Page:New Brunswick Magazine Issue 1.djvu/37

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WHERE STOOD FORT LATOUR?
25

the east side; but a single fort-site is known on the east side,—that at Portland Point. This is why I think the fort stood on the east side, and probably at Portland Point. It is true these facts do not prove that conclusion; but they seem to me to give it a higher degree of probability than any other theory at present possesses. In any case, these facts are too important to be ignored, and if anyone wishes to establish another view, it will not be enough to give simply the reasons for his own belief, but he must meet and answer this testimony of Denys and the mapmakers, and show either that they were mistaken or else that they have been misinterpreted. But whatever we may think of the evidence, this much is sure, that future students will impartially examine it and give a decision according to its merits.

THE BROTHERS D'AMOURS.

THE FIRST FRENCH SETTLERS ON THE ST. JOHN RIVER.

Most people in New Brunswick, when they speak of the first settlers on the River St. John refer to the Loyalists who came here in 1783, or to the New England men who settled at Maugerville and Sheffield twenty years earlier. Little is ever said, because but little is known, of those French inhabitants of the St. John river who were living on its banks a full century before the era of the Loyalists, and of whom we obtain very fleeting and uncertain glimpses in the official despatches sent by the commandants of Acadia to the French government. Yet these people cannot but be interesting to us who now inhabit the land which they made their home, and if the whole story of their trials and toils could be told we would no doubt find it as full