12 PROCEEDINGS: BOSTON SOCIETY NATURAL HISTORY. 



Governor Winthrop also records 1 that in the summer of 1642 "the 

 merchants of Boston sent out a vessel again to the isle of Sable, with 

 12 men, to stay there a year. They sent again in the 8th month, and 

 in three weeks the vessel returned and brought home 400 pair of sea 

 horse teeth, which were esteemed worth 300, and left all the men 

 well and 12 tons of oil and many skins, which they could not bring 

 away, being put from the island in a storm. " 



In the 4th month of 1642, "the adventurers to the Isle of Sable 

 fetched off their men and goods all safe. The oil, teeth seal and 

 horse hides, and some black fox skins came near to 1500." 2 



As we learn from a letter by Bishop Saint Vallier, written in 1686, 

 the Acadians caught and shipped large numbers of the wild cattle to 

 their homes on the mainland, where they domesticated them. We 

 do not find the wild cattle mentioned after this time. 



During the early part of the 18th century we hear very little of 

 Sable Island. It was next brought into prominence by the Rev. An- 

 drew Le Mercier, a graduate of Geneva and of old Huguenot stock, 

 who, in 1719, became pastor of the French Protestant Church in Bos- 

 ton. In 1729, on the arrival of Governor Phillips in Nova Scotia, Le 

 Mercier proposed to him to plant a colony of French Protestants in 

 Nova Scotia. The Governor recommended a grant of 5,000 acres, 

 but nothing came of it. On the 6th of March, 1738, we find Le Mer- 

 cier petitioning 3 Governor Armstrong for a grant of Sable Island, but 

 after approval of his petition, he was unwilling to pay the penny an 

 acre quit-rent. At this time, Le Mercier sent stock to the island pre- 

 paratory to moving his family there. In 1740, he again applied for 

 a grant of the island arguing 4 that as the land is " low, boggy and sandy 

 soil, with large ponds or settlings of water occasioned by the overflow- 

 ings of the tides, he thinks the penny an acre too much for what can 

 not be improved." 



. At the instance of Le Mercier, the Governor of Nova Scotia issued 

 two proclamations forbidding any molestation of Le Mercier's estab- 

 lishment on Sable Island. Nevertheless, he suffered losses and ad- 

 vertised in a Boston paper 5 , in 1744, a reward of 40 for the detection 



1 Winthrop, I c. ii. 34. 



2 Winthrop, I. c. 67. 



3 Murdoch, Beamish: Hist, of Nova Scotia, i. 523 (1865). 

 *Ibti., ii. 6 (1866). 



6 Boston Evening-Post, Jan. 30 (1744). 



