First Impressions of New Brunswick. 13 



notice ! " So sending the non-combatants on shore, we hung 

 about in harbour during the next ten days, expecting either 

 to sail, or what was, I suspect, more congenial to the tastes of 

 some of us — viz., an order to disembark and make ourselves 

 comfortable on the mainland. 



These were anxious days, however, to many, but possibly far 

 less serious than rumour stated ; at all events, to us", they were 

 uncommonly uncomfortable, seeing that a cold north wind blew 

 down river, and often a chopping sea prevented the inquisitive 

 from landing to view the lions of the place, thus driving us 

 to become victims of that horrid tedium and "that awful yawn 

 which sleep cannot abate." Being tied to the ship, we felt the 

 restraint the more that it was forced, whilst diversities of 

 opinion as to the crisis seemed to indicate that the step was 

 unnecessary, some politicians who came on board asserting 

 that the whole affair was a hoax got up by our American 

 cousins to bother John Bull on account of the precious 

 Alabama. Others looked with earnest faces at our red coats, 

 and remarked that " Colonel Harding and his fine fellows had 

 not come an hour sooner than wanted " ! At length the rigour 

 of martial law slackened, and availing myself of the opportu- 

 nity, I proceeded on shore for the purpose of examining a 

 remarkable fragment of Old Red Sandstone which fringes this 

 portion of the southern coast, and overlies a series of strata 

 supposed to belong to the same age as those of Ontario, in 

 which Sir William Logan. discovered the oldest known fossil, 

 named the Eozoon Canadense* As our captain's gig dropped 

 astern of the transport "Simoon," and was being rowed towards 

 Carleton, numbers of fishing boats were seen dragging nets 

 heavily laden with the well-known American shad named 

 the "Alewive," which at this season crowds the harbour before 

 proceeding up the rivers for spawning purposes ; indeed so 

 burdened were several of the nets that the wonder was how 



* See Dawson, Quart. Jour. Geo/. Soc. London, vol. xxi., p. 51; and 

 Carpenter, ditto, p. 59. 



