20 SETTLEMENT OF CARAQUET. 



possible, however, that, in establishing these fisheries, a 

 different, and originally more energetic, portion of the 

 mother people might be transplanted to this region, 

 and that hence the superiority of the French population 

 along this road may have been derived. 



Pursuing our way along the coast from Great Ance, 

 we descended again to the flatter and wetter land, and 

 had reached the commencement of Waterloo Settle 

 ment, when, at what is called Sullivan s Corner, we 

 turned off to the right, and went south to the mouth of 

 the Caraquet River, and through the Caraquct Settlement, 

 till we reached Mr Blackh all s, a distance altogether of 

 twenty-two miles, where we stopped to bait our horses 

 and ourselves. 



This settlement of Caraquet seems very prosperous. 

 Near the mouth of the river stands a large church, beau 

 tifully situated, and capable of accommodating 800 

 people. There is some rich land in the neighbourhood, 

 and the population which frequents the church cannot be 

 less than 2000. Great alterations have recently been 

 made in their agricultural practices. Necessity, in fact, 

 has compelled the introduction of changes, and a greater 

 attention than formerly to the means of persuading the 

 land to produce a sufficiency of food. The rotation for 

 merly adopted almost universally was alternate crops of 

 wheat and potatoes the latter manured with the refuse 

 of the herring and cod-fish caught so abundantly on 

 their coasts. But both these crops have failed, or proved 

 uncertain ; and hence oats, Indian corn, or other grains, 



the policy of their leaders to promote such intermarriages. In 1730 the 

 Illinois professed themselves to be &quot; inviolably attached to the French, 

 by the alliances which many of that nation had contracted with them, 

 in espousing their daughters.&quot; It is doubtless the same connection 

 with the French, and with the early missions of the Jesuits which 

 stretched from the mouth of the St Lawrence to the banks of the 

 Mississippi that has kept them all true Roman Catholics to the present 

 day. 



