186 J. G. BOUEINOÏ 



we recall with some amusemeut the efforts of men iu times, when the virgin forest held 

 the mastery iu America, to reprodnce the titles and trappings of the old world and create 

 a new noblesse to gratify the cravings of ambition which could not be satislied iu Europe. 

 On the banks of the St. Lawrence, seigniors held estates of princely magnitude and 

 imitated the feudal customs of their old homes across the sea. On the Hudson, patroous 

 assumed the dignity of great manorial lords, and iu South Carolina an English philo- 

 sopher attempted to create grandees under the high-sounding names of lords-palatine, 

 landgraves and caciques. Even in the little island of Prince Edward, when it had ]iassed 

 away from its first French proprietors. Englishmen had their ambition to become lords 

 paramount, manorial lords and barons.' In Acadie, the dignity which was to be attached 

 to grants of land for the encouragement of settlement never took root, and though the 

 title has been long retained in Scottish families as a purely honorary distinction, it has 

 never had since the days of Stirling any connection with the province from which it was 

 named more than two hundred and sixty years ago.- 



Oue of the persons who obtained such a right was Lord Ochiltree, who built a fort 

 in 1629 at Baleine, a small port to the northeast of Louisbourg, with the object of colon- 

 izing that section of Cape Breton, but he was very soon forced to leave the place by a 

 number of Frenchmen under the leadership of a Captain Daniel, who claimed that the 

 Scotch nobleman was a trespasser on the territory of France. After destroying the Eng- 

 lish post, the same Captain Daniel built a fort and commenced a settlement at St. Anne's,^ 

 then called G-reat Cibou,' by the savages. This first attempt to foui^ a French colony on 

 the northeastern coast of Cape Breton was unsuccessful after a few years of struggle. The 

 Jesuit mission, which is said to have existed there in 1634, was withdrawn and the 

 settlement almost deserted two or three years later, when an energetic Frenchman came 

 to the island and established a post in the same place to carry on the fisheries. 



The history of Acadie from 1632 to 1'713, when it became a permanent possession of 

 England, is one of a never-ceasing contest between the rival chiefs, La Tour and Char- 

 nisay, for the supremacy in the country where both of them claimed to have rights. 

 New Scotland, in those days, in fact, was the scene of such feuds as kept rival chieftains 

 for centuries in a state of constant warfare amid the glens and mountains of old Scotland. 

 In Cape Breton an enterprising Frenchman of the name of Nicholas Denys, Sieur de Fron- 

 sac, a native of Tours, attempted to establish himself at St. Peter's, on the isthmus between 

 the sea and the Bras d'Or lake, on the southwestern extremity of the island. For many 

 years he also built trading posts of some importance at St. Anne's on the eastern coast 

 of Cape Breton, at Chedabouctou Bay (now Guysboro), and at Miscou on the coast of 

 New Brunswick ; but he, too, suffered from the greed and lawlessness of rivals. It was 

 easy enough, in those times, to obtain grants of land and the right to trade in those 

 countries from the authorities in France, M'ho knew nothing of the geography of the new 



'See Campbell's " History of Prince Edward Island" (Cliarlottetown, 1875) 20-12; Bourinot, " Local Govern- 

 ment iu Canada," Johns Hopkins "Un. Studies," Baltimore, 1SS7. 



'' Murdoch's "History of Nova Scotia" (i. ()8-69) gives a description of the insignia of the order. 



' Ferland, "Cours d'Histoire du Canada," i. 259. This liistorian (i. 2o8) falls into the error of confusing Lord 

 Ochiltree's fort at Baleine with the one which Daniel subsequently built at St. Anne's. Murdoch, in his " History of 

 Nova Scotia," (i. 72) also makes the mistake of placing Ochiltree's fort at St. Anne's. See Brown, " History of 

 Cajie Breton," pji. 74-8-1; Champlain, iv. 1283-8. 



' See infra, sec. IX, for meaning of this Micmac word. 



