1697.] IBERVILLE IN NEWFOUNDLAND. 391 



and, according to the incredible report of the 

 French writers, two hundred persons were killed 

 and seven hundred captured, though it is admitted 

 that most of the prisoners escaped. When spring 

 opened, all the English settlements were destroyed, 

 except the post of Bonavista and the Island of Car- 

 bonniere, a natural fortress in the sea. Iberville 

 returned to Placentia, to prepare for completing 

 his conquest, when his plans were broken by the 

 arrival of his brother Serigny, with orders to pro- 

 ceed at once against the English at Hudson's Bay. 1 

 It was the nineteenth of May, when Serigny 

 appeared with five ships of war, the "Pelican," the 

 "Palmier," the "Wesp," the "Profond," and the 

 "Violent." The important trading-post of Fort 

 Nelson, called Fort Bourbon by the French, was 

 the destined object of attack. Iberville and Se- 

 rigny had captured it three years before, but the 

 English had retaken it during the past summer, 

 and, as it commanded the fur-trade of a vast inte- 



1 On the Newfoundland expedition, the best authority is the long 

 diary of the chaplain Baudoin, Journal du Voyage que j'ai fait avec M. 

 (T Iberville ; also, Memoire sur V Entre prise cle Terreneuve, 1696. Compare 

 La Potherie, I. 24-52. A deposition of one Phillips, one Roberts, and sev- 

 eral others, preserved in the Public Record Office of London, and quoted 

 by Brown in his History of Cape Breton, makes the French force much 

 greater than the statements of the French writers. The deposition also 

 says that at the attack of St. John's "the French took one William 

 Brew, an inhabitant, a prisoner, and cut all round his scalp, and then, 

 by strength of hands, stript his skin from the forehead to the crown, and 

 so sent him into the fortifications, assuring the inhabitants that they 

 would serve them all in like manner if they did not surrender." 



St. John's was soon after reoccupied by the English. 



Baudoin was one of those Acadian priests who are praised for ser- 

 vices " en empeschant les sauvages de faire la paix avec les Anglois, 

 ayant mesme este en guerre avec eux." Champigny au Ministre, 24 Oct., 

 1694. 



