6 MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 
In 1598 forty convicts were left on the island by the Marquis de la 
Roche, who intended to transfer them to the mainland as soon as he had 
selected a site for a new colony. A storm, however, presently arose that 
drove him eastward, and he finally returned to France where he is said to 
have been imprisoned. The convicts were not rescued for five or six years, 
when all save a dozen had perished, the survivors subsisting on cattle, seals 
and berries, and clothing themselves with skins and furs. During the first 
half of the seventeenth century the island was visited by English and 
French fishermen and hunters in pursuit of the seals, walruses and foxes that 
then abounded, and by others who hunted the cattle for their hides. In 
1633 John Rose of Boston, who was wrecked upon the island, reported 
having seen ‘¢more than eight hundred head of wild cattle and a great 
many foxes many of which were black.” After he had effected his escape 
in a boat built from the wreckage of his vessel, he returned again with 
seventeen Acadians, who so slaughtered the cattle that few remained when, 
some years later, a company arrived from Boston having the same end in 
view. Apparently the cattle, foxes, and walruses were exterminated at 
about this time, for we find little or no reference to them during the next 
hundred years. 
About 1738 Rev. Andrew Le Mercier, also of Boston, restocked the 
island with some domestic animals, expecting to settle there himself. The 
wild ponies that to the present day are found in ‘ gangs’ all over the island 
are said to be descendants of this stock, although it is thought by some 
that they originally came from the wreck of a Spanish vessel.’ Since 
Le Mercier’s time the cattle have been at least semi-domesticated, for the 
island became during the latter half of the eighteenth century a place of 
resort, not only of honest fishermen, but of pirates and wreckers, attracted 
no doubt by the constantly increasing number of vessels that were cast 
away upon it. Gruesome tales are told of the robbery and murder of the 
unfortunate people who escaped the sea only to fall into the hands of these 
miscreants, and blood-curdling ghost-stories have grown out of this dark 
period of the island’s history. In order to protect life and property, the 
Government of Nova Scotia in the autumn of 1801 established on Sable 
Island the first relief or humane establishment, that has developed into the 
well-equipped life-saving service there today. Since 1801 accurate records 
of the havoc wrought by storms in the physical aspect of the island, and of 
the many wrecks that have occurred on its outlying bars, have been kept 
by the various superintendents. Up to 1882, no less than one hundred and 
1For an account of them see J. B. Gilpin ‘On introduced species of Nova Scotia,’ Trans. N. S. 
Inst. Nat. Sci., Vol. I (printed II), pt. 1, 1864, pp. 60-68. 
