was
to be the task of a new age of industry. The colonist of the eighteenth
century--a merchant, a farmer, or a fur trader--thought that Cape Breton
was bleak and infertile and refused to settle there. Louisbourg remained
a compact fortress with a good harbor, free from ice during most of the
year, but too much haunted by fog. It looked out on a much-traveled sea.
But it remained set in the wilderness.

Even if Louisbourg made up for the loss of Port Royal, this did not,
however, console France for the cession of Acadia. The fixed idea
of those who shaped the policy of Canada was to recover Acadia and
meanwhile to keep its French settlers loyal to France. The Acadians were
not a promising people with whom to work. In Acadia, or Nova Scotia, as
the English called it, these backward people had slowly gathered during
a hundred years and had remained remote and neglected. They had cleared
farms, built primitive houses, planted orchards, and reared cattle. In
1713 their number did not exceed two or three thousand, but already they
were showing the amazing fertility of the French race in America. They
were prosperous but ignorant. Almost none of them could read. After the
cession of their land to Britain in 1713 they had been guaranteed by
treaty the free exercise of their religion and they were Catholics to a
man. It seems as if history need hardly mention a people so feeble
and obscure. Circumstances, however, made the role of the Acadians
important. Their position was unique. The Treaty of Utrecht gave them
the right to leave Acadia within a year, taking with them their personal
effects. To this Queen Anne added the just privilege of selling their
lands and houses. Neither the Acadians themselves, however, nor their
new British masters were desirous that they should leave. The Acadians
were content in their old homes; and the British did not wish them to
help in building up the neighboring French stronghold on Cape Breton. It
thus happened that the French officials could induce few of the Acadians
to migrate and the English troubled them little. Having been resolute in
acquiring Nova Scotia, Britain proceeded straightway to neglect it. She
brought in few settlers. She kept there less than two hundred soldiers
and even to these she paid so little attention that sometimes they had
no uniforms. The Acadians prospered, multiplied, and quarreled as to the
boundaries of their lands. They rendered no military service, paid no
ta