ON CAPE BRETON. 221 



Louisbourg, where the inhabitants were for the most part poor and had few valuables 

 which their captors could steal ; but as a matter of fact Pepperrell and Warren promised 

 that the inhabitants and their families could depend " on meeting the best treatment, nor 

 shall any person be sufi'ered to give them the least disturbance." Not only were the col- 

 onial troops disappointed in not finding any " loot '' — to use a word familiar a century 

 later — but the govan'umeut of Massachusetts saw itself in extreme financial difficulties, 

 largely on account of the heavy expenditures incurred by an already crippled province 

 for the Louisbourg expedition. It was not unlil over three years had passed away and it was 

 decided to restore Cape Breton to the French, that the imperial government found it expe- 

 dient to appease the colonists by reimbursing them for their expenses in winning a vic- 

 tory, rendered worthless by the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle. In 1749, the sum of .£183,649 

 sterling arrived in Boston, in the shape of six hundred and fifty three thousand ounces of 

 silver, and ten tons of copper, which were carried in waggons through the streets of 

 Boston and subsequently divided among the governments of New Hampshire, Ehode 

 Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts — the latter deservedly and legally receiving the 

 greater portion. Those were days of paper money, when men thought they could get 

 rich and pay their debts by the fresh issues of paper whenever the treasury was empty, 

 and chiefly owing to the efforts of Thomas Hutchinson, the historian, a wise and energetic 

 public man who was speaker of the house of representatives at the time, and subsequently 

 royal governor and chief justice during his residence in the colony, the money paid to 

 Massachusetts was used to buy up and cancel the depreciated paper currency.' 



Before we resume the history of Cape Breton and narrate the events in Europe 

 which led to its eventually becoming a permanent possession of England, it is but due to 

 the men who took part in this memorable episode of colonial history to tell something of 

 their subsequent career. The colonial forces, for the greater part, were obliged to remain 

 in Louisbourg all the following winter until the arrival of a garrison of regular troops 

 from England. Immediately after the fall of the town, the weather, which had been 

 remarkably free for seven weeks from fogs and rain, became damp and unhealthy, with 

 the unfortunate effect that the troops, worn out by fatigue for weeks, succumbed to 

 dysentery, and several hundreds found a grave on a point of land between the town and 

 the rocky beach, known as Point Rochefort. In the spring, as soon as troops arrived 

 from Gibraltar, "Warren and Pepperrell, who had acted as joint governors until that time, 

 went to Boston, and, after receiving the thanks of the citizens, the former proceeded to 

 England. Before this, however, he had been promoted for his services at Louisbourg to 

 the rank of rear admiral of the blue. In 1741 he distiguished himself in the great naval 

 fight off Cape Finisterre, in which he and Anson defeated a large French fleet under 

 Jouquière and St. George. A monument to his memory in Westminster Abbey, that 

 Walhalla of England's great men, tells us that he died in the forty-ninth year of his a^e, 

 " a knight of the Bath, vice-admiral of the red squadron of the British fleet, and member 

 of parliament for the city and liberty of Westminster." - Captain Tyng, who commanded 



'See Parson's "Life of Pepperrell," 207; "Hutchinson's History" ii. 394-396; " Appleton's Cyclopœdia of 

 American Biograpliy," art. " Hutcliinson." 



- Usher Parsons, in liis " Life of Pepperrell," is not correct wlien ho gives a baronetcy to Warren. Belknap 

 " History of New Plamjishire," ii. 223, makes the same mistake. Murdoch quotes the epitaph in Westminster 

 Abbey (History, ii. 69-111), and says that the distinction of the Bath was " but rarely bestowed " in those davs. 



