Note 68 — Chapter XXIV · 1763-1770.

France ceded to England "Canada with all its dependencies," reserving only such part of what had been known as Canada as lay west of the Mississippi. The watershed between the Missouri and the Mississippi rivers had been the boundary between Canada and Louisiana when both were owned by France, and by the treaty of 1763 the River Mississippi was agreed to as the future boundary between the English and French possessions in that quarter; the language of the treaty being, "that the confines between [France and England] in that part of the world shall be fixed irrevocably by a line drawn along the middle of the River Mississippi from its source [etc.], to the sea." Very soon after this treaty, viz., on 7th October, 1763, the Province of Quebec was erected by Royal Proclamation, but the Province as then constituted took in very little of what was afterwards Upper Canada and what is now Ontario; the most north-westerly point was Lake Nipissing; the whole of the territory adjacent to the great lakes was excluded. In 1774 the boundaries of Quebec were enlarged by the Quebec Act. That Act recited that "by the arrangements made by the said Royal Proclamation a very large extent of territory, within which were several colonies and settlements of subjects of France, who claimed to remain therein under the faith of the said treaty, was left without any provision being made for the administration of civil government therein." The Act, therefore, provided that "all the territories, islands and countries in North America belonging to the Crown of Great Britain, bounded on the south by a line" therein described, "from the Bay of Chaleurs to the River Ohio, and along the bank of the said river, westward, to the banks of the Mississippi, and northward to the southern boundary of the territory granted to the Merchants-Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay," etc., "be, and they are hereby, during His Majesty's pleasure, annexed to and made part and parcel of the Province of Quebec as created and established by the said Royal Proclamation of the 7th October, 1763."