160 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
phical region, that supposed east and west coast from Cape Cod to 
Cape Breton. The Acadia then, that DeMonts was to govern, was sup- 
posed to be limited to the region between the Gulf of St. Lawrence and 
Cape Cod. Of course the King justified these limits by the discoveries 
of Verrazano, and, ignorant of, or ignoring, the English voyages to 
Maine in 1602 and 1603, wished to push his southern boundary as near 
as possible to the English in Virginia, who, according to the distorted 
maps of the time were settled but a short distance south of Cape Cod. 
But these limits of Acadia, though thus clearly defined, never came into 
use, for of course they were totally ignored by the English, and they 
fell quietly into oblivion, to be revived fitfully at times for diplomatic 
purposes, but never in any way affecting either lines which exist to-day, 
or any later lines whatever. 
We come now to the year 1604, a crucial year in Acadian History. 
In that year DeMonts, with Champlain as King’s geographer, sailed 
with a goodly expedition for Acadia. He explored the coast of Nova 
Scotia, the Bay of Fundy, the mouth of the St. John, and then passed 
to the present River St. Croix, which he thus named. The land seemed 
fair to his eyes, and, on an attractive island in the river, he formed his 
settlement. During that and the two succeeding years his ships explored 
southward to beyond Cape Cod. His discovery, naming and settlement 
of the St. Croix constitute not only one of the most interesting parts 
of our history, but are of the greatest importance to our present subject, 
for they helped to give origin to the most important of all New Bruns- 
wick’s boundary lines, one which to-day persists, and about which centres 
a long involved and important diplomatic history. The settlement was 
a failure, but the sad story of the sufferings of the settlers, and the death: 
of many of them, helped to give the place prominence in the narratives 
and on the maps of Champlain, and to fix it for ever in the minds of: 
men. Asa result, all subsequent maps, no matter how small their scale, 
did not fail to mark a place of such importance, and the river St. Croix 
took its place, never again to disappear from the maps of the world. 
The settlement was removed to Port Royal, and in 1607 Champlain 
returned to France and came no more to Acadia, but he left with us 
enduring memorials of his presence. 
Thus we reach the end of the Exploration Period of our history. 
It has no boundary to pass on to the next period, but it produced a 
distribution of discovery and settlement which finally resulted in the 
boundaries of the present, and it fixed a locality, the St. Croix, which 
later became a part of New Brunswick’s most important boundary line. 
