Drawing the boundary
An inspection of the map of the United States shows the boundaries, in most cases, to be, either rivers, the crests of mountain ranges, parallels of latitude, or meridians of longitude. In but a single instance has the circle, with its geometrical accuracy, been employed to indicate a dividing line of contiguous States; and the inquiry at once suggests itself, why the southern frontier of Pennsylvania was not prolonged to the New Jersey shore, why the eastern one of Maryland was not made to strike it, and why a circle should be the northern boundary of Delaware – the odd result of which has been to leave so narrow a strip of Pennsylvania between Delaware and Maryland, that the ball of one's foot may be in the former, the heel in the latter, while the instep forms an arch over a portion of the "Keystone State" itself...
-- From John H. B. Latrobe's 1854 address
to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania
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