Still though the variety at first glance seems greater than might have been expected, a little further inspection will satisfy us that the life of that day was one of extreme simplicity, of luxuries there were few, and even the necessaries of life were sometimes scanty enough.
One hundred and forty years have passed since James Simonds and James White set themselves down at the head of Saint John harbor as pioneers in trade to face with indomitable energy and perseverance the difficulties of their situation. These were neither few nor small, but they were Massachusetts men and in their veins there flowed the blood of the Puritans. The determination that enabled their progenitors to establish themselves around the shores of the old Bay States upheld them in the scarcely less difficult task of creating for themselves a home amidst the rocky hillsides that encircled the Harbor of St. John.
Today the old pioneers of 1764 would hardly recognize their ancient landmarks. The ruggedness of old Men-ah-quesk has in a great measure disappeared; valleys have been filled and hills cut down. The mill-pond where stood the old tide mill is gone and the Union depot with its long freight sheds and maze of railway tracks occupies its place. “Mill” street and “Pond” street alone remain to tell of what has been. The old grist mill near Lily Lake and its successors have long since passed away. It certainly was with an eye to business and not to pleasure, that Hazen, Simonds and White built the first roadway to Rockwood Park. Could our pioneers in trade revisit the scene of their labors and note the changes time has wrought what would be their amazement? They would hardly recognize their surroundings. Instead of rocks and crags covered with spruce and cedar, with here and there an open glade, and the wide spreading mud flats at low tide they would behold the wharves that line our shores, the ocean steamships lying in the channel, grain elevators that receive the harvests of Canadian wheat-fields two thousand miles away, streets traversed by electric cars and pavements traversed by thousands of hurrying feet, bicyclists darting hither and thither, squares tastefully laid out and adorned with flowers, public buildings and residences of goodly proportions and by no means devoid of beauty, palatial hotels opening their doors to guests from every clime, institutions for the fatherless and the widow, the aged, the poor, the unfortunate, the sick the insane, churches with heaven directing spires, schools whose teachers are numbered by the hundred and pupils by the thousand, public libraries, courts of justice and public offices of nearly every description, business establishments whose agents find their way into every nook and corner of old-time Acadie, railways and steamboats that connect the city with all parts of the globe, splendid bridges that span the rocky gorge at the mouth of the St. John where twice in the course of every twenty-four hours the battle, old as the centuries, rages between the outpouring torrent of the mighty river and the inflowing tide of the bay.
A few years since the writer of this history in an article in the New Brunswick Magazine endeavored to contrast a Saturday night of the olden time with one of modern days.[69]
A COTTAGE OF TODAY.
“Saturday night in the year 1764—The summer sun sinks behind the hills and the glow of evening lights the harbor. At the landing place at Portland Point, one or two fishing boats are lying on the beach, and out a little from the shore a small square sterned schooner lies at her anchor. The natural lines of the harbor are clearly seen. In many places the forest has crept down nearly to the water’s edge. Wharves and shipping there are none. Ledges of rock, long since removed, crop up here and there along the harbor front. The silence falls as the day’s work is ended at the little settlement, and the sound of the waters rushing through the falls seems, in the absence of other sounds, unnaturally predominant. Eastward of Portland Pond we see the crags and rocks of the future city of the Loyalists, the natural ruggedness in some measure hidden by the growth of dark spruce and 186 graceful cedar, while in the foreground lies the graceful curve of the “Upper Cove” where the forest fringes the waters edge. We may easily cross in the canoe of some friendly Indian and land where, ten years later, the Loyalists landed, but we shall find none to welcome us. The spot is desolate, and the stillness only broken by the occasional cry of some wild animal, the song of the bird in the forest and the ripple of waves on the shore.
The shadows deepen as we return to the Point, and soon the little windows of the settlers’ houses begin to glow. There are no curtains to draw or blinds to pull down or shutters to close in these humble dwellings, but the light, though unobstructed shines but feebly, for ’tis only the glimmer of a tallow candle that we see or perhaps the flickering of the firelight from the open chimney that dances on the pane.