John Dan MacKenzie gave me an interesting anecdote about the 
     
     first settlers. Apparently a large block of land south of the present 
     
     Graham’s Creek was granted in the early days to the chief or leader 
     
     of a sept of the clan Graham; a similar grant north of the Creek to 
     
     the leader of a group of MacKenzies. The Patriarch Graham, when 
     
     making his “Last Will and Testament” put in a proviso that if any 
     
     of his descendants should ever marry or become a “Catholic”, he (or 
     
     she) was to lose all claim to any of the Graham lands. When old man 
     
     MacKenzie, a Catholic, got wind of this, he likewise inserted in his 
     
     Will a similar restriction against any of his land ever passing to a 
     
     Protestant. Maybe, it was the first MacKenzie who started it. I’m not 
     
     sure, as I didn’t listen very carefully to that part of the story. This, of 
     
     course, was in the time of “entailed” property. Today, I understand, 
     
     the Grahams and the MacKenzies are to quite an extent “mixed up”, 
     
     some having “jumped the fence” one way, some the other. The thing 
     
     that amazed me most was that these old men in the “long ago” could 
     
     have been so bitter, especially when it is quite probable, nay most 
     
     likely, that neither was lacking in intelligence. Perhaps each knew he 
     
    
   
   
    
     was wrong and each was too stubborn to admit it to himself. Who 
     
     shall say? 
     
    
   
   
    
     From MacKenzie’s Cape fairly early next morning, Friday, 
     
     August 10th, I set out for Georgetown. Arriving at the southern end 
     
     of Panmure Island Bar, 1 went ashore on the beautiful sand beach 
     
     where l was warmly greeted by 3 men who were at the shore gathering 
     
     seaweed with a horse and cart. They turned out to be Howard Steele, 
     
     his somewhat older brother Angus, and their father John Dan Steele. 
     
    
   
   
    
     This John Dan, retired seaman, had spent 44 years at sea in the 
     
     days of “Wooden Ships and Iron Men”. He had sailed on the old 
     
     square-riggers, had been around the Horn four times, and had been 
     
     shipwrecked a number of times. On one trip, he told me, the ship lost 
     
     all her canvas in a hurricane and became so waterlogged that the crew 
     
     had to tie themselves to the rigging by means of the masts and cross- 
     
     arms. After 27 days adrift they were rescued by another ship. Of a 
     
     crew of nearly fifty men, some death, some dying, only the Captain 
     
     and John Dan actually survived. 
     
    
   
   
    
     John Dan showed me callouses on the palms of his hands big as 
     
     hen’s eggs and got from rowing at sea in life-boats; in one of these he 
     
     and some others had survived for twelve days before being rescued. 
     
     On one occasion an Italian ship had passed close by and “ignored” 
     
    
   
   
    
     l3