About the time James Simonds decided to settle at St. John, the harbor was carefully surveyed by Lieut. R. G. Bruce of the engineers, whose plan is reproduced in the accompanying illustration. A glance will suffice to show that the rocky peninsular on the eastern side of the harbor, where the business part of the city stands today, was at that time uninhabited. The military post at Fort Frederick imparted a little life to the immediate surroundings but on the other side of the harbor everything remained in its virgin state, except at Portland Point, where there was a small clearing and the ruins of a feeble old French Fort. The few Acadians who once lingered there had fled before the English invaders, and only when some wandering savage pitched his wigwam on the shores of "Men-ah-quesk," as he called it, was there any tenant save the fox, the bear or other wild forest creature. The rocky peninsular of east St. John with its crags and swamps was considered of so little value that it remained ungranted up to the time of the landing of the Loyalists. In the words of James Simonds it was "the worst of lands, if bogs, morasses and rocks may be called lands." [Illustration: PLAN OF THE HARBOUR OF ST. JOHN IN NOVA SCOTIA, Surveyed & Sounded in September 1761 BY R.G. BRUCE ENGR. Scale 300 yds to an inch] The circumstances under which James Simonds made choice of the Harbor of St. John, as the most promising place for an extensive trade, are detailed at some length in his evidence in the famous chancery suit which arose about the year 1791 in connection with the division of the lands of Hazen, Simonds and White, and occupied the attention of the courts for more than twenty years. It is chiefly from this source we learn the particulars that follow.