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ing line of the States; but none of them can give any
substantial grounds for his belief.
Out of this contradictory evidence and above the ob-
scurity of yague tradition there rises one clear and decisive
fact, which is this : that for at least forty years last past
Maryland has acknowledged the right of Virginia up to a
line which, beginning at Sassafras Hammock, runs east-
ward across the island to Horse Hammock, and Virginia
has claimed no higher. By that line alone both States
have limited their occupancy for a time twice as long as
the law requires to make title by prescription. By that
line Maryland has bounded her election district and her
county. North of it all the people vote and pay taxes in
Maryland, obey her magistrates, and submit to the pro-
cess of her courts. South of it lies, undisturbed and un-
disputed, the old dominion of Virginia. We have no doubt
whatever that we are bound to regard that as being now
the true boundary between the two States. There are not
two adjoining farms in all the country whose limits are
better settled by an occupancy of forty years, or whose
owners have more carefully abstained from all intrusion
upon one another within that time.
We have thus ascertained to our entire satisfaction the
extent and situation of the territory which each State has
held long enough to make a title by prescription, and the
boundary now to be determined must conform to those
possessions, no matter at what expense of change in the
original lines. We know, therefore, how the laud is to be
divided. But how does prescriptive title to land affect the
right of the parties in the adjacent waters ?
It has been argued with great force and ingenuity that
a title resulting merely from long possession can apply only
to the ground which the claimant has had under his feet,
together with its proper appurtenances; that a river, a
lake, or a bay is land covered with water; that land can-
not be appurtenant to land; that therefore title by pre-
scription stops at the shore. But this is unsound, because
the water in such a case is not claimed as appurtenant to
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