Page:New Brunswick Magazine Issue 1.djvu/297

"The lands are very valuable if they may be had." So wrote James Simonds to Wm. Hazen in the first business letter extant (so far as we know) of the many that passed between Simonds and White and their New England partners. The date of the letter is August 18, 1764, and the original is in the possession of the writer, a yellow, well worn affair in some places well nigh indecipherable.

It will be remembered that James Simonds had made choice of the harbor of St. John as a place of settlement mainly, on account of the excellent marsh lands in the vicinity and the abundance of the limestone, combined with the advantages of the situation for Indian trade and fishing. The first grant of land was made October 2, 1765, to James Simonds, Richard Simonds and James White, and it does not appear that it was the original intention of these gentlemen to admit their New England partners to a share in the ownership of the lands, the procuring of which they perhaps not unnaturally regarded as a little speculation of their own. The other partners, however, soon manifested a strong desire to possess some real estate in Nova Scotia—land hunger seemingly was a weakness with the descendants of the old Puritans—and the following passage in Mr. Simonds' letter to Samuel Blodget, of Boston, is evidently written in reply to inquiries on this head. The letter is dated at Halifax, October 1, 1764.