150 The French in Prince Edward Island

rary work, thrown up to be armed and manned only to meet an emergency, but designed to contain a perma- nent garrison, with which an enemy striving to enter the harbour would have to lay his accounts to reckon.

It was now the ninth of August, and Franquet hay- ing accomplished the more important portion of his mission at Port Lajoie, hastened, while the pleasant months still lasted, to visit St. Peters and other settle- ments of the Island.

Embarking in a flat-bottomed barge manned by six stout oarsmen, he directed his course up the North East River. He had not proceeded far, however, before he discovered that the strength of the current was setting a severe task to the rowers. The barge was accordingly taken in tow by a small schooner, and proceeded on her way up the stately river, Franquet taking diligent note the while of the changing scenes that presented them- selves to right and left. The unexplored forest was to be seen everywhere—a waving sea of verdure throwing itself from the distant uplands down to the river banks. There small openings were beginning to appear, with the log houses of the settler rising among the stumps of the recently felled trees, and strong though patchy harvests waving over the yet unlevelled and unfenced fields. Round L’anse aux morts, la petite Ascension, and La Riviére des Blancs on the right bank, and L’anse aux Perogues—L’Isle aux foins and la Riviére de Brouillan on the left, and along the courses of little streamlets on both sides of the river, were seen the settlements of some newly arrived Acadians.* About two leagues up

*So far as I can make out, the places mentioned in the text correspond with what we now call Spring Garden Creek, Wright’s

Creek and Marshfield Creek on the right bank of the river, and Stewart Cove, Fullerton’s Marsh and Johnston’s River on the left.