204 
BULLETIN OF T1TE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
observations, in compiling the accompanying map. Settlers, 
partly English but mostly of Irish descent, began to extend up 
the river as an expansion from the growing Miramichi settlements 
about ISIS, and more rapidly after the great fire of 1825; and 
they continued to increase until about 1870 when they 
reached up beyond the old Indian Portage, and included some 
forty or fifty families.* A considerable village had also grown 
up, some time after 1825, around some large mills at Sabbies 
River, where the foundations and abandoned gardens are still 
to be seen. In recent years, however, owing partly to the 
destruction of most of the timber by fire, with a consequent 
failure of a market for the farm produce, and partly to the 
universal movement of the young people to the more attractive 
life of the towns, the settlements have been steadily contracting, 
until now the river is abandoned by all but a dozen families, 
and the former large farms are rapidly reverting to wilderness. 
This phenomenon of the contraction of settlement in a time of 
prosperity, a striking fact in the history of the settlement of 
New Brunswick, is characteristic of the other North Shore 
Rivers as well, but nowhere is so conspicuous as on Cains River. 
Some day these rivers will all be settled again, and then the 
settlement will be permanent. 
The greater part of the country along the river has been 
burnt and is now barren and worthless, though it is said locally 
that the great Miramichi Fire did not touch this valley. In 
addition to a considerable amount of lumbering which has been 
done on the river, it is a favorite resort of trout fishermen and 
*The general place of the river in the history of New Brunswick is briefly discussed, with 
references, in the Transactions of the Koyal Society of Canada, X, 1904, ii, 120. The locations 
of all of the families on the river in 187$, at the time its settlement was most thriving, are shown 
upon Roe and Colby’s Map of Northumberland County, published at Saint John in that year, 
while other facts are contained in the grant plans of the Crown Land Office. In addition I 
have been so fortunate as to obtain very full information as to the nationality etc. of the early 
settlers, — too much in fact to publish in the present paper as I originally intended, For this 
information, and much more besides, I am greatly indebted to Mr. Alexander Arbo, himself 
an almost life-long resident on the river, who has answered my many troublesome inquiries 
with the greatest readiness and courtesy, and to Mr. J. J. MacKinnon, long a school teacher 
in the settlement. The information they have given me I expect later to publish in full in 
another connection. 
