It is a war against the pines, the only real Aroostook or Penobscot war.

~The Freshman's Vacation.~ He had fished in the Aroostook, And he'd trolled in the Walloostook,

A portion of this road only has yet been opened, and I have no information that any part of it has been opened over territory claimed by the British, although it is contemplated to extend it to the Aroostook when it can be done consistently with the public interest.

Since my last communication the land agent's forces at the Aroostook have been reenforced by about 600 good and effective men, making the whole force now about 750.

The highlands bordering on the Aroostook, distant 40 miles to the north of the party, were distinctly seen from an elevated position whenever the atmosphere was clear, and a long extent of intermediate country of inferior elevation to the position then occupied presented itself to the view, with the two peaks of Mars Hill rising abruptly above the general surface which surrounded their base.

To erect stations opposite to the base of Mars Hill and upon the heights of the Aroostook, in order to obtain exact comparisons with the old line at these points, were considered objects of so much importance as to determine the commissioner to continue the operations in the field to the latest practicable period in hopes of accomplishing these ends.

It was the first evidence that we were approaching the perilous borders, the marches where the North and the South mingle their angry hosts, where the extremes of our so-called civilization meet in conflict, and the fierce slave-driver of the Lower Mississippi stares into the stern eyes of the forest-feller from the banks of the Aroostook.

Pine, potatoes and people: the story of Aroostook.

Pine, potatoes and people: the story of Aroostook.

In the north-northwest direction there appear two ridges of comparatively small elevation, which were pointed out as the Aroostook Mountains, but have since been ascertained to lie near the sources of the Meduxnikeag.

In that will be seen the mountains near the source of the Aroostook, Alleguash, and Penobscot on the one hand, and of the Tobique on the other, while the intervening space is occupied by a curve resembling an inverted arch, of which the St. John occupies the keystone.

To the north of the Des Chutes the ground again rises, and although cut by several streams, and particularly by the Aroostook, the chain is prolonged by isolated eminences as far as the White Rapids, below the Grand Falls of the St. John, where it crosses that river.

To this broken chain belongs the elevation of 918 feet given by Messrs. Mudge and Featherstonhaugh to an eminence in the neighborhood of the Aroostook Falls.

It is not in any sense a dividing ridge, being cut by all the streams in the country, and in particular to a great depth by the St. John and the Aroostook.

The British commissioners, although they give a profile of this ridge, do not pretend to have examined it except at Mars Hill, near the Aroostook, and at the Grand Falls of the St. John.

The minimum height is 1,306 On the line of Messrs Featherstonhaugh and Mudge from the Cocumgamoc Mountains to the head waters of the Aroostook The maximum height is 1,268

On the third part of the British line from the sources of the Aroostook to the Grand Falls of the St. John

The minimum height on their profile, excluding the Aroostook at its mouth and its intersection with the meridian line, is 243 feet, and the mean of the numbers entered by them both on their map and profile is 665 feet.

It is regretted that the computations of the barometric and other observations for the determination of the heights of that portion of the country between the valley of the St. John and the sources of the Aroostook, explored by the division of Major Graham, could not be completed in time to be made use of for this report in the description of that portion of the line claimed for Great Britain by Messrs. Featherstonhaugh and Mudge.

Sufficient information is known, however, to have been derived from those surveys to justify the assertion that, instead of the strongly marked range of highlands represented by the British commissioners as constituting a part of their "axis of maximum elevation," the country in the vicinity of the Aroostook lying between its sources and the valley of the St. John is devoid of the character they have attributed to it.

The number of elevations within the territory watered by the Aroostook and claimed by Great Britain that have thus been carefully measured amounts to upward of 200.

The character of the great basin of the Aroostook, dotted with the detached peaks which rise abruptly from it at intervals of many miles apart, is here exhibited through at least two-thirds of its extent in so satisfactory a manner as in itself to preclude the idea of an "axis of maximum elevation" composed of anything like a connected or continuous chain in this region of country.

In order to find mountains to form a part of it they are compelled to go south of the source of branches of the Penobscot; thence from mountains long well known, at the sources of the Alleguash, well laid down on the rejected map of Mr. Johnson, it becomes entangled in the stream of the Aroostook, which it crosses more than once.

2. The highlands as claimed by Great Britain from the Metjarmette portage to the source of the Aroostook River.

In making a survey of the Little Madawaska River, a tributary to the Aroostook, from its mouth to its source in the Madawaska Lakes.