FORT LA JOYE AND MICMAC TALES 37

outside world so long as their little world was not disturbed. Hunting, fishing, and clearing land occupied most of their time. And then there were the visits from the fathers of the flock, for their spiritual welfare was well looked after. Even in those early days of the French occupation there were five regularly constituted parishes on the Island.

The men who strove to convert the savages and to retain the Acadian French in their spiritual allegiance were high-souled romanticists. They must have been that, else they would never have left comfortable livings in their home land, France, to endure the rigours and hardships of a colonial land. The first missionary to Isle St. Jean was a Sulpician, Abbé Breslay. He had seen life in courts and palaces of France. He, with other nobles, had crowded around the old king at Versailles. But he gave it all up. He came to America and served among the French and Indians. In 1721, he and his assistant, M. Metivier, settled on Isle St. Jean. A church, dedicated to St. John the Evangelist, was immediately erected. A wooded plot near the entrance to the harbour was reserved for a cemetery. Here the faithful Duboisson, Sub—delegate of the Intendant, was buried in 1744. In the centre of the plot a tall black cross was erected —-—a symbol and beacon to the incoming vessels. But the seminary, which they actually had in mind, remained only a dream. At this time there was only one parish on the Island. These two missionaries remained only two years. Then their place was taken by a Franciscan priest. This holy father served under most severe conditions, with rations of a soldier. He was clothed in a gown of coarse grey druggeting, gathered at the waist by a coarse leather thong.