Page:New Brunswick Magazine Issue 1.djvu/36

and Fort LaTour on the east. The former was of course that of the Sieur Martignon, who was granted the west side of the harbor in seigniory in 1676, but that Franquelin placed Fort LaTour on the east side is significant. After 1700 several maps appeared which placed this fort on the west side of the harbor, no doubt through confusion of it with that built at Carleton by Villebon, and this is the case in the fine maps of Bellin made before 1755. In 1757 however Bellin, the greatest French mapmaker of the last century, issued a much corrected map of Acadia, and in that he not only removes Fort LaTour from the west to the east side but places before the name the significant word "Ancien", so that it reads "Ancien F. LaTour." Bellin had access to the remarkably rich collections of ancient maps in the French "Depot des Cartes" and that he should have changed his earlier maps and especially have added the significant word "ancient" must be given weight in this argument. This is but the barest outline, but I may summarize the whole matter by saying that I know of no piece of evidence drawn from maps tending to show that the fort was on the west side; it all points to the east side.

If now we seek for a possible site for the fort upon the east side, we find that but a single site of an old fort has been recorded, that at Portland Point. Had any other existed it could hardly have completely escaped notice. Thus Mr. Lawrence (Footprints, page 4) states "Mr. Simonds erected his dwelling on the ruins of an old French Fort, Portland Point", and there is other evidence to show that a fort of considerable importance stood there. Moreover, and this is important, if this fort at Portland Point was not Fort LaTour, our historians have no idea what fort it was.

Denys, then, tells us that Fort LaTour was not at the "old fort" in Carleton; the early maps place it upon