OUR ISLAND STORY 19

Count interfered with the activities of certain fishermen uncon- nected with his company, who fished within the limits of the domain which he believed had been granted to him. It is stated that he sent an armed vessel to assert his right. The fishermen were attacked,and the tradesmen for whom they fished thereupon protested to the authorities of the Home Government. Eventual- ly the Letters Patent obtained by the Count de St. Pierre were revoked and his enterprise ended in disaster.

Other leaders of enterprise in the time of the French occupa- tion were M. de la Ronde and M. de Roma. The former co- operated with the Count de St. Pierre. He devoted his energies and ability, and those of many of the people, to the subjugation of the forest and the development of Agriculture. He organized the pioneers, instructed them in the methods of cutting down the trees and clearing the land. A dense forest covered the face of the country. Many of the treeswere eight and ten feet in cir- cumference. After they were felled and the wood hauled or burned away, their roots had to be extracted from the earth in which they were deeply imbedded. It was de la Ronde’s task to direct the work of men some of whom had never before handled an axe or seen a hoe. His efforts were crowned with a large measure of success. The French pioneers were hardy men from Breton, and hard workers. The primeval timber they cut was of excellent quality. They made some use of it at home, and sent much of it away to Cape Breton and to France; and, they burned. the remainder. They planted and sowed in the uncovered soil and found it fertile. Many acres in the vicinity of Port La Ioie, or the site of Charlottetown, and on the borders of the adjacent rivers and around the shores of Hillsborough Bay as far as Point Prim were cleared and cultivated by them. They erected com- fortable log houses and farms. They sold their'surplus produce at the Fortress of Louisburg for the prices allowed by officers appointed by the French Government. They were thus enabled to live on the products of their labors. ‘

Success also followed the efforts of the French pioneers engaged in‘the fisheries at St. Peters, Tracadie, Malpeque, and other points on the Isle St. lean; and their number increased notwithstanding