a point in the northern boundary of Pennsylvania, eighty-two miles west of the north-east corner of said State, excepting therefrom a strip one mile wide, extending along the east side of the Niagara River, from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. Massachusetts, in consideration of the above grant, and while she reserved the right of pre-emption in the soil, relinquished to New York all sovereignty and jurisdiction over all that part of the State of New York lying west of a meridian drawn through Seneca Lake, and comprising what were subsequently known as the Phelp's and Gorham and Holland Land Companies' purchases. On the north-east, the line between New York and New Hampshire remained unsettled until October, 1790, when New York consented that Vermont, which had been taken from the western part of New Hampshire and organized as a State, might be admitted into the Union with its present western boundary. This was ratified by Congress on February 18, 1791, and Vermont, under its present name, thus became one of the United States. On the south, Pennsylvania claimed, under the Charter of March 4, 1681, from King Charles II., as far north as the 42d parallel. Connecticut claimed, under the Charter of April 23, 1662, granted by the same king to John Winthrop and others, from the parallel of 41° to the parallel of 42° 2'. Thus a narrow strip two minutes, or about two and one-third miles wide, extending from the Delaware westerly as far as the western limits of New York, was claimed by both colonies.

This controversy was terminated in favor of New York by an act of the General Assembly of Connecticut, passed in May, 1800, whereby it released all territorial and jurisdictional interest in all lands lying west of the eastern boundary of New York, in consideration of a conveyance to Connecticut by the United States of that tract of land in the north-east part of Ohio, since known as the "Western Reserve," from the proceeds of the sales of which the noble school-fund of the latter State has been derived.

The northern boundary of New York, being coterminous with that of the United States, was first defined and established by royal proclamation, October 7, 1763, and confirmed by act of Parliament in 1774, in fixing the limits of the Province of Quebec. It was again defined by the second article of the treaty of peace concluded between the United States and Great Britain in 1783. The line was afterward surveyed and practically located in 1817 and 1818, by commissioners appointed under the fifth and sixth articles of the Treaty of Ghent.

The boundary between New York and New Jersey remained unsettled until September 16, 1833, when an agreement was entered into by commissioners mutually appointed by the two States, and ratified by New York the next year, which effectually disposed of all further controversy.

By the recent compact between New York and Connecticut, ratified by an act of the Legislature of New York, passed May 8, 1880, the last of the boundary disputes which have so long existed as subjects of irritation between New York and her neighbors has been amicably and definitely settled. It now remains for the lines thus established by solemn agreement to be accurately surveyed and marked by permanent monuments, so that all possibility of future doubt may be removed.

This is now being done in the most thorough manner along the division line between New York and Pennsylvania, under the direction of the Board of Regents of the University of New York, and the work should be ex tended to all other portions of the State boundary not defined by natural objects.

THE HUGUENOTS OF VIRGINIA

Three hundred years ago, upon the table-lands above the lowlands of the noble river, then known as the Powhatan, within twenty miles of the site of Richmond, the historic capital of the Fallen Confederacy, there stood in a clearing, surrounded by the primeval wilderness, a large collection of Indian huts. It was the town of the Monocans, and the eastern outpost of one of the aboriginal nations, which then possessed the territory of Virginia. Three powerful nations were then scattered over the different parts of the State. The Powhatans occupied the territory below the falls of the rivers emptying into the Chesapeake; the Mannahoacs, the country above the fails of the Potomac and Rappahannock, and the Monocans, the upward slope from the falls of the James to the mountains.

These nations were sprung from different stocks, and spoke languages so different from each other, that no philologist of the present day can derive them from the same root, and interpreters were necessary when the nations transacted business with each other. They were each divided into tribes, who spoke different dialects of the same language.

The Powhatan, the most powerful of the three, was divided into thirty tribes, the names of some of which are now borne by the rivers and bays entering into the Chesapeake. The Mannahoacs had eight, and the Monocans five tribes. The latter nations were in friendship with each other, and were combined together in carrying on perpetual warfare against the Powhatans.

The Mohemenco tribe of the Monocans occupied the town of which we have spoken, and was near the debatable line between them and the Powhatans, and many battles were fought over the same ground where, in our time, the strength and supremacy of our great Government was severely

tried.

Time has wrought a sad change on these Indian nations. The names of the nations and the tribes, when not entirely extinct, are only preserved by those who do not know their origin. The site of this town is now occupied only by a country church and a way-side store, standing on the edge of a forest, at the fork of a common country road, one branch of which crosses James River at the "Mannakin" town ferry, and the other goes on directly to Richmond. A few miles below are the Huguenot Springs, a now deserted watering-place; and across the river, fringed by fertile lowlands in full

cultivation, are seen the extensive works and buildings of the Mannakin Coal Mines. In the course of time another race and nation were to occupy the place of the Monocans, and like them, in the revolution of years, to be scattered and dispersed; but unlike them, never to become extinct or forgotten, or to leave no "footprints on the sands of time."

The Huguenots of France, whose struggle against the Government had been terminated by the ability and power of Richelieu, although conquered, were permitted for a time to enjoy the freedom of conscience secured by the famous Edict of Nantes. But Louis XIV., despite the remonstrances of the Pope of Rome, of Catholic Spain, and all Protestant Europe, repealed the edict of religious freedom and commenced against them a persecution only equalled by the atrocities of Nero and Caligula. To escape massacre and execution, fifty thousand families, having among them those distinguished by opinions and sentiments liberal beyond their age, by industry and proficiency in literature and art, left their country for other climes, where, under vines and fig-trees other than those of La Vendée and Bordeaux, they might enjoy their own opinions and worship their God, and where the myrmidons of the bigot, Louis XIV., could not make them afraid. Some went to England, some to Holland, some planted their vineyards on the Cape of Good Hope. The cruelty of the despot of France gave citizens to America. Many came to New York, more to the Carolinas, and in 1690 King William of Orange sent a large body of them to Virginia. They were naturalized by a special act passed for the purpose and by His Majesty's command, through the colonial government; they were settled on the south side of James River, and were granted a tract of land extending from Bernard's Creek, just below the town of the Monocans, who, like themselves, had left their homes and hearth-stones to enjoy, in a more impenetrable wilderness in the far West, that freedom which the Huguenots were to possess upon the spot where it had been denied to them.

A large body of land extending along the south bank of the river, one mile from it in depth, and twenty-five miles in length, up the stream, including all the islands in the river opposite them, was granted to them by letterspatent. The southern line was chopped upon the trees, and, for a hundred years after, was known as the French line. The eastern boundary was Bernard's Creek, and the western was Salle's Creek, whose names now recall the foreign birth of the new settlers, as does the name of Sabot Island, whose shape resembles the wooden shoe of the French peasantry. The Colonial House of Burgesses, held "at his majestyes royall colledge of William & Mary, adjoining to the Citty of Williamsburgh," on December 5, 1700, “in the 12th year of his majestyes reign," after confirming the

grant of the land given them, established the settlement as a distinct parish, called King William's Parish, and exempting the "said French refugees" from the payment of public and county taxes and levies for seven years, which period of time was afterward further extended.

Thus settled and encouraged, they determined at once, as they had left their old country for a new one on account of religion, that they would discard all the traditions, habits and prejudices of the Old World, and erect themselves into a community founded upon the precepts of the Bible and the example of the Apostles, and established a community of property, both real and personal. They divided the land into sections, running from the forest-line to the bank of the river, and allotted them to families according to size, and at intervals erected storehouses, into which each person. able to labor was to deposit the crops made and gathered by him, and to receive therefrom the necessaries for himself and his family. But, as might have been supposed, this system would not work even in that industrious and moral community, and they then, by voluntary agreement, divided the lands of the settlement among themselves, according to what they considered right, and having accomplished this partition without dispute or contention, held and worked their lands like the other settlers around them. Their crops showed at first that they still cherished the remembrance of the occupations of their native land. They took the wild vine of the country and cultivated it, and made what Beverly, in his history, called "a strong-bodied claret;" but they soon abandoned its cultivation, and, like other Virginians, raised the great staple of the colony. Having taken the country of the Indian, they cultivated his peculiar plant. Tobacco will always be associated with the Indian, whose history, in the words of Charles Lamb, is written upon the immortal tobacco-leaf.

At this time, although many of their descendants still live in the county of Powhatan, and near what is now known as "Mannakin Town," they have been scattered abroad, like the rest of the sons of the "Old Dominion," to every State and territory of our great country. Our newspapers lately contained an account of the murder of one La Prade, a descendant of one of the first settlers from France, and several others bearing the same name are now living not more than five miles from the site of the old "Monocan town." Only one family has retained in an uninterrupted line of descent the land allotted to it at the division of the territory first held in common. Up to the close of the late war, four brothers lived on adjoining farms, which their ancestors of the same name had owned in an uninterrupted descent for a hundred and sixty years, and one of them still holds his hereditary domain, bearing a name suggestive