Due to the shipbuilding activity immediately above it, the bridge was equipped with a draw until the mid-nineties. During that decade the Government embarked on the project of reclaiming large tracts of marsh land for agricultural purposes through the construction of aboideaux. As Mount Stewart was the site of the greatest undertaking in this regard, the draw was replaced with a floodgate, adjusted in such a way as to allow the water from the marshes to flow out at low tide without per¬ mitting the sea water to flow in at high tide. The head block from which the gates swung was hewn out of a beech log by Mr. Robert Pigot , a broad-axe man from shipbuilding days. Mr. George Jay , the owner of a nearby blacksmith shop, watched the tides and adjusted the gate accord¬ ingly. The project resulted in the drainage of some 500 acres of marshland. The salt water grass died out, and, until the fresh water variety de¬ veloped some years later, the area presented the appearance of a barren waste. Large crops of hay were eventually realized, and the marshes could be used much more extensively for pasture than formerly. Fishermen, how¬ ever, disliked the aboideau as it prevented fish getting up-river to spawn. The lines were drawn in 1932 when the Government considered re¬ placing the floodgate, which was in poor repair, with a span. At a meeting in school on June 17th chaired by Mr. George Warren , a re¬ solution was passed which protested that the proposal to place a span in the bridge would result in causing the tide to flow unto the marshes and cause destruction to valuable property. On the next evening a meet¬ ing was held in Mount Stewart hall for the purpose of approving the pro¬ posed span. At this meeting Mr. Ross Pigot , speaking both as a fisherman and farmer, declared that he did not consider that the span would inter¬ fere with the marshland, as the new railway bridge, which had been com¬ pleted in 1926, would practically take the place of the aboideau. When the span was installed, such proved to be the case. Throughout the area's history, little of a commendatory nature has ever been said about the state of the public roads. Enveloped in clouds of dust during the summer, the traveller was confronted with a morass of mud in spring and fall. Of the winter roads a writer to the Examiner on January 30, 1905 complained that "winding from highway to field and from field to highway across ploughed ground and stumped land, through barbed wire and other wire fences, as well as fences made of poles, our roads have been during many winters past, and are today, at once a problem and a hindrance to the traveller and a disgrace to the province." Such a hindrance were they that, where practicable, the winter traveller often forsook them altogether and journeyed over the frozen bays and rivers, guided away from springs and soft spots by a line of bushes which had been planted in the ice at intervals along the way. Although many decades would go by before its use became widespread, the introduction of asphalt as a surfacing material was a great stride toward the ultimate solution of the road problem. During the late twenties the Hon. J. P . ( Jim Bill ) Maclntyre of Savage Harbour , then Minister of Public Works, directed the paving of a two-mile stretch of the . The famous "" was the ancestor of today's all-weather roads which, as they are introduced, take much of the hardship out of winter travel. Difficult as the roads were in the past, they were, nonetheless, tran¬ quil. The story is still told of a lady who, giving the lead to her horse, —43—