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actual cost was not £500 but £1300. The width of the aboideau at the bottom was seventy-five feet and at the top twenty-five feet and when completed it was quite a substantial structure. Two tide saw-mills were built here by Mr. Simonds not long after, but evidently they were not a very profitable investment for in the year 1812 one had fallen into total decay and the other was so much out of repair as to be of no material benefit to its owner.

When the first Marsh Bridge had been nearly twenty-five years in existence it naturally called for repairs, and there arose a controversy as to where the responsibility for the repairs rested and what proportion of the cost ought to be borne respectively by the provincial government, the city corporation and the proprietors of the marsh. This controversy has been one of periodical recurrence during the past century and the end is not yet. In the year 1813, that is about twenty-five years after the bridge was built, James Simonds submitted a representation of its condition to the St. John Common Council in which he stated, "That the present situation of the bridge and the decay of it is such that it is scarcely possible it will stand longer than the next storm that may happen at spring tides."

When the Loyalists arrived in 1783 the dyked marsh lands produced only about 400 tons of hay but it was said that "if tilled and ditched they would raise much more." It is probable that today the marsh raises four times the quantity named above.

Hazen, Simonds and White after the building of the first running dyke in 1769 continued to devote considerable attention to reclaiming and improving the marsh, and in order to have ready access to it cleared about three miles of road from the westerly part of Fort Howe hill nearly to the place where the first aboideau