Page:New Brunswick Magazine Issue 1.djvu/211

The garrison at Fort Frederick was composed largely of New England troops, and among the officers was Captain Moses Hazen, a brother of William Hazen and a cousin of James Simonds.

Whilst the establishment of a military post at Fort Frederick imparted a little life to the immediate surroundings, everything on the eastern side of the harbor remained in its virgin state, except at Portland Point where there was a small clearing and the remains of a French Fort. The rocky peninsula on which the business part of St. John stands today was uninhabited. The few Acadians who may have lingered round its coves had fled before the advancing tide of British conquest, and it was only when some wandering savage pitched his wigwam on the shores of Men-ah-quesk, as he called it,^[1] that there was any tenant of the spot save the fox, the bear or other wild creature of the primeval forest. The rugged features of the ancient Men-ah-quesk, with its swamps and crags, caused it to be so lightly esteemed in the eyes of the Messrs. Simonds and White that they did not deem it worth the quit rents, although these amounted to but half a cent an acre annually. In the words of Mr. Simonds, it was "the worst of lands, if bogs, morasses and rocks may be called lands." Accordingly, in the grants of 1765 and 1770, it was excluded in favor of the "Marsh" which, in the eyes of the first settlers, was of far greater value.

When the Loyalists arrived in 1783 and learned that this was to be the site of their city, the prospect to some of them seemed appalling. The late Dr. Gove of St. Andrews once related to the writer of this paper how that his grandmother Tilley, having landed at the Upper Cove, climbed up the steep ascent of Chipman's