D'immenses terrains, propices à la culture, n'attendent que des mains diligentes pour rendre au centuple ce qu'on leur aura prêté. Développez-vous donc, jeune rameau de la grande race latine; épanouissez-vous sur cette terre aux horizons immenses, et devenez à votre tour un arbre puissant aux racines plongées dans un passé glorieux, à la cime sa projetant vers un lumineux avenir.
THE ISLANDS
OF
SAINT-PIERRE AND MIQUELON.
(Notes of a lecture given at the Institut Canadien, before the Quebec Geographical Society on the 29th April, 1880, by His Excellency the Count of Premio-Real, Consul General for Spain.)
Translated by Crawford Lindsay, chief English Translator, Legislative Assembly, Quebec.
How many persons in Europe and in America, even amongst those who lay claim to a certain amount of knowledge, are ignorant of the very names of those little islands, lost to sight on the coast of New-Foundland, that colossus of which they are the humble attendants.
How many Frenchmen are there to whom their name is unknown, and in whose minds they give rise but to vague and hardly realized ideas: like unto the distant murmur of ocean waves which barely reaches the ears of those who dwell away from the sea-shore.
And yet these islets are the wreck of an immense empire, which once stretched from the Polar regions to the mouths of the Mississipi, the great Father of Waters. They once formed but an infinitesimal portion of that vast domain, which the sons of St. Louis made fruitful with their labor and hallowed with their blood but which, after having opened up to civilization, they allowed to be taken from them by a vigilant and practical adversary.