VI. BOUNDARIES, TRADE, DEFENSE, AND INDIAN AFFAIRS
Besides the work discussed in the preceding chapters, the Board of Trade had important duties to perform in dealing with questions which especially concerned the external relations of the colonies. As the representative of the English government the Board had charge of boundary disputes, Indian relations, and defense; it also assisted in the administration of the laws of trade and supervised the schemes for fostering certain industries in the colonies.
Boundary disputes
When the Board of Trade was organized, the territorial limits of the various British colonies were vague and indefinite. Some reached far into the interior of the continent, regardless of the claims of colonies established by other nations; others overlapped their English neighbors on either side. To add to the confusion, no one appeared to know just where any described line ran, and residents of adjoining colonies were not agreed upon the location of rivers and ocean inlets named in the descriptions of their boundaries. Under such circumstances it was a slow, tedious process to settle the various disputes between the individual colonies. It was even a harder task to determine the boundaries between Eng-