dow to be assured that Pony had
subsided, and we take leave of the corporate authority of Three Fathom
Harbor, and are once more on the road.

One can scarcely draw near to a settlement of these poor refugees without
a feeling of pity for the sufferings they have endured; and this spark of
pity quickly warms and kindles into indignation when we think of the story
of hapless Acadia--the grievous wrong done those simple-minded, harmless,
honest people, by the rapacious, free-booting adventurers of merry
England, and those precious filibusters, our Pilgrim Fathers.

The early explorations of the French in the young hemisphere which
Columbus had revealed to the older half of the world, have been almost
entirely obscured by the greater events which followed. Nearly a century
after the first colonies were established in New France, New England was
discovered. I shall not dwell upon the importance of this event, as it has
been so often alluded to by historians and others; and, indeed, I believe
it is generally acknowledged now, that the finding of the continent itself
would have been a failure had it not been for the discovery of
Massachusetts. As this, however, happened long after the establishment of
Acadia, and as the Pilgrim Fathers did not interfere with their French
neighbors for a surprising length of time, it will be as well not to
expatiate upon it at present. In the course of a couple of centuries or
so, I shall have occasion to allude to it, in connection with the story of
the neutral French.

In the year 1504, says the Chronicle, some fishermen from Brittany
discovered the island that now forms the eastern division of Nova Scotia,
and named it "Cape Breton." Two years after, Dennys of Harfleur, made a
rude chart of the vast sheet of water that stretches from Cape Breton and
Newfoundland to the mainland. In 1534, Cartier, sailing under the orders
of the French Admiral, Chabot, visited the coast of Newfoundland, crossed
the gulf Dennys had seen and described twenty-eight years before, and took
possession of the country around it, in the name of the king, his master.
As Cartier was recrossing the Gulf, on his return voyage, he named the
waters he was sailing upon "St. Lawrence," in honor of that saint whose
day chanced to turn up on the calendar at that very happy time. According
to some accounts, Baron de Lery established a settlement here as early as
1518. Some authorities state that a French colony was planted on