CAR AV RE EAH ol Teer

Migration from Acadia after the English Conquest

THE closing years of the seventeenth century and the first decade of the eighteenth were for the French and the English in both Europe and America a period of almost unbroken war. For the French colo- nies and fisheries in Acadia it was a sad time and finally in 1710 Port Royal fell into permanent pos- _session of the English. By the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713 the latter were confirmed in possession of Aca- dia with undefined limits, of Newfoundland, and of the Hudson’s Bay Territory. Cape Breton and the islands of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, including Isle Saint Jean, remained to the French. These two is- lands, hitherto neglected except by nomadic fisher- men who fished in the summer and by a few Acadians who traded for furs with the savages in winter, now assumed an important place in the French scheme of colonization. Immediately attention was focussed upon Cape Breton, then named Ile Royale, which was to be fortified to protect the fisheries, to provide a harbor for ships in distress of weather, to provide a station for observing the progress of the English colonies in that neighborhood, to command the en- trance of the Gulf as a link between France and Quebec, and to serve as an entrepdt for the trade between Quebec, France, and the West Indies. It was