When about three hundred yards out from the Island and while paddling along in a half-asleep condition toward the nearest point on the mainland, I suddenly became aware of a pair of large parallel fins cutting along the perfectly calm water and coming straight toward me through the fog. This at a distance of less than 50 yards. “Sharks”, flashed through my mind momentarily. I got such a scare that I nearly fell out of the canoe. Then as the two sea monsters changed course to a curved approach such as to put themselves between Tota and Panmure Island, I noticed that the dorsal fins dipped under‘and reappeared as if the “creatures” were swimming by a sort of rolling motion such as I had once observed in the case of a school of porpoises. Whatever they were, it was too late for me to turn back; nothing for it but to keep paddling and get off a quick prayer. Within about a half minute of my first sighting the fins, two large jet-black sea monsters surfaced about 30 feet to one side of the canoe and lay there perfectly still gazing at me with their large round eyes. I would judge that they weighed each a half ton or more and I learned later that they were probably “black fish”, a type of sea mammal. Within a minute, more or less, and having apparently satisfied their curiosity, my friends took off. The last I saw of them was two large triangular fins cleaving through the water at about fifty miles an hour and quickly disappearning in the fog in the general direction of the Church at Sturgeon lying south across St. Mary’s Bay.

On the tip of the point opposite Panmure Island (which I later learned is known as Wightman’s Point) I discovered an old French burying ground, the graves hidden in the spruce trees and marked by flat shore stones set on edge. These born no epitaphs but simply the initials of the inhabitants, such as “A.S.”. Farther back from the shore but still lost in a thick cover of spruce were two or three “English” graves one, in particular, having a large marble monu— ment inscribed

“Sacred to the memory of JAMES WIGHTMAN Assistant surgeon of the 2nd Mass’ Regiment whose death occurred at the armory hospital Washington on the 16 of June 1863 at the age of 21 years. Caused from the effects of typhoid fever.

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