8o HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NEWFOUNDLAND 



Rochelle and hand them over to Du Perron Thalour, 

 'commandant in that isle'; 1 and in 1667 we hear of 

 a resident Governor, doubtless De la Poype, starting from 

 La Rochelle for Placentia with about sixty families ' of several 

 trades ', 1 50 soldiers, and some guns. 2 La Rochelle was also 

 the port from which the earliest Acadian settlers had sailed. 

 It seemed as though France was about to occupy the principal 

 approach to the Gulf of St. Lawrence as well as its southern 

 shores with Acadian colonists. 



This new danger had been foreseen some sixty years before. 

 It was hinted at in the document of 1600; the petitioner of 

 1621 wrote, 'if we don't send convoys France or even 

 Spain will ' ; Hayman wrote that ' the French and Biscayans 

 will dispossess us' (1630); and Sir F. Gorges, Lord 

 Baltimore, Captain R. Robinson, and Captain W. Davies 

 reiterated the same fears. For those who had eyes to see, 

 the growth of French power in Canada and Newfoundland 

 menaced the existence of the English fisheries and settlements 

 in Newfoundland. The authors of the orders of 1670 and 

 1675, which opposed English settlement in Newfoundland, 

 were statesmanlike from their point of view except in one 

 respect. They minimized the French danger. ' Reason and 

 experience ', said Captain R. Robinson, ' teach us in peace to 

 provide for war.' But the statesmen to whom Captain 

 Robinson spoke closed their eyes tight, and declared that 

 there was no danger from France ; or (and here their better 

 instincts spoke) if there was, the convoys would provide 

 against it. 



and to the The second influence which drew state ships to Newfound- 

 A^ill i- land was fiscal> After the Nav 'g ation Acts > 1651, 1660, and 



1 French Records, Paris; Ministere ties affaires etrangeres : fends 

 Amrique, vol. v, fol. 35 ; Ordre et Instruction au Sieur De la Rochette 

 Gargot . . . allant faire le voiage de terre neufve et Canada. May 4, 

 1663; kindly found and copied for me by Dr. Doughty, Archivist of the 

 Dominion of Canada. 



2 Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, Jan. 8, 1668 : Colonial 

 Papers, vol. xxii, No. 5. 



