110 The settlement of Acadia. [1605-32 ACADIA, CAPE BRETON, AND THE ILE DE SAINT JEAN. The French settlement on the Bay of Fundy has been briefly referred to, in so far as it displays certain main characters in French colonial policy ; but for many reasons the story of Acadia and the two adjacent islands calls for separate treatment. French maritime colonies in the neighbourhood of New England were called upon to play a part politi- cally that was even more disproportionate to their material development than the part played by French Canada. The hapless Acadia was the shuttlecock to French and English battledores. Thrice in the wars of the seventeenth century it fell to England ; thrice it was restored by treaty to France. It stands apart from the other French colonies, inas- much as it was scarcely touched, for good or ill, by the commercial companies. Unlike the French Canadians, the Acadian colonists laid no disproportionate stress on military organisation, but, on the contrary, repeatedly allowed themselves to fall a prey to English raids for want of sufficient armament. But though time after time the little posts were ruined, the fields laid waste, the cattle destroyed, there seemed to be an indestructible vitality in this, the least carefully fostered of all the French colonies. As compared with Canada, Acadia received little or no help from the home government. Its officials, too often men who had failed in Canada, produced the censuses and " memoirs " that were required of them ; and the colony flourished rather in spite than because of their efforts, which were mainly directed to their own enrichment. The widely scattered population, settled in hamlets of some twenty persons each, found a congenial climate and soil, and, in their dependence on their own initiative, resembled rather an English colony in its early stages than a colony of New France. With few exceptions the 2500 Acadians of 1714 were the descendants of forty families sent out between 1633 and 1638, and of some sixty colonists sent in 1671. The 2500 French of 1714? increased nearly six-fold in the next forty years of English government. The first era of attempted French settlement (1605-32) bequeathed to its successor (1632-70) nothing but an inheritance of disputed claims, which the fertility of the La Tour family, representing the first grantee, passed on from generation to generation. ArgalTs raid (1613), and Sir William Alexander's ill-supported attempt (1621) to found a "Nova Scotia" that should be to Scotland as New France and New England to their parent stems, did not make things easier for Razilly, sent as governor to make a fresh start when Acadia had been restored to France by the Treaty of Saint Germain-en-Laye (1632). The story of the relations of the governor, and his deputy d'Aulnay, with Nicholas Denys, one of the grantees and the historian of the colony in this
