MacRae. And the last times we were there Captain MacDougall run it, Sandy MacDougall, the piper.

There’d be...a lot of people. They’d be hauling for the factories then. They’d be hauling for the stores too. Alex MacWilliams — we used to call him Wild Alex — from Eldon. He’d be hauling every day...for Ross’s and Larrabee’s, the stores. A trip a day. See, they used to get their supplies, as much as they could, on the ice till the boat’d run. They’d try to get every— thing in because in the spring everything’d be tied up with mud and things.

Alex used to haul an awful lot of puncheons of molasses [across the ice]. All the puncheons of molasses always went down in the basement. They’d have to roll them down, buckle them down with rope, I guess... Oh, a lot of people ’d be buying them. A lot of them for water tubs. They’d saw them in two. Two tubs then. And some used to get them and have them at the end of the house for the rain water. Yeah, you’d hardly see a house but there’d be one of them puncheons out. Rain water. They’d have that for washing, see? They used to say the water was softer.

Ice Dangers

[Sometimes] the horses would get in the ice [and need to be rescued]. [There was] mostly a crowd around and they ’d pull him out. See, they ’d put a rope around his neck and they’d kinda pull, choke him, cut his wind off, and he’d float, float, see? And then they’d just shoot him right on[to] the ice. But they had to be pretty careful when they’d choke him you know. They’d just choke him [a little] and then have to let it go.... And then roll him up in blankets and wrap him around.

There was a fella, Angus William Docherty. He was coming home one evening from town. He was a man that had pretty good horses... . Along the roads was kind of [a] pitch, so he hit the pitch and the swing broke and the horse slipped out on him. He lost his reins and the horse went... . They were two days looking for [the horse].

So, late this evening, they thought they seen a spot out on the drift ice off the Point. They went out and there was the horse, going around. They tell me all that saved the horse from laying down was he always used to drive with an overdraw on.1 The horse couldn’t lay down with the overdraw still hooked on the pad.

This Douglas Buchanan; he was in town doing some business... . He had a woodsleigh and he happened to have a young horse. The old horses,

1. An overdraw is an additional piece of harness running from the top of the horse’s head down the nape of the neck, designed to keep the horse’s head erect.

15 O BELFAST PEOPLE