26 The French in Prince Edward Island

favor of Denys who secured a confirmation of his privileges by Letters Patent, dated November 9, 1667.’

Having returned to Cape Breton he met with a disastrous fire in 1669 which totally destroyed his settlement at St. Peters. He then retired to Nepisi- guit, wrote his book there or in France, and published it in 1672, partly as a defence of his cause, partly to reimburse himself for his losses. But other troubles piled up. The Company of New France, apparently becoming convinced that Denys could not achieve a settlement of the territory under his control, gradu- ally granted it away bit by bit, so that on Denys’ death in 1688 at the ripe old age of ninety, his one abiding legacy to France and to posterity was his narrative and descriptive history.

Two years before his death in 1686, Isle Saint Jean had again been included in a grant, this time to the Sr. Gautier, who had been interested in the seden- tary fishery at Chedabouctou and wished to extend his activities to the hunting of seal and walrus in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Sr. Gabriel Gautier was granted the right of establishing a sedentary fishery in Isle Saint Jean and the Magdalens for the killing of seals in return for one-half mare of silver a year payable to the treasury of the Western Domain, provided these is- lands had not been granted to another since the cancellation of the charter of the Company of the Occident (December, 1674), and provided they were

7C11 II, Vol. 1.