In Search of the Highlands: Mapping the Canada-Maine Boundary, 1839

by George W. Featherstonhaugh

120 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1988

About the author

George William Featherstonhaugh, geographer and geologist.

Reviews

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved these journals (there are actually two, Featherstonhaugh and another guy). Journals are great fun as primary sources, but typically you are left wishing that the authors wrote with a bit more detail, or a bit more emotion, something. Featherstonhaugh is perfect at journalling. These recount a surveying expedition from Fredericton, New Brunswick to Quebec City, passing directly across the bulk of Northern Maine. These two Brits were trying to figure out if there was a real line of highlands that the British could claim as the appropriate boundary between Maine and Canada, because the line Maine was claiming was much further north. So they set out with some French Canadians and local Indians to get the lay of the land. F does spend a bit too much time talking about rocks and geological formations, but he also fills this with snarky comments about the crappy inns and "indifferent" food, and drunken lumbermen shooting at forts in the middle of the night, and cute girls smoking pipes in these frontier towns, and the fish they caught, and how he really wants to see a moose but keeps getting thwarted, and the Penobscot hunters they run into in the middle of the woods, and how buggy it is. Plus he gets more and more irritated with the other guy, writing all these screeds about what a screw up he is (in his journal, the other guy seems totally oblivious, but maybe he was just nice). Anyway, I thought these were really a treat.