buildings and forced the inhabitants, who then numbered between 1200 and 

 1300, to flee to France. A little before these events, in the same year 

 1778, the colony had been visited by the celebrated geographer Cassini 

 who had fixed the latitude of Saint-Pierre. Cassini described the islands 

 of Saint-Pierre- et-Miquelon as bare of everything, animal as well as plant. 



The treaty of Versailles of September 3, 1783 returned the colony to 

 France under full and entire sovereignty, for the government of Louis XVI 

 had demanded the abolition of all the restrictive clauses of the Treaty of 

 1763. 



The same year the treaty was signed, 510 inhabitants of the colony 

 were repatriated by boats of the royal navy. A second contingent of 713 

 passengers sailed the following year. 



Expeditions from the metropolitan ports to the bank fishery immedi- 

 ately followed repossession of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. At the same 

 time, local outfitting was rapidly resumed. Each year saw the number of 

 long-boats, barks, and wherries increase in the colony. Most of these 

 sailed out from Saint-Pierre but Miquelon also equipped a good number. 

 On an islet at the mouth of Saint-Pierre harbor, the Isle de Chiens, today 

 called the Isle de Marins, a small colony of Normans settled, enterprising 

 fishermen who soon took the habit, during the good season, of fishing with 

 their long-boats and barks along the coast west of Newfoundland, called, in 

 the colony, the Gulf fishery. 



In some years, the colony found itself unable to supply the number of 

 men needed for the local fishery. This initiated the custom of bringing 

 men from France. The fishermen engaged for the season's fishing by the 

 small outfitters of the colony were transported, going and coming-, by the 

 vessels outfitted at the metropolitan ports of France for the French Shore 

 of the west coast. Some of these vessels made a specialty of transporting 

 these men as passengers which justified stopping twice at Saint-Pierre. 

 On the contrary, this traffic presented no interest to the bank vessels at a 

 time when the limited yield of the handline fishery permitted them to store 

 in the hold all the fish caught before returning to France. Stopping at 

 Saint-Pierre was a detour resulting in a considerable loss of time. It was 

 justified only by grave damage to the vessel or the necessity of renewing 

 supplies. 



138 



