The Glasier letters (which have just been printed in the Collections of the N. B. Hist. Society) show that before Beamsley Glasier left Montreal, as the accredited agent of the St. John’s River Society, there had been a good deal of discussion about the location of the townships it was desired to procure and settle. It was ultimately decided that this matter should be left to the discretion of Captain Glasier after he had made a personal examination of certain localities and obtained reliable information respecting the ungranted lands in Nova Scotia. Glasier wrote from Halifax on the 15th December, 1764, to Captain Thos. Falconer and the Society’s committee at Montreal, informing them of his selection of the valley of the River St. John as by all odds the most desirable situation. He says:
“When I compare this place to any other we ever thought of I am surprised it had not been fixed on before I came away. The island of St. Johns (or Prince Edward Island) is not good land, besides being so far to the northward it is too exposed if a war should happen, as is all up the Gut of Canso, Bay Challeurs, etc. Besides the whole of that part of the country, as well as all the coast to the head Cape Sable and up the Bay of Fundy, is bound with fog almost three months in the year. In this River you have none above the falls, nor have you Musquitos here in any sort of comparison to any other part of this country. Besides you are so near the settled parts of New England that you may sail with a good wind to Boston in 30 hours, or if you have a mind to coast along shore you may harbour every 4 or 5 Leagues all the way to Boston and that all winter. I think we are very happy not to settle on the Lake where we proposed, for if we had anything to send to market it would take more time and be a greater risk to get it out of the River St. Lawrence than to go from here to Europe.”
On the 1st March following Capt. Glasier addressed a letter to John Fenton of Boston informing the members of the Society in that quarter of the success of his subsequent proceedings. He apologizes for the tardiness of his communication by saying, “I have put off writing, as the world puts off Repentence till the last moment.” Glasier is very enthusiastic as to the outlook.
“The interval lands on the St. John,” he says, “are wonderful, not a stone and black mold 6 feet deep, no underwood, large tall Trees all hardwood; you may drive a Coach through the Trees, we can cut what Grass we please and we may improve the land immediately; in short I can’t describe it to you. * * * * I hope we shall be able to begin something this summer, there is the D—l and all of people applying for lands in this province. There is now settled 50 families just above us, all Yankys[81]; they are not very good Farmers you know but they raised fine grain last year.”
In the choice of the St. John river valley as the best situation for the townships that were to be laid out and settled, Beamsley Glasier seems to have been guided very largely by the advice of Charles Morris, the surveyor general of Nova Scotia, and his son Charles Morris, junior. The younger Morris had a personal interest in the Society and Capt. Glasier writes of him:
“Mr. Morris’s son is one of our Proprietors and is to go with me in April to survey the whole tract I have asked for. He is Deputy to his Father and very clever, as you’ll have occasion to know hereafter. We propose setting out from Halifax about the beginning of April and take a survey of Port O’Bear[82] on our way to St. Johns. I imagine the whole will take us a great deal of time as we shall go up all the small rivers. I have engaged a little schooner for the purpose. As places for our Mills and good Timber, oak as well as pine, is a great object, and as Mr. Morris is a Conesieur in the Goodness of Lands, if we don’t fix upon convenient spots to answer all our purposes it will be our faults.”
The task of surveying and exploring proved of greater magnitude than Glasier had anticipated, and at the end of the summer the Surveyor General of Nova Scotia and his son had only been able to make a general sketch of the river and townships, not an accurate survey, and Glasier expressed the opinion that it would be a work of two years at least before the River would be thoroughly known. Just how much time was spent in the work of exploration and survey we do not know, but the younger Morris spent three months in the summer of 1766 surveying the townships of Gage and Sunbury, and in addition to this he says: “The Surveyor General and myself expended more than a Hundred Pounds Sterling of our own Money in surveying the River last year.”
Captain Glasier was very desirous of obtaining the best lands on the river and he states frankly, in one of his letters, “what we want is the good lands only, or as small a quantity of the bad as is possible.” He was not ready to make definite application for lands, therefore, until he had ascertained the whereabouts of all lakes, ponds, sunken and bad lands, etc., in order to avoid paying quit rents to the crown for that which was not improvable.
Meanwhile trouble was brewing at Halifax, and it was only by the good offices of Governor Wilmot, Charles Morris, sr., and other members of the Council that the St. John River Society was saved from disaster. We get an idea of the threatened danger in a letter of Hon. Michael Francklin to Captain Glasier of July 22, 1765, in which great concern is expressed that Glasier had not yet made his choice of the lands he desired. “You cannot conceive how the Government is embarrassed,” writes Francklin, “by the daily applications that are made. We have no less than three agents from Pennsylvania who are put off on your account. * * * My dear Sir be thoroughly persuaded that no set of people will have the preference to your Gentlemen in anything that can be done for them, but pray do reflect and consider the Government here and our situation, how disagreeable it is to lock up a whole River, sufficient for fifty Townships, and people applying every day that we are obliged to put off until you are served. Consider what a risque 219 the Government runs of losing a number of valuable settlers. I beg of you, on my own account and as one who has the welfare and prosperity of the Province at heart, that you will by some means or other make your choice as soon as possible and transmit it to the Governor.”