BAY FORTUNE.

BY J. O. Unnnmv.

In the eastern part of Kings county, about eight miles from Souris by road and about five by water, is situated the harbour of Bay Fortune, lying between Abel’s Cape qn the south and Aitken’s Cape on the north, memorable as the port where the warship in which Captain Marryat, the novelist. sailed lay fbr two or three weeks nearly a hundred years ago. Captain Mar- ryat in his book called “Frank Mildmay, or the Naval Oflicer,” gives an account of the ship's officers having a very good time in Halifax; and shortly after leaving there. news reached the ship that a vessel having on board a number of Irish emigrants bound for Canada was cast away or stranded near Halifax. “Captain Thunderbolt,” who was Lord Townsend, proprietor of township 56, suggested that some of those emigrants would be just the thing to settle his estate and proposed a retum to Halifax to bring some of them here. a proposal readily agreed to by other ofiicers of the ship who still re- tained a vivid recollection of the pleasant time spent there a few days previously. Then having induced several of the emi- grants to join them, they again set sail for Fortune Harbour, where the agent, Edward Abel. lived, several of the ship’s officers sleeping for a fortnight in Abel’s barn. the

site of which is still visible on Abel’s Cape, ,

which has lately become a celebrated resort for sportsmen and tourists. While making Abel’s Cape their headquarters Lord Town- send. with others of the ship’s crew and the emigrants. made daily excursions to the nearest part of Lot 56, about a mile and a half west from Fortune Harbour and near

to where the Red House postoflice is now kept. They went into the woods, cut down trees and Captain Marryat says hauled them out by the tops and built several houses for the emigrants who were to become tenants to Lord Townsend at a yearly rental of one shilling sterling per acre or five pounds, eleven shillings and two pence Island cur- rency per 100 acres equal to about three pounds fourteen shillings British sterling. This was a provision common to all the leases. and was a source of frequent conten- tion between landlord and tenant although in the majority of cases no attempt was made to exact more than the additional one- ninth to Island currency. The house nearest to Fortune Harbour was occupied by Pat Pierce, who became tenant for a hundred acres at the rental aforesaid, and the writer remembers seeing some of the logs of his house forming part of a fence about seventy years ago. Some twelve or fifteen years after the events above narrated Pat Pierce was the possessor of a nice black carriage horse. if the term is applicable to a time when carriages and carriage roads were al- most unknown to the eastern part of the province at least. Mrs. Abel looked upon this horse with a covetous eye and tried in vain to induce Pierce to sell him. Failing in that. she prevailed upon her husband to de- mand immediate payment of the rent. Poor Pierce succeeded in getting together the five pounds eleven shillings and two pence, but on presenting it to Abel he ob- jected that some of ,the' coins were not current money (there were no notes at that time). Pierce set out on