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The endless billows of house-roofs showed forth with wonderful distinctness, and one could have counted the chimney stacks and the little black streaks of the windows by the million. The edifices rising into the calm atmosphere seemed like the anchored vessels of some fleet arrested in its course, with lofty masting which glittered at the sun's farewell.

It is rather a curious circumstance that very soon after Francklin, Hazen and White embarked in the masting business they found themselves at logger heads with William Davidson, whose workmen they had for two years been endeavoring to protect from interference on the part of the "rebels" and Indians. In point of fact Mr.

I spent three-quarters of the day on the platform. I stared at the sea. Nothing on the horizon, except near four o'clock in the afternoon a long steamer to the west, running on our opposite tack. Its masting was visible for an instant, but it couldn't have seen the Nautilus because we were lying too low in the water.

Some of these wrecked ships had perished in collisions, others from hitting granite reefs. I saw a few that had sunk straight down, their masting still upright, their rigging stiffened by the water. They looked like they were at anchor by some immense, open, offshore mooring where they were waiting for their departure time.

Some of the sticks obtained were of very large size, including one mast, 35 inches in diameter and 91-1/2 feet long, and a yard 26 inches in diameter and 108 feet long; for these two sticks they received respectively $450 and $350. It was essential to the success of the masting business that a good practical man should be at the head of it, and Mr.

The extent of William Davidson's masting operations must have been very considerable, for Hazen & White wrote to Colonel Francklin in March, 1782, "Davidson will have about 200 sticks out this season and near as many more fell in the woods, having employed almost half the Inhabitants in cutting.

The masting business was a very important one in the early days of New Brunswick. Vessels were built expressly for the trade, and, being of large size, and usually sailing under protection of a man-of-war, soon became the favorite passenger ships.

'It is a pity, wrote Newton, the collector of the customs at Annapolis and Canso, in 1719, that 'so fine a province as Nova Scotia should lie so long neglected. As for furs, feathers, and a fishery, we may challenge any province in America to produce the like, and beside that here is a good grainery; masting and naval stores might be provided hence.

After numerous efforts, the fore-staff and the top-gallant mast were gotten down upon the deck, not without these honest men having a hundred times risked being precipitated into the sea, the rolling shook the masting to such an extent. Then, the top-sail having been lessened and the foresail furled, the schooner carried only her foretop-mast stay-sail and the low reef of the top-sail.

Weldon, by some words which escaped him, understood that astonishment. It was the 9th of March. The novice kept at the prow, sometimes observing the sea and the sky, sometimes looking at the "Pilgrim's" masting, which began to strain under the force of the wind. "You see nothing yet, Dick?" she asked him, at a moment when he had just left the long lookout. "Nothing, Mrs.