admitted to be American and on the other all admitted to be British. For a distance of about a half a mile the island of Campobello lies so close to the American shore that a channel, known as Lubec Channel, not more than a thousand feet in width, separates the two countries, and the thread, or deepest axis of this channel might well define the boundary. For the remaining score of miles, however, as has already been explained, the estuary is too wide, its depth too great and too uniform to afford any physical delimitation, except that based on equal division of water areas.