1627-64] Second period of colonisation. 75 In 1621 James I granted to Sir William Alexander the "isle and continent of Norumbega"; the continental portion to be styled New Alexandria, the peninsular Nova Scotia. In 1627 Alexander's son made a settlement opposite Port Royal, and the son of La Tour, the French successor to de Poutrincourt, withdrew to Cape Sable. With the formal restoration of Canada and Acadia in 1632, a better regulated attempt at their colonisation followed ; but the proposal to make three provinces of Canada, Port Royal and Cape Breton rendered La Tour jealous of the rival governors, and he encouraged interference from the now flourishing New Englanders. In 1656, with Cromwell's co-operation, the Acadian settlement once more passed to the English and was granted to Sir Thomas Temple, who vigorously developed it. But in 1667 Charles IPs French sympathies compelled the restoration of the much debated territory. No boundary -line however long remained satisfactory to both parties, and the weakness of the French colony exposed it to continual attacks on the part of its powerful neighbour. Eventually the Kennebec river was to become notorious as a sort of "no-man's land" where encroach- ments might, or might not, constitute serious offences according as the exigencies of the moment, and the readiness of the rival parties to proceed to larger issues, should determine. After the restoration of Canada the zeal of the Company began to fall off; and in 1663 the population was only 2500, at a time when the town of Boston numbered 14,300 inhabitants, and Virginia over 80,000. A main cause of the backwardness of Canada lay in the particular circumstances that the colonists were called upon to meet. Unluckily for France, Champlain's arrival in Canada had coincided with the rise of the Iroquois confederacy of Five Nations and the outbreak of hostilities between the races south of the St Lawrence and the Algonquin races, inhabiting the Lake districts and the River valley. It was natural and necessary that the scanty band of settlers should seek a friendly alliance with the natives whose habitations lay nearest to them or into whose lands they pushed their explorations; but these natives happened to belong to tribes destined ultimately to succumb in one of the internecine wars which had continually thinned the native population of America. The hostile confederacy is believed to have numbered in the height of its power not more than 2200 fighting men ; but the race of the Mohawks, Senecas, Cayugas, Onondagas, and Oneidas, who made up the Five Nations, was superior in quality to that of the Algonquins and Hurons, the French allies. Their power of permanent confederation supplies evidence enough of their superiority. By lucky accident the English settlements escaped the path of the Iroquois. The tribes that had occupied the New England coasts had been devastated by disease shortly before the arrival of the Puritans, and in Virginia too none of the tribes that were dislodged belonged to the races whom a great future awaited. The path of the Iroquois naturally stretched northward and westward to the CH. III.
