previous charters;
and when these countries were again occupied by the Dutch and restored
by the treaty of Breda it was thought necessary that the title of the
Duke of York should be restored by a fresh grant. In both of these
charters to that prince was included the Province of Sagadahock, within
whose chartered limits was comprised the territory at present in
dispute. This Province, confined on the sea between the rivers St. Croix
and Kennebec, had for its opposite limits the St. Lawrence, or, as the
grant expresses it, "extending from the river of Kenebeque and so upward
by the shortest course to the river Canada northward." The shortest
course from the source of the Kennebec to the St. Lawrence is by the
present Kennebec road. This grant therefore covered the whole space
along the St. Lawrence from about the mouth of the Chaudiere River[47]
to the eastern limit of the grant to Sir William Alexander. By the
accession of James II, or, as some maintain, by the act of attainder, it
matters not which, this Province reverted to the Crown, and was by it
granted, in 1691, to the colony of Massachusetts. In the same charter
Nova Scotia also was included. This has been called a war grant, as in
fact it was, and the colony of Massachusetts speedily availed themselves
of it by conquering the whole of the territory conveyed except the
island of Cape Breton. The latter, too, fell before the unassisted arms
of the New England Provinces in 1745, at a time when Great Britain was
too deeply engaged in the contest of a civil war to give aid either in
money or in men to her transatlantic possessions.

[Footnote 46: Sebastian Cabot, in the employ of Henry VII, discovered
the continent of North America 24th June, 1497, and explored it from
Hudsons Bay to Florida in 1498. Columbus discovered South America 1st
August, 1498, while the voyage of Vespucci, whose name has been given to
the continent, was not performed until 1499.--HUMBOLDT.]

[Footnote 47: See Note VI, p. 147.]

The colony of Massachusetts, therefore, could not be charged with any
want of energy in asserting her chartered rights to the territory in
question. It is, in fact, due to her exertions that both Nova Scotia
and New Brunswick came at so early a period into the possession of the
British Crown. In 1654 the French settlements as far as Port Royal, at
the head of the Bay of Fundy, were reduced by Major Sedgwick, but by the
treaty of Breda they were restored to France.