necessarily, were very indefinite. The Merrimack River was an important
factor in fixing the limits of the grant, as the northern boundary of
Massachusetts was to be a line three miles north of any and every part
of it. At the date of the charter, the general direction of the river
was not known, but it was incorrectly assumed to be easterly and
westerly. As a matter of fact, the course of the Merrimack is southerly,
for a long distance from where it is formed by the union of the
Winnepeseogee and the Pemigewasset Rivers, and then it turns and runs
twenty-five or thirty miles in a northeasterly direction to its mouth;
and this deflexion in the current caused the dispute. The difference
between the actual and the supposed direction was a matter of little
practical importance so long as the neighboring territory remained
unsettled, or so long as the two provinces were essentially under one
government; but as the population increased it became an exciting and
vexatious question. Towns were chartered by Massachusetts in territory
claimed by New Hampshire, and this action led to bitter feeling and
provoking legislation. Massachusetts contended for the land "nominated
in the bond," which would carry the line fifty miles northward into the
very heart of New Hampshire; and on the other hand that province
strenuously opposed this view of the case, and claimed that the line
should run, east and west, three miles north of the mouth of the river.
At one time, a royal commission was appointed to consider the subject,
but their labors produced no satisfactory result. At last the matter was
carried to England for a decision, which was rendered by the king on
March 5, 1739-40. His judgment was final, and in favor of New Hampshire.
It gave that province not only all the territory in dispute, but a strip
of land fourteen miles in width, lying along her southern border, mostly
west of the Merrimack, which she had never claimed. This strip was the
tract of land between the line running east and west, three miles north
of the southernmost trend of the river, and a similar line three miles