NATURAL HISTORY AND PHYSIOGRAPHY OF NEW BRUNSWICK. 203 
French family names Muzroll and Savoy, two of the commonest 
names in the French settlements at the mouth of the Miramichi. 
This is confirmed by the fact that Sabbies is simply a corruption 
of Savoys, the form which appears, as I have recently found, in 
the earliest records. I have no question that these names are 
a survival of the actual residence at the mouths of those branches 
of French families of those names. They probably settled there 
at the time when the French were being driven from the accessible 
parts of the Province by the English, in the same way that they 
settled at, and gave names to, the French Lakes on the St. John. 
Their settlement here would be natural for the reason that this 
river was the great route of travel from the Miramichi to the 
St. John via the portage to the Gaspereau, a route which was 
used not only in early Indian and French times but even after 
the arrival of the Loyalists. The exact route of this portage I 
have been able to work out on the ground, and the matter is of 
so much antiquarian interest that I have treated it with some 
detail in a supplement to this Note. As to the other names of 
places along the river, they are mostly of an obvious descriptive 
sort, given no doubt by the earliest lumbermen.* 
The first survey of the river, from the mouth nearly to 
Muzrolls Brook, was made by W. Harley in 1826; this part was 
later surveyed also by B. R. Jouett. The headwaters were 
sketched in connection with timber-line surveys as far down as 
Bantelorum Brook, by Kilpatrick in 1835, while all the inter- 
mediate portion was surveyed by Fairw'eather in 1836. Some 
surveys in connection with proposed roads, (never built) to 
Gaspereau and Grand Lake were made by J. A. Beckwith in 
1850. All of the plans of these surveys are in the Crown Land 
Office, and have been used, along with new information and 
♦Except the curious name Bantelorum, which I have not been able to interpret. Local 
explanations vary much, — from an origin in recollection of a stream of that name elsewhere, 
to a slang expression for a drunken revel by some early lumberman. The word first appears, 
and in this form, upon Kilpatrick’s survey plan of 1835. Wilkinson, 1859, gives it the form 
Bartholomew, perhaps under the supposition that it is a corruption of that word, which was a 
family name among the Micmacs; though such an origin seems unlikely. The word certainly 
has, however, much the appearance of a somewhat jocose corruption of some Indian word. 
Six-mile Brook is perhaps so called because its southern branch is crossed by the Indian 
Portage about six miles from Cains River. 
