MARYLAND GEOLOGICAL SURVEY                         471

significance. The boundary from the Sassafras to the tangent stone in
the vicinity of the Pennsylvania Railroad is a part of the general tangent
line which was run from the middle point of an east and west line ex-
tending from Fenwick Island to the Chesapeake. The northerly line
was run from this middle point in a way to be tangent to a circle of
twelve miles radius whose center was in Newcastle, Delaware. Such a
line was the result of a long-pending suit between the Penns and the
Baltimores, and the attempt of the Lord High Chancellor to express
specifically what was intended by James II and his Council in their
decree of 1685. Numerous attempts were made to run this difficult line
during the years 1760 to 1763, but it was not finally located and marked
until- the work of Messrs. Mason and Dixon a few years later.

At the time the boundaries were determined the exact conditions of
the country were not known and the provision was made that if the tan-
gent line touched the circle south of the east-west diameter that the due
north line from the tangent point should not subtract any portion of the
circle from the possessions of the Penns.

The second portion of the eastern line is a small part of the twelve-
mile circle which lay west of the due north line, passing through the
tangent point. The circle itself represents the attempt of James II
while still Duke of York to retain the integrity of the old settlement on
the Delaware when the King, his brother, granted Pennsylvania to Wil-
liam Penn. The actual location of this circle was the occasion of much
controversy during the long-drawn dispute between the Penns and the
Baltimores. Their commissioners wrangled regarding the center of the
circle, whether it should be twelve miles in radius or circumference, and
whether or not the miles should be measured horizontally or surficially.
The arc itself, so far as it forms a boundary of Cecil County, was origi-
nally run by Mason and Dixon and has subsequently been resurveyed by
Col. Graham in 1849 and Captain Hodgkins in 1892. The third portion
of the eastern boundary is a straight line in the meridian of the tangent
point extending from the so-called point of intersection to the latitude of
the east-west boundary run by Mason and Dixon. The intersection point
at the southern end of this meridian line, situated just south of the