| The Illinois abandoned by the French. |
In 1702, Tonty left Fort St. Louis on the Illinois to join Iberville in the south, and, except for a few years at a little later date, that fort was abandoned. The Indians, too, who had gathered round it, dispersed; some of them moved down to the Mississippi; and connexion between Canada and Louisiana was afterwards sought not so much by the Illinois river, as by the line of the Ohio, the earliest scene of La Salle's discoveries.
CHAPTER VI
ACADIA AND HUDSON BAY
In the last chapter the main stream of Canadian history has been followed down to the Treaty of Utrecht. New France was essentially the colony on the St. Lawrence; but with the story of Canada proper the story of Acadia is interwoven, and Acadia under another name now forms part of the Canadian Dominion. To complete the tale to 1713, it is necessary to go back to the early days of settlement in the present Maritime Provinces of the Dominion. Some notice must also be made of English commercial enterprise on the northern side of Canada, the shores of Hudson Bay.
| Acadia. |
Acadia, Acadie—a name which the French took from the Indians1—included an ill-defined region. Whoever held it, at any given time, naturally claimed as large an area as possible, and, after it was ceded to Great Britain by the Treaty of Utrecht, the question of the boundary was a fruitful source of trouble. Under the French, Acadia was roughly coterminous with the present provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and part of the State of Maine; but Acadia proper was the peninsula of Nova Scotia. There, and on the immediately adjoining coast of the mainland, the fighting and the raids took place. It was not until after the Peace of Utrecht was signed that Cape Breton Island, whose name recalls the nationality of early voyagers to North America, became, under the new title of Île Royale, a renowned stronghold of France; while Prince Edward Island, the Île de St. Jean, played little part in the early history of North America.
1 See [above], note.