?-s plied with weather broadcasts on radio and television, but they are able to make their own judgements as to when to make hay or pull up fishing gear. This wisdom is summarized in familiar adages: "Red sky at night, sailors' delight"; "The moon is tilted, holding rain"; and "There's a sun dog in the sky." Souris in Days Gone By More than 60 years ago a new teacher visited a class room in a Souris school and enlivened a geography les¬ son by telling history stories. One was of three British captains who came to Prince Edward Island in 1758 fol¬ lowing the capture by their forces of the French fortress at Louisburg in . One of them, Cap¬ tain Norris, sailed his ship into a little inlet north of Souris and anchored there, giving the place the name it has borne ever since. It was . Another, Captain Rollo , sailed into the bay south of Souris , which was thereafter called . And the third, Captain Colville , sailed his ship into Souris Harbour , and it of course, became known as . This was a good story, the kind children can remember. One of the boys who heard it, nine year old George Leard , remembered it without copying it down. However, he found out years later that it was not true! Nevertheless, it did not matter, for by then the story had given him something much more important than mere factual information - it had given him a lifelong interest in Souris history. What follows here will attract all those Souris people who, like George Leard , have become interested in the story of their town. And for the others it may serve to do what the apocryphal story of the three captains did long ago - spark an interest in local history. The name Souris is, of course, the French word for "mouse." As it suggests, Souris was first seen and named when Prince Edward Island was Isle St-Jean, part of the French empire in . This may have been in 1724, when there was a plague of mice in Prince Edward Island . A map of 1744 identifies Souris as "Havre a la Souris ." In the British Museum there is a map of 1758 which repeats this name in its English translation - "Mouse Harbour." Folk lore gives Henri Cheverie as the name of the first settler. Others were Michel Cheverie (1805), Jean and Toussaint Longaphie (1810), Fidele and Cyprian Paquet (1813), Francois Cheverie (1819) and Francois Lavie and Paul Boucher (1820). But it was not an exclusively French settlement: in 1773 the owners of Lot 45, in which Souris is located, were William Burt and John Callender , and a John MacPhee lived here in 1814. In 1824 there was a tax sale of 500 acres at to William Johnson of Charlottetown . The names Lavie, Paquet, Cheverie and MacPhee are still to be found in Souris . The first inhabitants of Prince Edward Island were, of John Knight , the founder of Souris . course, Micmac Indians, who hunted and fished on the Island in summer and wintered on the mainland. We may be sure they were familiar with the area around . Later visitors were Portugese and Icelandic fishermen, but they made no settlement. In 1764, after Isle St-Jean passed into British hands, Captain Samuel Holland made a famous survey of the Island. On his map Souris is called . When the 500 acres at were sold in 1824 Souris was identified as Red Cliffes. But the original French name was never forgotten, and in the middle of the 19th century Souris became the undisputed official, as well as popular, name of the settlement. Other places nearby also underwent changes of name. When John MacGowan came from Charlottetown and built a mill at New Bristol in 1830 he named his place Gowan Brae . Now the name New Bristol has disap¬ peared, and the district is called Gowan Brae . Similarly, Royal Cove just east of Souris is called Chepstow today. Souris developed originally as 10 farms, which by 1835 had been reduced to nine. They were long narrow stretches of land with their heads buried in the woods and their feet washed in the bay. But the real founder of Souris as a town rather than as a country district was John Knight , who in the 1830s acquired a small wharf from Neil MacDonald and to protect it built a small breakwater. This was the beginning of Souris as a port, the development which determined its future impor¬ tance.