curve. He must have known whether the curve was intended to be the arc of a circle, what radius was intended to be used, and from what center it was run. A minute's use of the dividers will show that on this map the curve is drawn in the arc of a circle having its center at the mouth of the Merrimack. The use of the dividers on the same center applied to the more southerly of the two curves on Fletcher's diagram and on Holland's Map is equally convincing. The small margin of error will be mentioned later. This curve nowhere coincides with and greatly diverges from the are of a circle drawn from the mouth of the Piscataqua.

The later surveyed and more northerly curve shown on Holland's and Carrigain's maps and on Fletcher's diagram nowhere coincides. with the arc of a circle drawn from a center at the mouth of either river. How, then, was this curve determined? On rereading the description in the Mason patent it was noted that it mentions two centers, one at the mouth of the Merrimack, the other at the mouth of the Piscata qua. Possibly the unaccounted for curve was run as the arc of an ellipse having these centers as the foci. A trial of this on Holland's and Carrigain's Maps, on Fletcher's own diagram and on the most reliable modern map obtainable, shows that it is the arc of such an ellipse, with the slight variation that might be expected in an early survey made under great difficulties.

Although the writer has been unable to find any reference to this curve as elliptical he is led to believe that sometime prior to June, 1769, the Proprietors were ably and shrewdly advised respecting a new survey of the curve. The sector of an ellipse would contain many square miles more than the sector of a circle run from either center. Nothing appears in Fletcher's in

structions about a new or elliptical curve; that was not necessary; he understood his business and attended to it, adding many thousands of acres to the domain of his employers.

The northwardly increasing error in Blanchard's survey, about three and a half miles too far from the center near Newfound Lake, furthered greatly the practicability of this elliptical curve. Were it not for the arc of a circle on the Blanchard and Langdon Map, and the Fletcher survey of 1768 on that same arc, we might believe that Blanchard's curve of 1751 was intended to be in the arc of an ellipse, so near did it come to correctly forming such a curve.

But what it may be asked is the present interest in the form of these curves and what matters it how or where they were run? The answer is a practical one which will be understood by practical men. Some part of the boundary lines of thirty New Hampshire towns and of three counties were fixed by, and coincide today with the line of this historic curve. The boundaries of many towns, and of some counties, not bounded on the curve, are determined by it, bear definite relation to it. On the Blanchard and Langdon Map, 1761, no town is crossed by the curve. On Holland's Map, 1774, only two towns, Holderness and Sandwich, are crossed by the curve surveyed by Blanchard in 1751 and completed by Fletcher in the winter of 1768. All other towns touching this curve have boundary limits determined by it.

Notwithstanding legislative boundary changes required by topographical convenience and political expediency in the century and a half elapsed since the surveys for Holland's Map were made, the latest township map of New Hampshire shows thirty towns, some part of whose boundary lines were fixed by

and now coincide with this great curve. These on the easterly or inside of the curve are Fitzwilliam, Troy, Marlboro, Roxbury, Stoddard, Washington, Newbury, New London, Wilmot, Danbury, Alexandria, Bridgewater, Ossipee and Freedom. The towns on the westerly or outside of the curve are Richmond, Swansey, Keene, Roxbury, Sullivan, Gilsum, Marlow, Lempster, Goshen, Sunapee, Springfield, Grafton, Alexandria, Hebron, Plymouth, Tamworth, Madison and Eaton. The towns easterly from Bridgewater and Plymouth are on the southerly or "Winter Curve" surveyed by Fletcher in March, 1768. The boundaries of two towns, Roxbury and Alexandria, have been so extensively changed that a part of both easterly and westerly bounds now coincide with the curve. Parts of the boundaries of Sullivan, Merrimack and Grafton counties still coincide with the curve.

A long continued controversy arose between the Mason Proprietors and the State of New Hampshire as to the exact position of the Masonian Curve. The location of the curve determined necessarily the boundary lines between the state grants on the outside of the curve and the towns granted by the Proprietors on the inside. As these in turn determined the abutting property lines of the neighboring farmers and landowners any uncertainty about the position of the curve led to conflicting claims. To end this controversy and the litigation which had grown out of it, a settlement was finally effected in 1788 between the Proprietors and the State. By the terms of this settlement the state conveyed to the

Proprietors, for the sum of forty thousand dollars in public securities of the state and eight hundred dollars in silver or gold, all the territory lying between the outer or elliptical curve and a straight line drawn between a point on the Massachusetts boundary, reckoned or measured to be sixty miles from the mouth of the Merrimack, and a point on the Maine boundary sixty miles from the mouth of the Piscataqua. These were probably intended to be statute miles, for the ends of the straight line shown on the diagram are eight or nine miles inside of or nearer the sea than the ends of the curved line.* (See Vol. XXIX, N. H. State Papers, diagram opposite p. 338.)

Thus this great territory was conveyed by the State to the Proprietors for a sum which probably did not nearly represent the actual value of the then ungranted lands therein. This was done that there might never in the future be any possibility of a conflict in regard to it, and its limits were so defined as to include all the lands about which a controversy was then pending or might arise in the future.

"The Proprietors could convey to the settlers only the soil. For political rights and the powers of government the grantees were obliged to resort to the Province, later the State, from which acts of incorporation were readily obtained when the conditions of settlement had been fulfilled."** In these acts the boundaries which had been fixed by the Proprietors were retained. Thus the Masonian Curve, by the terms of the settlement of 1788 henceforth determined, without possibility of conflict or appeal, the town boun

daries along its continuous bend. Only by act of the legislature could they be changed.

The boundary lines of many towns, and some counties, at considerable distances from the curve have been determined or affected by it. A glance at the map shows that boundaries of Rindge, New Ipswich, Jaffrey, Sharon, Temple, Dublin, Peterboro, Nelson, Harrisville, Hancock, Antrim, Windsor, and of many other towns are substantially concentric with the Mason curve. The Masonian Proprietors in granting such areas of land, and in laying off tracts of approximately equal width, naturally found it convenient to define the boundaries as parallelly concentric with the limit. of their own territory. Consequently we find on the early maps, and surviving even today, numerous instances of these concentric lines."*

Likewise in determining the northerly and southerly boundary lines of such grants it was convenient to lay them out on the map on radial lines drawn from a center on the seacoast. Many town boundaries will be seen on the map in which the southeasterly slant is conspicuous, and which are substantially radial to the curve.

Some

of these, inside the curve, are the towns last above mentioned, also several of the towns on the boundaries between Merrimack and Belknap Counties, and and between Rockingham and Strafford Counties. Some of these on the outside of the

curve, granted by the Province, are. Newport, Croydon, Grantham and Enfield.

The old maps, and new ones, too, show altogether too many boundary lines radial to the curve, too many concentric with it, to make it probable that their direction was a mere coincidence. They are not exactly radial, not exactly concentric. It is hardly to be expected that they would be when we consider that the lines were run in the forests, through swamps, over mountains, often with compasses of weak polarity, and with the meagre data then available to correct for variation and for other compass errors. That these surveys and the surveys of the curve were so nearly correct reflects great credit on the men who made them.**

The geography of New Hampshire is unique in this great curve. Nothing like it affecting town and county boundaries is to be found crossing any other state in the union.***

Sometime New Hampshire, recognizing the general interest in matters historical, will mark by suitable monuments the places where this great historic curve crosses the principal highways, thus doing for the Mason Curve what Vermont has done for the Crown Point Road, built across that state by order of General Jeffery Amherst during the last of the French and Indian Wars.****

JANUARY "Hast thou considered the treasuries of the snow?"-Job.

January is the month for the robust and the young. Never does

the robust man feel better than in January. There is health in the clear, sharp air for him able to go out into the woods with the axe and team, and as he comes in from labor to his meals, or to the cheery evening by the fire, there is the zest of life running thru his veins in the rich, red blood that during the day has been fed by the crisp oxygen of New Hampshire. Robert Burns, who was decidedly a poet of winter, once said

"There is scarcely any earthly object that gives me so much, I don't know as I call it pleasure, but something that exalts me, enraptures me, as I walk in the sheltered woods on a winter day, and hear the wind howl thru the trees and rave o'er the plain."

That feeling that came to Burns comes strongly to us sons of New Hampshire; for here for many generations our sturdy ancestors have been going into the woods to get the lumber and wood. What sturdy men were the settlers, who, according to Belknap, went into the woods, worked all day, and lay at night on boughs around a roaring fire-their feet to the fire, the cold sky their only covering. Even Longfellow, who is rather pale-blooded, said "There is something in being in the woods on a winter day that cheers me long." Happy, indeed, the husbandman in New Hampshire these days, who can follow the custom of his ancestors, sharpen his axe, hitch up his team, and go out into the

woods for a day's work; how good his supper will taste, how cosy the fire will glow at night, how comforting will feel his bed.

JANUARY JOYS FOR THE YOUNG.

And what joys come to the young in January. If the days are clear we have the ponds securely frozen, and on sharp skates we glide away feeling the fun of being alive. If its a good coat of snow on the earth, the lads and misses plan and take girls "go slidin'." the sleigh rides, while the boys and

or

"Goin' Slidin" is one form of amusement that rural, city or village reared man and woman recall with delight. How rapidly memory slips back over the years when you and I are passing down the street and hear the cry "clear the track," "get-out-of-the-way." Yelling like Comanche Indians, down the hill they come, a string of happy, healthy boys and girls. "Bellybump," heads up like turtles, they twist their bodies and swing their rapidly moving sleds around corners, thru gate-ways-and we elders hold our breath and wonder how they do it. No overcoats, jackets unbuttoned, cheeks red with health-who feels any better than they-and what fun will they ever find in life that matches the January slide? And there is another group-the lads and misses in their "teens;" the boy taking his girl sliding; carefully he places her on the front of the sled and hops on behind her; his left leg is doubled under him, his right is used as a rudder-his cheek is close to her ear, her hair blows back and tickles his face, the snow crystals blow down their necks-he shows off a little and makes the most