of them, hired out on Crapaud ice with his master, digging mud. One day, in the middle of March when breaking up the ice, he let the crowbar slip out of his hand into the mud-hole in twenty feet of water. His master sent him for it. He took a rope rein off one of his horses, put it around his waist, and down he went to the bottom of the mud—hole. In half a minute’s time, his master pulled him up half dead, without the bar. He soon came» to and they put him in a mud sleigh and sent him home to change his clothes. He was none the worse for his cold dive.

FIRST STORES

I remember the good old days in Crapaud, and our first three tiny little shops, run by John Hall, James Bulpit, and Donald Palmer. These shops, I think, were about sixteen feet square. Hall’s store was at the end of the house, Bulpit’s in the yard, and Palmer’s at his house gate;

Elick Cameron was his salesman and head clerk. I used to go to these shops many times.

Mr. John Hall had a private wharf on his shore and bought oats and potatoes, and scowed them down the river to the vessels. We had a government wharf on Palmer’s shore. At low water, it was bare sand, but a small vessel could take her full load at high tide. There was also a small wharf at Wigginton’s Bridge for scowing. Thomas Bulpit built the scows, and Lock and Bingham bought our oats and potatoes, and scowed them out t othe vessels. I remember one scow load of oats, all ready to go at high tide, caught under the bridge and tipped and spilt her load in the river, and they landed on Bulpit’s shore, while the buyer was up getting his dinner and thousands of bushels were lost. Lock did not mind

the loss. He ran a big store and built large vessels and sold them in the English market.

At this time, he wanted a wharf built out at Sandy Point road end. He commenced it himself and built an abutment away out at the edge of the deep water. In the spring, the ice carried it all away. He then called a meeting to know what could be done, and the farmers and merchants agreed to hire a dredge and put a penny on every bushel of cats shipped away. Then they hired a dredge boat from Nova Scotia, and a channel was opened up to Victoria Wharf. Then our government put on a little steamer, which made one trip a week from Charlottetown to Crapaud. The boat was called “The Maid of the Mist.” Lock’s shipbuilding broke

him financially, and he had to go away, while Bingham went to the city to live in a hotel on Pownal Square.

A MARRIAGE MARKET

Now, when Crapaud was young, I knew a young man who fell in love with a strange, good-looking girl. He married her without courtship, and after a short time, he could not keep her at home. She strayed away at nights from him. His friends pitied him and tried to get her back, but she said. no. She wanted to be a free girl again. They both wanted to be parted forever. The law at this time was to advertise a breacy wife and put a halter on her neck and lead her to town to the Markfieéfsiquare, and sell her by public auction. He sold his wife and got ten shillings and some goods for her. The man who bought her shipped her away to a big city. The freed husband came home again and courted another girl. Her name was Mary Power, an Irish Catholic girl. She turned Protestant and was a member of the English Church. It was a good marriage and they had a big family. They later sold their farm and moved away to New Brunswick. I knew them well, as I own their farm now.

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