Page:New Brunswick Magazine Issue 1.djvu/111

based on it being commanded by higher ground and not being well supplied with water. It thoroughly commanded the entrance to the river, which no fort erected at Portland Point could do, because the range of cannon two hundred and fifty years ago was slight. Dr. Ganong supposes that an enemy's ship could lie in the channel and attack Fort LaTour, and he gives this as one reason why Fort LaTour was located at Portland Point. He does not seem to be aware that the channel between Navy Island and the east side is 160 feet deep, that the current runs with fearful rapidity, so that no man in his senses would anchor his ship there unless he wished to have his vessel destroyed. The place where vessels lay, referred to by Denys in his book, was on the Carleton side just north and west of Navy Island and close to the "Old Fort." That place could be reached at high water by vessels passing through the Buttermilk channel in spite of anything that the occupants of a tort at Portland Point could do to prevent them, and if they were armed ships they could lie to the north-west of Navy Island and cannonade Portland Point without being liable to suffer much damage themselves. This was the fatal vice of the Portland Point site—that it did not command the river and that it could be attacked by the ships of an enemy lying behind Navy Island. The description of Denys shows that this was why he did not think Charnisay's fort well placed, but preferred the site behind Navy Island where he leads us to infer Fort LaTour was situated.

This subject might be pursued further, but enough, I think, has been said to show that Mr. Ganong's view with regard to the site of Fort LaTour, is not correct; in fact the witnesses which he calls to prove his case, the description of Denys and the maps, put him out of court and show him to be in the wrong.