356 PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND.

and they would be beholden to foreigners for nothing but salt, lines, hooks, and other fishing-tackle.

“ Here they have likewise avast quantity of plaice, thornbacks, mackerel, and herrings. In several pools and lakes along the downs, they have excellent trout, and such a prodigious quantity of eels, that three men might fill three hogsheads of them in four and twenty hours. Lastly, you meet in all parts of the island with great plenty of game. It is therefore surprising that so plentiful a country should have so long been overlooked by‘ the French.” 9*

From the foregoing extracts, it is probable that the French government would not have allowed the natural resources of this island to have remained dormant, if they had retained its sovereignty.

In 1758, this island surrendered to Great Britain, when its population is stated to have been 10,000; but an old Acadian, Who is still living, and was then on the island, told me that he recollected well the number of families in all the settlements, and that the population could not have exceeded 6000. Lieute- nant-Colonel Rollo was sent from Louisburg, by General Amherst, to take possession of the island; and, to the eternal disgrace of the French governor, avast number of English scalps were found hung up in his house. The island, for many years pre-

* Genuine Letters and Memoirs relating to the Natural, Civil, and Commercial History of the Islands of Cape Breton and St John’s, from the first settlement there, to the taking of Louisburg by the English in 1758, by an impartial Frenchman. London translation, 1761.