Page:New Brunswick Magazine Issue 1.djvu/108

elsewhere, I only desire to show that it could not have been at "Old Fort", Carleton, where Dr. Ganong undertakes to place it, although to accomplish this it becomes necessary for him to give the word behind a different meaning from that which it has in ordinary use. If "behind" and "in front of" were interchangeable terms I might yield to Dr. Ganong's views, but not otherwise.

If Harbor Master Taylor ordered a foreign sea captain to moor his. vessel at Rankin's wharf, and as a farther direction told him that Rankin's wharf was behind Navy Island, what chance would the foreign captain have of finding that locality? He would never find it from that direction, because Rankin's wharf is no more behind Navy Island than the South wharf is, or than any other wharf on the east side. Yet Dr. Ganong, in his paper on the site of Fort LaTour read before the Royal Society of Canada, and in his article in the New Brunswick Magazine, tries to make it appear that this locality is behind Navy Island. Denys says that he did not think Charnisay's fort well placed because it is commanded by an island which is very near it, and behind which ships can place themselves under cover from the fort. It would have been, in his opinion, better placed behind the island where vessels anchor, and where it would have been higher and not commanded by other neighboring places. "Old Fort", on the Carleton side, is behind Navy Island, the island where vessels anchor, and there is no other locality in the harbor that answers this description. The text of Denys, which I quote above, leads us to infer that Fort LaTour was on that site, and I have no doubt that was the case. At all events Denys clearly shows that Charnisay's fort was not there, thus effectually disproving Dr. Ganong's theory. I must confess that it is a puzzle to me to understand how so accurate an