558                           THE COUNTIES OF MARYLAND

Pennsylvania to Virginia which crossed the Potomac at Williamsport,
stimulated the settlement of the territory.

The " temporary line" referred to in the founding of Washington
County was a boundary of great importance to the inhabitants of north-
ern Maryland as is evidenced by its use in defining Washington County
eight years after the permanent Mason and Dixon line had been accepted.
The " temporary line " was run ex parte by a group of Pennsylvania
commissioners and surveyors who had started with the Maryland repre-
sentatives to run a line which should serve as a boundary between Mary-
land and Pennsylvania until their contending proprietors should come
to some agreement resulting in a permanent boundary. This temporary
line on the east side of the Susquehanna River was about a quarter of a
mile south of the present boundary and west of the Susquehanna River
an equal distance north of the present boundary. The original sur-
veyors only ran the line to the top of South Mountain, the eastern limit
of Washington County, and the westward extension of the line had been
accepted by mutual consent. Thus it will appear that at the time Wash-
ington County was laid off its northern boundary was defined according
to an unofficial, probably rather vaguely located, line when there really
existed the recently surveyed and well-marked Mason and Dixon line
which had been accepted by the respective proprietors of Pennsylvania
and Maryland and approved by the Lord High Chancellor of England.
One wonders whether the rather curious wording of the boundaries arose
from ignorance, or patriotism which would disregard the acts of the
English courts, or from a latent hope in the minds of the Marylanders
that if they were successful in establishing a new confederation they
might wrest this narrow strip and add it to the Maryland domain.

The original boundaries of the county remained in force but a few
years. The success of the Eevolutionary War and the issuing of the
Eevolutionary Grants for land in western Maryland, the prospective
opening of the west and the increased security felt in that quarter stimu-
lated settlement in the vicinity of Fort Cumberland where the distance
from the County Court imposed a serious hardship on the new settlers.
The new conditions led in 1789 to the erection of Allegany County out