[bourinot] builders OF NOVA SCOTIA. S 



Sieur de Monts, who was authorized to colonize " La Cadie.'" ^ The 

 Indian name of Halifax Harbour still survives in Chebucto Head, while 

 Shubenaeadie, Musquodoboit, Chedabuctou, Tracadie, Pictou, Antigonishc, 

 Escasoni, Mabou and Cobequid are only a few among the numerous 

 mementos of the race whose descendants live on " reserves '' — a few of 

 them in comfort — and receive the protection of a paternal government. 

 It is quite possible that these Indians may disappear' as a separate 

 community in the course of another century before the aggressive 

 competition of the white man, but whether this happens or not, their 

 memory can never pass away 



" Whilst their names of music linger 

 On each mount and stream and bay." 



The courtier and poet, Sir William Alexander, at a later time Lord 

 Stirling, who was ambitious to be the founder of a colony, suggested the 

 name of Nova Scotia as early as 1621, when a few Frenchmen, a remnant 

 of the first European settlement at Port Eoyal— were the only represen- 

 tatives of France in Acadia. " Being much encouraged hereunto by Sir 

 Ferdinando Gorges," ^ to quote his own words, " and some others of the 

 undertakers of New England, I show them that my countrymen would 

 never adventure on such an enterprise unless it were as there was a new 

 France, a New Spain and a New England, that they might likewise have a 

 New Scotland." King James I. of England entered heartily into the 

 schemes of his favourite, and induced his privy council to approve of the 

 arant to him of a charter under the great seal which made him lord 

 paramount practically of ancient Acadia, as well as of Cape Breton and 

 Prince Edward Island, under the name of Nova Scotia. Since this first 

 appearance of the name in a royal charter it has always clung to 

 the peninsular province.* 



1 See Appendix A for full text of the commission to Sieur de Monts. 



2At the present time there are a few over two thousand Micmacs in Nova Scotia 

 —one-third of whom live on reserves in the island of Cape Breton— and the 

 statistics of their condition show they are holding their own remarkably well as 

 a distinct class of the total population. The Roman Catholic priests devote them- 

 selves assiduously to the amelioration of their state, and the dominion government 

 contributes medical aid in times of illness. 



3 He was a governor of New Plymouth and r^'ceived a royal charter in 1620 for 

 the colonization and government of New England. 



* See Appendix B for copy of the charter of 1621 given to Sir William Alexander 

 for the plantation of Nova Scotia in America. Also infra, p. 34. The portrait of 

 Sir W. Alexander that is given as a frontispiece to this volume represents him at the 

 age of fifty-seven, and is taken from the engraving published by Marshall in 1635, and 

 reproduced in Shafter's " Sir William Alexander and American Colonisation," Win- 

 sor's " Narrative and Critical History of America" (vol. iv., p. 156), and the Banna- 

 tyne Club's edition of " The Earl of Stirling's Register of Royal Letters relative to 

 the aflfairs of Scotland and Nova Scotia from 1615-1635 " (vol. i., frontispiece). 



