big shed on the tannery and there was a great big capstan in it: great big capstan with a horse in it all the time going around. And a big crusher... for crushing the bark of a hemlock. Tan—bark, they called it. And one fella’d be feeding the sheets of tan—bark in, you know, and crushing it all up just like cracked corn. Just about like that coming out... .

He put that in the vats and it coloured it good. He had some treatment, I suppose, to put in it, too, besides. It coloured the hide nice, nice brown or dark on one side. Then he’d take it up, and he had splitting machines — he’d split a hide. And then he’d smooth it all off; lie it, kind of dry it; and roll it right up into leather.

Not in my time, but before my time, when I was young, I guess, he had three or four men working with him, and he had a couple of shoemakers making the shoes right in the tannery in the shop, upper floor. They were making the shoes and the long boots there and everything. And he was selling them right to the stores. People buying them.

It was the old, slow way of making leather, but it was good leather, see? It went on for years. He made an awful lot of leather and he was shipping it away and everything. Putting it on schooners going to other countries. There was great demand for it in Newfoundland.

It was great leather, but there was some new chemical come out, a fast way of making leather out of hides, and he started using that. And, whatever it was, the leather wasn’t so good, and he lost a big market in Newfoundland. They wouldn’t buy it. The old—fashioned way was the real way. The leather was kinda burnt or something in this new chemical.

I guess the markets kind of died away. He dwindled off. He just run a few and then he died. God, it must be 50 years ago since he quit. It must be.

We bought the house. It was a lovely big house he had. It’s over there on the road, the place where we used to live. Somebody tore the tannery down and built two or three small buildings out of it. It’s all gone.

Pinette Corner

And right across from the tannery was my great—grandfather, Donald Hector MacDonald. He was born in Point Prim on the farm that Alex MacLeod has got now. His wife was Flora Murchison from Point Prim. And it was their son — Captain Samuel MacDonald — he was the man that took the ship across the Atlantic to England before he was 19 years old. He died when he was 32 years old. .. in Charlottetown.

That big house at the Comer. That was Theodore Lantz’s house, all right. There was a big store in it: and he run a lobster factory, of course. Oh, there

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236 BELFAST PEOPLE