98 ‘The French in Prince Edward Island

woods cutting timber when his gun resting against a tree fell and discharged its contents into his knee.” On arrival at Louisburg he lay in a hospital for three months hovering between life and death. Another soldier died of pneumonia and a third was lost on the ice, ‘‘a very good man and an excellent sawyer.”

The only bright spot on the horizon was the happy relations existing between de Pensens and Roma, Commandant in the settlement at Three Rivers. Roma praised him as a man of honor breathing “the spirit of peace, wisdom, and equity,” and de Pensens reciprocated by giving hearty support to the Com- pany of the East. On October 20, 1734, he wrote the Minister that all the complaints made against Roma by his partners were obviously pretexts for abandon- ing the enterprise.‘

In 1734 and again in 1735 a census was taken of the population of Isle Saint Jean, and for the first time in its history the live stock is enumerated as well, an indication of the fact that henceforth more attention is to be paid to the agricultural resources of the colony as distinct from the fisheries. In 1734 there were 396 souls, exclusive of fishermen, who num- bered 176; and in 1735 there were 432 colonists and 131 fishermen. This illustrates the fluctuating nature of the fishing industry as well as the steady increase of the colonists. Of the latter the census of 1734 states that four persons came from Spain, 16 from Canada, 162 from Acadia, and 214 from France; while the census of 1735 enumerates three from

7C11 IV, Vol. 14, p. 221.