ON CAPE BEETON. 271 



encouraged the expatriation of the French wheu the island became an English possession. 

 So slow, however, was the progress of this class that in 1801 it is said that the total popu- 

 lation of lie Madame and of the northwest shore — exclusively French then — did not 

 reach ITOO souls.' This count, however, does not include probably all the little settle- 

 ments on the Bras d'Or or on the Marguerite river, where a population was gradually 

 attracted by the good lands and the fine salmon fishery. No doubt for the first decade of 

 the present century a few families came over to the lie Madame and the northwest 

 country, but at no time from 1158 to 1810 was there any noteworthy migration to any 

 part of the island except what I have already mentioned. It is safe to say that the fourteen 

 thousand or more French Acadians who now inhabit the island of Cape Breton are the 

 descendants of the 700 old French and Acadians who remained in 1758 and of the one 

 hundred families or so — certainly not more than one hundred families all told — that 

 came into the island from 1758 to 1810. Always a prolific race, like the French Canadians, 

 they increased largely, and their numbers would now probably be much greater were it not 

 that in the course of time their young men and women sought occupation in the New 

 England states — the former as sailors and the latter as servants or operatives in the mills. 

 Still despite the drain on this population — probably less than in the case of Scotch and 

 English inhabitants of some parts of the island — they show a slight increase from decade to 

 decade in the two counties of Richmond and Inverness where they have been most numeroiis 

 since the days of French occupation. I am informed by the authorities I have consulted 

 in different parts of the island,- where the French Acadians still live, that in the county 

 of Cape Breton, where Louisbourg is situated and the only district retaining the old 

 French name, they are a very insignificant and apparently decreasing remnant. Louisbourg 

 is deserted by its old possessors, and it is only in the pretty sequestered settlement of 

 French Vale, at the head of a creek emptying into one of the branches of Sydney harbour, 

 and in the charming country, through which the arm known as the little Bras d'Or 

 connects the ocean with the great lake of that name, that we now find the descendants 

 of the families who first made their homes in those picturesque and fertile districts many 

 years ago. French Vale was settled by four brothers from Prince Edward Island in the 

 beginning of this century, and the little Bras d'Or chielly by Acadian emigrants from St. 

 Pierre and Miquelou. With these came a number of old French people who left France 

 at the time of the French revolution and had none of the characteristics of the Acadian 

 French. Some years ago a few families came from the river Bourgeois in the county of 

 Richmond and joined their countrymen on the Little Bras d'Or. French Vale at onetime 

 was a flourishing- agricultural settlement, and its Acadian population lived happy, con- 

 tented lives, but soon the younger people became discontented and while the young men 

 sought employment in the coal mines, the girls went to the United States. The result is 

 that the lands once tilled by the French Acadians are now for the greater part in 

 the hands of Gaelic-speaking people. The Acadians are in Cape Breton undergoing that 

 transformation which must be expected in the case of a very small number of people situ- 



' See Brown (" Hist, of C. B.," 421,) which cites the statement of population sent to the English authorities by 

 General Despard, while lieutenant-governor. 



- I must here express my thanks especially to the Reverend Fathers Quinanof Sydney and of Arichat for the 

 information they have given me respecting the French Acadians of Cape Breton and Richmond counties. 



