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these French aggressions upon Nova Scotia and Newfoundland; and it gave the British subjects in America the opportunity they especially desired to remove, if possible, the humiliation brought on them by the disgraceful peace treaty of Aix la Chapelle. A strong British fleet commanded by Lord Amherst, with the gallant Wolfe second in command, and supported by nearly one-third of the fighting strength of Massachusetts, again captured Louisburg in 1758, and razed its battlements to the ground; the following year Wolfe marched into Canada and captured Quebec. With the fall of these two strongholds, French power in the New World was broken, and Great Britain became mistress of her possessions in North America.

It was during this same war that the attempt was made by the British authorities in Nova Scotia to remove from that colony all vestiges of Latin influence, by forcibly expelling the French settlers from the land. The execution of this harsh and cruel policy furnishes the saddest chapter in the somewhat romantic history of Acadia. Thousands were deported to the Virginia and New England colonies, where they found a scant welcome, and many hundreds perished miserably through exposure and want. The pathetic incidents connected with the depopulation of the French village of Grand Pré, conducted by the unwilling Lieutenant Winslow, who declared the duty "very disagreeble to my natural make and temper," gave to Longfellow the theme for “Evangeline." If the chroniclers of the time are reliable, the natives of Grand Pré were not altogether the simple-hearted, peaceloving people depicted by the poet, but were rather a troublesome and somewhat vicious colony of fishermen who lost no opportunity to inflict injury upon the New England skippers who came in contact with them. Candor, however, compels one in forming estimates of the moral qualities of the French and English fishermen of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to divide honors about equally between them. If the French in Nova Scotia were sullen and unruly under English dominion, and if they enjoyed harrying New Englanders when they came to the Bay of

Fundy, they probably found ample justification for their misdeeds in the bad treatment they had themselves received.

In drawing up the treaty of peace which was concluded in Paris in 1763, much difficulty was encountered by the plenipotentiaries in adjusting the fishery question which appears to have claimed consideration beyond all other topics. France, driven to extremities, seemed willing enough to lose all of Canada, but she insisted upon the retention of some parcel of territory as a basis from which to carry on her fisheries. Strong opposition to any fishing concessions manifested itself in England, it being earnestly contended that the fisheries alone were worth more than possession of all Canada. It was finally agreed that France should continue her use of the shores of Newfoundland from Bona Vista to Cape Riche, as had been previously stipulated in the treaty of Utrecht. French fishermen were not allowed to fish elsewhere within three leagues of the shore; and along the coast of Cape Breton an interdiction of fifteen leagues was placed against them. The islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon were ceded to France in full right, to serve as shelter to its fishermen, and the French engaged not to fortify or to effect permanent settlements upon the

same.

The French fishery interests had again suffered severely by these wars, although after the treaty of Paris, through generous bounties and every kind of governmental encouragement, they slowly revived, and in course of time recovered a share of their former prestige. France having sided with the American colonists in their war of independence, suffered the loss of St. Pierre and Miquelon, but by the treaty of Versailles in 1783, these islands were restored, together with an extension of privileges theretofore granted on the shores of Newfoundland, giving them an area of shore line for curing, from Cape St. John to Cape Ray. The phraseology of this treaty, defining the nature of the rights of France on the Newfoundland shore, furnished another subject of contention to English and French statesmen, until a true meaning was agreed upon in 1881, nearly a century

later. The French insisted upon their exclusive right to occupy the shore areas allotted to them, even as against British settlers.

Despite continued ill-feeling between French and English fishing interests, both have nevertheless prospered, and the friction between them has gradually diminished ever since.

III

In seeking a home for themselves and their posterity, the Pilgrim Fathers were largely influenced in their choice of a place of settlement by the value they attached to the fisheries of New England. Enthusiastic descriptions of the abundance of cod in that region had reached them in England. The reports of Gosnold in 1602; of Pring, who explored the harbors of Maine in 1603; of Waymouth in 1605; of Popham and Gilbert who settled in Maine in 1608; and of the romantic John Smith who caught 47,000 cod at Monhegan in 1614, and who devoted pages "writ with his oune hande" to the wealth of the fisheries in the New World, and especially in New England, -all of these had been read and considered by the Puritans before making their exodus to the West. Before abandoning forever the shores of the Old World, they executed contracts with certain merchants in England, to whom they agreed to furnish fish, hoping thereby to defray the expenses of their voyage. In his history of Virginia, John Smith takes credit to himself for having been largely instrumental in inducing the Pilgrims to come to the New World on account of his favorable representations regarding the New England fisheries. In a discourse on the trials of the New England colonists and their wonderful industry in fishing, he enumerates the English ships that had made "exceeding good voyages" to the coasts, and continuing, says, "at last, upon these inducements, some well-disposed Brunists [Puritans], as they are termed, with some gentlemen and merchants of Leyden and Amsterdam, to save charges, would try their oune conclusions, though with great losse and much miserie." He

refers later to the prosperity of the little band in 1634"since they had made a salt worke wherewith they preserv all the fish they take, and have fraughted this yeare a ship of an hundred and four score tun."

The Pilgrims lost no time in entering upon the business of fishing. Within ten years after their landing at Plymouth Rock, they carried on an export fish trade with English and Dutch settlers in New York; indeed, fishing became the principal occupation and chief source of revenue of the people of New Plymouth, and the rapid settlement of Massachusetts after the founding of that colony, was greatly promoted by the great profits arising from the fishing interests on its coast. The colonists at Plymouth found remunerative occupation, while English vessels at Monhegan and other points along the coast of Maine reported fish in great abundance.

It was during the infancy of the Massachusetts colony that Salem, Gloucester and Marblehead were founded, and they soon became centres of great importance for fishing and other associated interests. The first Massachusetts ship visited the Banks of Newfoundland in 1645 — a pioneer destined to have an abundant following. Some friction between the fishermen of Plymouth and Boston manifested itself, but all such differences were finally adjusted by uniting the two colonies in 1692, and the fisheries of the greater Massachusetts flourished more extensively than ever. At the close of the seventeenth century, the merchants of Boston exported to Portugal, Spain and Italy about 100,000 quintals of cod, worth $400,000 annually.

In 1731 the fisheries of this colony employed about 6000 men. Ten years later the cod fishery had become exceedingly prosperous; the annual product being about 230,000 quintals, valued at $700,000. One hundred and sixty fifty-ton vessels were owned at Marblehead alone; and it is estimated that in all Massachusetts counted about 400 fishing vessels, together with multitudes of smaller fishing craft operating along New England shore stations. A variety of causes contributed to the decline of the New

England fisheries from 1740 to 1763. As already noted, the struggles between the French and English in Nova Scotia, Cape Breton and Newfoundland were especially acute at that period, and the New Englanders, as British subjects, were expected to answer repeated calls to arms. Fishermen were impressed into the royal navy, or were drafted into military expeditions by land against the traditional foe; and, as is usual in war, industrial pursuits languished.

After the final capitulation of Louisburg and the fall of Quebec, the fishing interests of the British colonies revived, and the coast towns of New England would have greatly increased in population and wealth, but for the threatening controversies which soon led to the American Revolution, and the final separation of the thirteen colonies from the mother country. The commencement of actual hostilities of course suspended all fishing operations until the restoration of peace in 1783.

The important rôle played by the fisheries in the causes that led to the Revolutionary War does not appear to be fully appreciated. Other causes assumed greater and more general prominence in popular discussion because they affected interests more extended in their nature, and exerted an influence on a greater number of the colonists. England had watched with jealous eyes the steadily growing trade — the expanding commerce and the rapidly increasing marine power of the New England colonies. This colonial trade had already extended to the ports of Europe and South America, and to the Spanish, French and English West Indies as well, where American fish found ready market to be paid for in sugar, molasses, rum, bullion and bills of exchange payable in European cities. The commercial prestige of New England began to interfere in no slight degree with the foreign trade of English merchants, and the excellent nautical training acquired by New England fishermen and sailors began to arouse the apprehension of Englishmen who demanded exclusive dominion in all that pertains to British industries.

The policy of curtailing American commerce by legislative