178 THE NATURALIST IN BEEMUDA. 



watcliing and endeavouring to suppress it, we cannot 

 obtain correct particulars. Large fires have been seen on 

 the mountains of Nova Scotia,, and from the volumes of 

 smoke which have been sent over the Straits, we have 

 reason to think, must have been productive of much 

 damage. New Brunswick, especially in the neighbourhood 

 of Miramichi, we hear, is also suffering from the same 

 calamity." — J. L. H. 



Discovery of Ancient Hawse-pipes. — In or about the 

 year 1844, 1 was informed by Mr. George Somers Tucker, of 

 Hamilton, that within the preceding two or three years, a 

 native settler, while fishing within a short distance of the 

 " Spanish Eock," on the south shore, got up from the bottom, 

 the leaden hawse-pipe of a vessel, which had evidently been 

 a great number of years under water ; and soon afterwards, 

 the same party fished up the feUow to it, in the same place. 

 One of these hawse-pipes was cut to pieces by the finder, 

 and converted into sinkers for nets and lines ; the other 

 was purchased by Mr. Somers Tucker, and conveyed to 

 Hamilton, where it was deposited in his grain and flour 

 store. This hawse-pipe he promised I should see; observ- 

 ing, that he intended to send it home to the British Mufeeum 

 as a curiosity. Search was accordingly made for the same, 

 again and again, but all to no purpose, compelling its owner 

 to conclude that it had been stolen from the store, and 

 disposed of as old lead. 



I know not at what period of history leaden hawse-pipes 

 were used by the ships of European nations, but if the above 

 statement be correct — as I have every reason to believe it 

 to be — there certainly appears to be ground for supposing 

 that some unknown vessel was wrecked at this very spot 



