Page:1898 NB Magazine.djvu/328

The story of Portland Point in pre-loyalist days is well nigh ended, having in the telling exceeded very considerably the limits at first assigned it in the mind of the writer. Doubtless the narrative might have been rendered more entertaining by the omission of many of its details. It must be remembered, however, that in an historical paper of this description the writer's ambition usually is to so thoroughly investigate the materials at hand that no student of local history need in future work over the same ground. This mode of working has its disadvantages. It renders it impossible to exclude topics merely because they are commonplace, for a faithful historic narration necessitates the representation of events as they really occur, commonplace or otherwise. The temptation to linger over romantic incidents in order to enhance the reader's interest has also to be resisted in order to confine the story to reasonable bounds.

The extracts that have found a place in this series of papers are taken both from public documents and private correspondence and are given for, the most part, verbatim et literatim with the design of letting the chief actors in the old time scenes speak for themselves. In our last paper the circumstances were detailed which led to the formation of a business partnership between the Honorable Michael Francklin and Messrs. William Hazen and James White for the purposes of "masting" and general trade on the St. John river. By their con-tract with the Imperial government the company agreed to furnish a certain quantity of masts, spars, anchor-