ARTICLE II. 
NOTES ON THE NATURAL HISTORY AND PHYSIO- 
GRAPHY OF NEW BRUNSWICK. 
By W. F. Ganong. 
107. — On the Physiographic Characteristics of Portage 
and Fox Islands, Miramichi. 
Read (in abstract) May 1, 1906. 
The islands of the coasts of New Brunswick fall into two 
classes. They are either the tops of submerged hills, as in those 
of the Bay of Fundy and Bay Chaleur, or else they are banks 
of sand heaped up by waves and wind, as in nearly all that re- 
markable series along our North Shore from Miscou to Buctouche. 
Of the sand islands two differ in size, in details of structure, 
and in vegetation, from all the others, namely Portage and 
Fox Islands, which lie across the mouth of the Miramichi.* 
*The origin of the name Portage as applied to this island is not known. One persistent 
local tradition, current especially among the English, asserts that formerly this and Fox 
Island were united, with a narrow neck where now is the passage between them, and that 
across this neck the Indians portaged their canoes when wishing to change sides in passing 
along the coast. Substituting a neck at the north end of the Island, where no doubt 
it was once attached to the mainland, the explanation is rendered possible, if not probable. 
It receives support from a Des Barres map of 1780 which marks just there, “carrying place.’ 
Another local explanation, given by the French, is that the word was originally potage, 
and was applied because the hunters and others who went there used to plan to cook their 
noon * 'potage’’ upon it, an explanation which receives a certain support from the fact 
that two early maps, made independently of one another, use that form (Jumeau, of 
1685, and L’Hermitte, of 1727). It is possible that neither explanation is correct, and 
that the name arose from some early circumstance or custom obscure to us; and this is 
rendered probable by the existence, near Cape Sable, Nova Scotia, of a Bon Portage Island 
to which neither of the above explanations would seem likely to apply. 
Fox Island was very probably named not from the animal but in honor of the great 
parliamentary leader, for the name appears first upon a map (of about 1780) by 
DesBarres, most of whose names were given in honor of persons; thus he named Portage 
Island Waltham, though the name has not persisted. Aside from a traditional reference 
given by Cooney in his History, (page 30), to the effect that the island was the seat of an 
•early establishment for the Walrus fishery, the Islands have apparently no history, even 
of a traditional sort. They are each owned by a number of persons, to whom they have 
been granted in lots for the valuable salmon and lobster fisheries of the shores. In the 
autumn they offer good opportunities for the shooting of wild fowl. They have no per- 
manent residents, for in winter even the light keepers and the many summer fishermen 
abandon them. The lighthouses and beacons, the fishermen’s sheds and huts, their 
boundary stakes, their net- racks, their paths, their -wells, and the occasional stacks of 
.dried beach or marsh grass cut for hay, — these are all the signs of their use by man. 
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