Page:New Brunswick Magazine Issue 1.djvu/34
near and higher ground, and behind which all ships can place themselves under cover from the fort, in which there is only water from pits, which is not very good, no better than that outside the fort. It would have been in my opinion better placed behind the island where vessels anchor, and where it would have been higher, and in consequence* not commanded by other neighboring places, and would have had good water, as in that which was built by the said late Sieur de la Tour, which was destroyed by d'Aunay after he had wrongfully taken possession of it, etc.
If the impartial reader who knows the harbor well, will follow carefully this account, or better if he will read it in comparison with Bruce's fine old map of 1761 which shows the harbor untouched by modern improvements, I think he will agree that Denys has given a good description of the harbor, that the island on the left of the entrance is Partridge Island, that the flats were those at Carleton now partly included in the Millpond, that the beach of muddy sand making a point was Sand Point, that the cove or creek making into the sand marshes was the creek, clearly shown on Bruce's map, at the present outlet of the Millpond, that the knoll a little farther on was the slight elevation on which stands the "old fort" in Carleton. On this knoll, says Denys, d'Aunay (Charnisay) built his fort, and further evidence of the identity of this knoll is given in his statement that the fort was commanded by an island [i. e. Navy Island] very near, behind which [i. e. in the channel] vessels could lie under cover from the fort, and that it had bad water. It may seem an objection that he makes the island higher than the fort site, but the island has washed away much in recent times, and the successive forts afterwards built at the "old fort" point must have raised that site somewhat. But aside from this we have important independent testimony that the fort site was really commanded by the island, in the following statement made in 1701 by the Sieur de Brouillan in describing the French fort which then stood on this point in Carleton,—"it is