rees, 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."

[81] The reference is to the settlement made at Maugerville two or
three years before, which at this time seems to have been
called the Township of Peabody, in honor of Captain Francis
Peabody.

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."

[82] Probably Port Le Bear (or Hebert) near Shelburne on the southern
coast of Nova Scotia.

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:
"T