CHAPTER IV.
ACADIA.
BY CHARLES C. SMITH,
Treasurer of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
ACADIA is the designation of a territory of uncertain and disputed extent. Though its sovereignty passed more than once from France to England, and from England to France, its limits were never exactly defined. But in this chapter it will be used to denote that part of America claimed by Great Britain under the Treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, as bounded on the south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by a line drawn due north from the mouth of the Penobscot River, on the north by the River St. Lawrence, and on the east by the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the Strait of Canso. Within these bounds were minor divisions vaguely designated by French or Indian names; and the larger part of this region was also called by the English Nova Scotia, or New Scotland.
SIEUR DE MONTS.
[This follows a copy of a water-color drawing in the Massachusetts Archives; Documents Collected in France, i. 441, called a portrait of De Monts from an original at Versailles. Mr. Parkman tells me that he was misled by this reference of Mr. Poore in stating that a portrait of De Monts existed at Versailles (Pioneers, p. 222); since a later examination has not revealed such a canvas, and the picture may be considered as displaying the costume of the gentleman of the period, if there is doubt concerning its connection with De Monts. There is another engraving of it in Drake’s Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast.—Ed.]