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238 harbour of St. John is the only one north of Cape Hatteras which has never been frozen, the Fundy tides having in this case proved a beneficent agency. Once there were but three ports under the British flag where more vessels were owned than in St. John, but that was in the period before metal hulls superseded hulls of stout green-heart.

The entrance to the harbour from the Bay of Fundy is flanked by rocky arms which narrow toward the outlet of the great river discovered by Champlain and de Monts on the fête day of St. John the Baptist, June, 1604, following their voyage to the Annapolis Basin. Partridge Island frowned upon their intruding sails as it frowns still upon the labouring, steaming, drifting procession that constantly passes beneath its gloomy banks. Into this "port of heroes" sailed the ships of de la Tour and Charnisay, and gallant Villebon. Frigates battled at its mouth whose masts flew the Lion and the Fleur de Lys. The timorous craft of New England settlers and the black hulks of reckless privateers braved the tidal estuary before May, 1783, when a valiant fleet of twenty vessels bore three thousand Royalists to a place of disembarkation on the right bank of the harbour opposite old Fort Frederick. The landing was at the foot of the street which was fittingly called "King" by the Tory founders of the city. In 1784 there were more than nine thousand Loyalists on the sterile site of St. John. It was not