MISCELLANEOUS. 1133 



Without statistics in the early part of the seventeenth century, we 

 only know, generally, that there was a material decline in this distant 

 branch of industry, caused, possibly, by the civil commotions at home. 

 But in the year 1645, though the number of vessels employed was 

 fifty less than in 1577, the fishermen of France were deemed by 

 English writers to be formidable rivals of their own. Disputes and 

 bloodshed had then occurred precursors of long and distressing wars 

 for the mastery of the fishing-grounds. 



Meantime the successes, the explorations, and the representations 

 of the hardy adventurers to our waters for an article of food for the 

 fast-days of the church had led to the most important political results. 

 The limits of this report do not permit minute statements ; and I will 

 only remark that, when Cartier already referred to made his first 

 voyage, the design of the French monarch was merely to found a single 

 colony in the neighborhood of the fishing-banks, but that the informa- 

 tion of the country communicated to Francis on the navigator's return, 

 confirming as it did the descriptions of the fishermen of Normandy 

 and Brittany, induced a more extended plan, and the possession, for 

 permanent colonization, of the vast region from which, after the 

 voyages and discoveries of Pontgrave, of Champlain, and others, were 

 formed the colonies of Canada and Nova Scotia, and, in due time, 

 Cape Breton. Thus it is historically true that France was directly 

 indebted to her fisheries for her possessions in America. 



The right to these possessions was soon disputed. In an age when 

 kings claimed, each for himself, all the lands and seas that his subjects 

 saw or sailed over, and when charters and grants were framed in per- 

 fect ignorance of the domains which they transferred, almost in 

 levity, to favorites, it could not but sometimes happen that the sub- 

 jects of different crowns received patents of precisely the same tracts 

 of country, and that, on lines where French and English grants met, 

 the boundaries were so vaguely and uncertainly described as to pro- 

 duce long and bitter contentions. 



Such, indeed, was the case to an extent to disturb the peace of the 

 colonists of America for more than a century. As most of the con- 

 troversies from this source are connected with our subject, a notice 

 of them is indispensable. 



The first difficulties occurred in the country known for a long time 

 as "Acadia," which may be described, generally, as embracing the 

 whole of the present colonies of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and 

 Maine between the Kennebec and the St. Croix rivers. It is suffi- 

 ciently definite for our purpose to say that this immense territory was 

 claimed by both crowns, and that the subjects of both the one rest- 

 ing on the English grant to Sir William Alexander, and the other on 

 the French patent to De Monts settled upon it, and fished in its 

 seas, as inclination led them. 



The treaty of St. Germains, in 1632, hushed for a while the earlier 

 disputes, since Charles I, who had married a French princess, re- 

 signed by that instrument all the places in Canada, Nova Scotia, and 

 Cape Breton occupied by persons who owed allegiance to him; yet, 

 as the English people condemned the cession, and as neither lines nor 

 limits were defined, new contentions arose, wluch, as we shall see, 



