Page:New Brunswick Magazine Issue 1.djvu/161

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AT PORTLAND POINT.
141

with much disgust, "Old Abbot did not do one day's work for sixty days after his wife arrived, no dependence can be placed on him."

One more extract only can be given respecting the lime industry which is also of interest as showing that mild winters were not in olden times unknown.

"Have had but little snow this winter, but few days that the ground has been covered; have got to the water side a large quantity of wood and wharf logs, about 300 hogsheads of Limestone to the kiln, and should have had much more of both articles if there had been snow. Our men have been so froze and wounded that we have not bad more than three men's constant labour to do this and sled sixty loads of hay, saw boards for casks, look after the cattle and draw firewood. Shall continue drawing or dragging wood and stone as long as the ground is froze and then cut timber for a schooner and boat stone for a Lime kiln which with the wharf will take 400 tuns."

It will be remembered that among their various branches of business the members of our old trading company at St. John had undertaken "To enter upon and pursue with all speed and faithfulness the cod fishery, seine fishery," etc.; it is therefore time to say something about the fishery.

During the earlier years of the partnership small schooners were employed in the Bay of Fundy at various points fishing for cod and pollock. The company had quite an important station for drying and salting fish at Indian Island[1] in Passamaquoddy Bay. Here for the first few years they carried on an extensive business, but later they paid more attention to their weirs at St. John. Simonds & White, during the seven years prior to the Revolutionary war, sent to Boston and Newburyport 4,000 barrels of alewives or gaspereaux, valued at 14 shillings per barrel, the whole amounting in value to about $12,000. They also shipped considerable quantities of bass, shad, salmon and sturgeon, and in addition sold to their employees and to the inhabitants up the river quantities of the

  1. ↑ This island was variously known as Indian Island, Perkins Island, L'Atterell Island and was by the natives called Jeganagoose.
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