John Catron

“ On the rapids selected by the commissioners, and on Brown's line, the bill of complaint of the State of Missouri is altogether founded; and if she fails in establishing the proper place of beginning, she has no case, and must go out of court as a complainant, and can have no relief further than an injunction to restrain Iowa from obtruding on her jurisdiction south of the true line, wherever it may be found, should Iowar attempt to go south of such line. ”

“ This court is, then, driven to that call in the constitution of Missouri which declares that her western boundary shall correspond with the Indian boundary-line; and, treating the western line of a hundred miles long as a unit, and then running east from its northern terminus, it will supply the deficiency of a call for an object that never existed. Nor has Missouri any right to complain. She herself, for ten years and more after coming into the Union, recognized the Indian lines west and north as her proper boundary ”

“ When acting through the surveyor's department of public lands, on the Missouri side, the general government has never recognized on the north, nor, until the Platte country was attached, on the west, any boundary as belonging to that State other than the two Indian lines run by Sullivan in 1816, so far as they extended. ”

“ From this point downwards, it was examined by the commissioners of Missouri in 1837.
The shoals on the 34th mile, at Farmington, on the 42d, at Benton's Port, and at the great bend at Van Buren, on the 51st mile, where Brown's line begins, and the descents on the 53d and 55th miles, are of about equal magnitude; neither reach to so much as two feet ascent in eighty rods, and are not perceptible at all when the water is three feet higher than when at its lowest stage in dry weather. ”