MILITARY AND CIVIL. 15

money in developing their property, but their venture was unfortunate.

In 173°, M. Depenoons arrived at Port—le-Joie as Governor. He was followed by Le Percelie du Hagu, and in 1738 by Cheveller Dupont Duchambon, who seven years later at the fall of Louisburg, ceded the Island of St. John over to the British Crown

About the year 1739, a vast forest fire devastated the country from the East Point to St. Peter’s Bay, thence southward to the Hillsborough River and westward to Bedford Bay; it was so extremely violent that all the fishing vessels at Morell River and St. Peter’s Bay, besides many dwellings and storehouses were consumed.

At the evacuation of their trading posts, Acadian families drifted to Baie de le Fortune and to Three Rivers. At this latter settlement, brick, bottles, glassware, etc., were made. This place was defended by a fort. It may also be observed that places of worship were erected at almost every hamlet, where mass was said by missionaries sent from France. Thus was Christianity first introduced to our shores.

Meanwhile it was with reluctance, and as it afterwards appeared, with a secret determination to embrace the first favorable opportunity of retaking them, that France ceded Newfoundland and Nova Scotia to England. With this object in view the French selected a spacious harbor on the eastern coast of Cape Breton, where they founded a city denominated Louisburg, in honor of the reigning monarch, Louis the Four- teenth. Here, on retiring from Nova Scotia in 1713, the French established their government; special attention there— fore was paid in regard to its defence and protection. Around the city a stone wall was built over thirty feet in height and more than two miles in circuit: there were six bastons and three batteries, containing embrasures for one hundred and forty—eight cannon and morters. At the entrance to the harbor stood the lighthouse and a battery of thirty 28 pounders. 'I_‘hus in thirty years building, and at a cost of thirty-two million livres in money, Louisburg became a potent fortress and the greatest bulwark of the maritime possessions in America.

_ Events had now occurred in Europe which involved England in a continental war, but France arranging herself on the