I74 HISTORICAL SKETCH OF PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND

Ball-practice with the 4o-pr. and 64~pr. guns was then proceeded with, which was also satisfactory to the Island team. The amount of prize money taken was $140 during the day.

The payment of teams'while engaged on such expeditions are regulated by the rank each man holds in his respective corps, from the gunner to that of the commanding officer. Traveling and other expenses are also disbursed by the Dominion Treasury.

The local militia was encamped this year at Hunter River, receiving their twelve days’ training, under the inspection of Colonel Beer, commanding the 82nd Battalion.

At half-past nine o’clock on the morning of the 29th January, 1885, three boats, commanded respectively by Newton Muttart, Muncy Irving, and Hanford Allan, having a crew of four oarsmen to each boat, left Cape Traverse with mails and passengers for the opposite shore. The passengers were : Dr. Peter A. McIntyre, M. P., Souris; James A. Morrison, Hali- fax; T. S. McLean, Halifax; James A. Fraser, Summerside; Philip Farrell, Sturgeon; Aaron Wilson, Summerside; Albert Glyddon, Tignish; numbering twenty—two men all told. As they proceeded on their way a snow storm prevailed, which increased in violence, and before the next morning the ther- mometer fell to sixteen degrees below zero. Meantime when about midway the men became exhausted and could not proceed further towards Cape Tormentine. Thus mid’st the darkness of the gulf, the pelting down of bail and sleet, of hunger and wretchedness, one consolation presented itself-— the ice upon which they were then situated was apparently firm, they therefore resolved to shelter themselves for the night as best they could. Accordingly two of the boats were placed together on their gunwales with baggage to windward, forming as it were a kind of cabin. Here a fire was made with boat oars, etc., and when consumed one of the boats was broken to pieCes and utilized in like manner,—-but the fire was too feeble to warm bodies famished with hunger and thirst, chilled with exposure and freezing.

During the while the ice with the boats and men had drifted towards Crapaud, but the snow drifted and the cold was intense ; when at length the drift cleared away, DeSable Kirk was sighted some five miles distant. With renewed hopes the men made a