It may also be seen in Lescarbot’s Histoire de la Nouvelle France, and an English translation is in Williamson’s History of Maine, i. 651-654, and Harris’s Voyages (1705), i. 813; cf. Harrisse, Notes sur la Nouvelle France, nos. 14, 15, 27. In the Massachusetts Archives; Documents Collected in France, i. (p. 435), is a copy of De Monts’s proposition to the King, Henry IV., dated Nov. 6, 1603, with the King’s remarks (p. 445), and the “Lettres Patentes expediées en faveur de M. de Monts,” signed by the King at Paris, Dec. 18, 1603. These letters-patent made him lieutenant-general of Acadia (40° to 46° N. lat.) for ten years; and by an ordinance (p. 451) all persons were prohibited to trade within his government; and (p. 453) the King orders all duties to be remitted on merchandise sent home by De Monts. Cf. Faillon, Colonie Française, au Canada, i.; and Guerin, Les Navigations françaises.
[403] [This island, now known as Douchet Island, is a few miles within the mouth of the St. Croix River, which empties into Passamaquoddy Bay. In the latter part of the last century, when the commissioners of Great Britain and the United States were endeavoring to define the St. Croix River, which by treaty had been fixed as the eastern bound of the new nation, this island played an important part. The maps were not conclusive respecting the historic St. Croix, some of them, like that of Bellin in Charlevoix’s History (1744), rather indicating the Magaguadavic River, on the eastern side of the bay; but the discovery in 1797 of the foundation-stones of De Monts’s houses on this island, with large trees growing above them, settled the question. The island bears evidence of having considerably wasted by the wash of the river, and its few acres are at present hardly large enough for the purpose it served in 1604. It is known that then the colonists resorted to the main shore for their planting. The island now has a cottage upon it, which bears aloft a small light, to aid river navigation, and is maintained by the United States Government, the deepest water being on the easterly side. The Editor examined the island in 1882, but could not find that any traces of De Monts’s colony now remained, though fragments of “French brick” were found there by William Willis twenty years ago. Cf. Hannay’s Acadia, p. 74; Parkman’s Pioneers of France, p. 227; Williamson’s Maine, i. 190; ii. 578; Holmes’s Annals, i. 149. In a survey of 1798 the island is called Bone Island; and it has sometimes been called, because of its position, Neutral Island. A plan of the buildings is given on the opposite page.—Ed.]
[404] [For this exploration, see ch. iii.—Ed.]
[405] [There is an essay on Pontgravé in the Mélanges of Benjamin Sulte, Ottawa, 1876, p. 31.—Ed.]
[406] [The question of early Dutch sojourns or settlements on the coast is examined in J. W. De Peyster’s The Dutch at the North Pole, and the Dutch in Maine, 1857, and his Proofs considered of the Early Settlement of Acadia by the Dutch, 1858; and traces of remains at Pemaquid have been assigned to the Dutch; but see Johnston in the Popham Memorial, and in History of Bristol and Bremen; Sewall’s Ancient Dominions of Maine. The early settlements of this region are also tracked in B. F. De Costa’s Coasts of Maine. Cf. New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 1853, p. 213; 1877, p. 337.—Ed.]
[407] [According to Parkman, the elaborate notices of Madame de Guercheville in the French biographical dictionaries of Hoefer and Michaud are drawn from the Mémoires de l’Abbé de Choisy.—Ed.]
[408] According to a careful census taken in 1686, the whole population of Acadia was 915, including 30 soldiers; and there were in the whole colony 986 horned cattle, 759 sheep, and 608 swine. (Murdoch’s History of Nova Scotia, i. 166, 167.) In 1689 the census gave the whole population as 803. (Ibid., p. 177.) Commenting on the almost stationary condition of the colony for nearly a century, Murdoch justly remarks: “It is a subject of grave reflection, that after eighty-four years had elapsed from the founding of Port Royal in 1605, and notwithstanding the expense of money and all the exertions of De Monts, Poutrincourt, La Tour, Denis, and others, men highly qualified for the task of colonization, the results should be so trifling. Many of the settlements were now desolate and abandoned, and none of them prosperous. Nearly forty years before, D’Aulnay had besieged St. John with a flotilla and five hundred men, and the defenders had been probably numerous. The contests and discords of ambitious leaders contributed, doubtless, to this unfavorable state of things; but the incessant interferences and invasions which the English at Boston carried on, must be considered as the chief causes of retarding the progress of French settlement in Acadia.”
[409] [See Vol. III. chap. ix.—Ed.]
[410] The grant from Sir William Alexander, dated in 1630, was recorded at Boston in the Suffolk Registry of Deeds (liber iii. folio 276) in 1659. This was to secure an English registry, as the region, since Sedgwick’s expedition in 1654, had become subject to England, and seemed likely to continue so.
[411] [The contract, March 27, 1632, between Richelieu and De Razilly for the reoccupation of Port Royal is in Massachusetts Archives; Documents Collected in France (i. 545); and (p. 584) his commission to take possession and drive away British subjects, with (p. 586) his acceptance.—Ed.]