9 



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

 permanent colonization, of the vast region from which, alter 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 herpossessions in America. 



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

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

 saw or sailed over, and when charters and grants Were fi-arned in 



{)erfect ignorance of the domains which they transferred, almost in 

 evity, to favorites, it could not but sometimes happen that the subjects 

 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 uncertably described as to produce 

 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 contro- 

 versies 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 maybe 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 resting 

 on the Enghsh 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 Br(>ton 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, which, as we shaU see, 

 were terminated only with the extinction of French power in this, hemi- 

 sphere. In fact, historians of acknowledged authority consider the 

 treaty of St. Germains as among the prominent causes of the American 

 Revolution, inasmuch as the disputes to which it gave rise disturbed, 

 finally, the relations between England and her thirteen colonies. 

 ' Twenty-two years elapsed, and Cromwell, in a time of profound 

 peace with France, took forcible possession of Nova Scotia, claiming 

 that its cession by Charles was fraudulent. He erected it into a colony, 

 and organized a government. It was considered highly valuable, and 

 Englishmen of rank aspired to become its proprietary lords firom the 

 moment of its acquisition. 



The French court remonstrated, without changing the purpose of the 

 protector. But, after the restoration of the Stuarts, and by the treaty 

 of Breda, in 1667, this colony passed a second time to France.* Though 



* Edward Eandolph, the first collector of the customs of Boston, in a Narrative to the Lords 

 of Trade and Plantations, in 1676, says that " The French, upon the last treaty of peace con- 

 cluded between the two crowns of England and France, had Nova Scotia, now called Acadle, 



