72 NEW ENGLAND FISHERIES 



fish annually, in striking contrast to the boasted returns 

 that England was securing from the same fisheries. 1 The 

 New England people employed less than half the number 

 of men in the service than the English, while the returns 

 from their fish must have been equal to, if they did not 

 surpass, those of the English vessels. 



The relations between the fishermen of New England 

 and their French neighbors were critical and hostile. A 

 brief explanation of the political conditions at the time will 

 readily account for this animosity. Acadia was the scene 

 of strife, partly because of the excellent fisheries in its 

 waters that each party wished to monopolize, partly be- 

 cause the land had been held alternately by each country, 

 either through seizure or concession. "When Acadia passed 

 into the possession of France in 1667 the bounds of the 

 province were not clearly defined ; the English claimed that 

 the western boundary was the Penobscot Eiver, the French 

 laid claim to the land as far west as the Kennebec River. 

 Consequently, the region was again open to strife and quar- 

 rels between the two classes of fishermen. The French took 

 pains to embitter the Indians against the English; and in 

 several instances used the Indians as their allies in making 

 attacks upon the settlements, especially in the frontier re- 

 gion between the Merrimac River and Pemaquid. This 

 stretch of the coast of Maine was the scene of atrocious war- 

 fare during the forty years that followed. 



De Bourg, the French governor of Acadia, in 1675, not 

 only prohibited his people from intercourse with the 

 Protestant fishermen, but also levied a tax of four hundred 

 codfish on every English colonial vessel found fishing on 

 the coasts of Acadia. The French officers seized all who 

 did not pay the fine, and took from them whatever fish 

 they had aboard, together with the provisions and outfits. 

 Two years later, about twenty fishermen from Salem were 



i Seybert, Statistical Annals, IV, p. 333. 



