LIFE OF MOSES HENRY PERLEY, 

 WRITER AND SCIENTIST. 



liv Philip Cox Ph. D. 



/.iOSES Henry Perley was born in the parish of Mauger- 

 ville. County of Sunbury, New Brunswick, on the 31st 

 of December, 1804. He was through his mother, a 

 grandson of Israel Perley, leader of a band of coloni.sts, who, 

 emigrating from Massachusetts, then a British dependency, 

 settled along the River St. John in 1762. He was also of the 

 sixth generation in descent from Allen Perley, or Ap[)erley, a 

 native of Wales, who arrived at Charlestown, near Boston, July 

 12th, 1630, and from whom the Perley s in America are des- 

 cended. 



Israel Perley was accompanied to N<^w Brunswick by his 

 brother Oliver. whi)>^e son Moses married the former's daughter 

 Mar}', and had issue Charles, who died in infancy, and Moses, 

 the sul)ject of this sketch. From his mother he inherited much 

 otthat restless enei-gy and love of nature which largely character- 

 ized his life, for she was a woman of strong, deep feelings and 

 convictions, an admirer of the artistic side of nature, and the 

 dignity of labour. 



When he was only a boy the family left Maugerville and 

 took u\) its residence in St. John, where Moses received a com- 

 mon school education, but the ordinary pleasures of city Ufe, the 

 dull routine of business, and the absence of those quiet charms 

 of forest, lake, and river, which had found a response in the 

 childish heart, soon caused the boy of sixteen or seventeen to 

 long for the freer and more congenial life of the country, and in his 

 bark canoe he is found every si)ringand early summer among the 

 Indians of the interior, sharing with them the lean-to or the 

 wigwam, })urcbasing their furs and other goods, for which he 

 always paid in coin— never in firewater nor worthless trinkets as 

 too many of the so-called traders of those days did. His vouth, 

 his honesty, his love of the wilderness, his sympathv for Indian 



