124 HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NEWFOUNDLAND 



and a few Frenchmen who took the oaths were allowed to retain or sell 



Frenchmen t h e j r possessions. Contemporary observers computed that 



remained * r J r 



chiefly on ioo families left Placentia for Cape Breton Island, but that 



St. Pierre t h ree remained, and with them some 50 or 60 unattached 



Island, 



servants, whom Moody sent into the woods to hide from 

 those who wished to transport them. 1 Captain Taverner 

 wrote (1717, 1718) that there were 150 French houses and 

 only three French families in Placentia; that west of Placentia 

 Bay there were 25 settlers with 66 women and children and 

 228 servants; that 17 of the 25 had taken oaths of allegiance; 

 that 15 of the 17 belonged to St. Pierre; that none of the 

 17, except four or five in St. Pierre, wintered under the 

 English flag; and that the rest lived a double life, their 

 souls, bodies, and personal property being in Cape Breton 

 Island, and their land and houses in Newfoundland. He had 

 surveyed all the French coast-line, with its fifty odd coves 

 and creeks, from Cape St. Mary to Chapeau Rouge, and from 

 Chapeau Rouge to the westernmost tenements in or near 

 Hermitage Bay; and, if Placentia and St. Pierre were ex- 

 cepted, he had only found a few settlers at Boboy, near Burin, 

 and six or seven elsewhere, 2 and rather more than twice that 

 number of vacant houses. 3 All his contemporaries corrobo- 

 rated Taverner in describing St. Pierre Island as the centre 

 of French activity, instead of Placentia, where only one 

 French family resided in 1730. France had run its race on 

 the mainland of Newfoundland. The French colonists, ac- 

 cording to Taverner, had a fine forest on the coast west of 

 Hermitage Bay, and natural pastures on Miquelon Island 

 and near Chapeau Rouge which they had neglected; but 



1 S. Merrett, Feb. 4, 1715; A. Cummings, Feb. 14, 1715 ; Captain 

 Taverner, May 20, 1718. 



2 Merichon Island, Egeron Island, Boboy, Corbein, Little St. Lawrence, 

 in Placentia Bay (west coast) ; ' Beach ', near Fortune ; and Bandalore 

 (Belleoram), where Belorme had wintered twenty years. 



3 In Cumin's Harbour (Paradise Sound), Port Ovray (?) (south of 

 Little Mortier Bay), and Great Burein, in Placentia Bay (west coast) ; 

 Grand Bank, near Fortune ; Bandalore (v.s.), Duck Bay, Cape Nigro 

 (Connaigre), Isle d'Espere, and Hermitage, in the Hermitage district. 



