SCRAPS OF LOCAL HISTORY. 49 



Dunccin used to pass our house every morning with a great load 

 of colHns for the dead who died during the night. (He that 

 afterwards drove stage to Newcastle.) 



MRS. JAS. CURRIE. 



My maiden name was Gray. I was born in Lower Napan. I 

 have often heard my mother and father speak about the 

 Miraniichi fire. My grandfather and father, then a little boy, 

 were living on the Woods place, next farm to E. Hutchison's. 

 He was then eleven years old. The night of the fire he. Dr. 

 Thompson and Samuel Thompson were together down the road on 

 this side of the river, and were trying to get down to grand- 

 father's on the Woods place, but it got so dark they could not 

 follow the road. They then joined hands and one walked in the 

 gutter. They met a woman who advised them to stay at her 

 house till morning or they would lose themselves in the dark. 

 They did so, and my father fell asleep sitting on the bed, as they 

 had very few chairs. The next thing he knew was the old woman 

 calling out if there was anybody in the house, for God's sake to 

 come out as it was afire. 



There is a story which, altbough not having occurred in New 

 Brunswick, still it took place on our coast and in the immediate 

 vicinity, viz. , in the Bale de Chaleur, which I have copied from 

 the Montreal Family Herald and Weekly Star of May 31st, 1911, 

 which I thought might interest some of our readers and is worth 

 preserving. It is the wreck of the Colborne : ' 'In 1838 — the year 

 of the second uprising in Lower Canada — the most conspicuous 

 figure in Canadian public life, also the most powerful man in the 

 country, was Sir John Colborne, known a few years later as Lord 

 Seaton, Commander-in-Chief of the forces. It was his strong 

 hand that broke the insurrection of the preceding year, and it was 

 his watchfulness and the disposition of the troops made by him, 

 that stamped out the flames of the second uprising as soon as they 

 burst forth. Thwarted and disgusted Lord Durham threw up the 

 administration of the Government in the autumn of 1838, and 

 returned to England. Sir John Colborne thereupon became 

 administrator of the Government, and a few months later was 

 appointed Governor General. 



"Early in the summer of 1838, Sir John sent to England for a 



