It was not however either Saint-Ovide’s or Pensens’ letters, that actually sparked the enterprise. Before these reached the Count of Maurepas another letter had arrived on the minister’s desk. This had come from a merchant in La Rochelle, referred to in the correspondence as ’Sieur Fleury’. La Rochelle, a major commercial port on the Bay of Biscay, was the main departure and landing point for merchant ships sailing to and from New France, and this Sieur Fleury can only be Charles de Fleury Deschambault, a member of a Canadian merchant family, who had established himself in La Rochelle as a banker, merchant and ship-owner trading to Canada 42. Significantly, Fleury had a direct connection with ile Saint-Jean: he was one of the directors of the short-lived Company of ile Saint-Jean.“3 Although the company had failed in the previous year, with the loss of money to all involved, Fleury had clearly not given up his hopes for the island. For in the letter that he had written to the minister, he claimed that ”masts of any size and quantity” could be got from lle Saint-Jean, that ”they were of a better quality than those of Canada" (in the French period, and long after, ’Canada’ meant Quebec and the St. Lawrence), and that they would cost much less — he does not say why, but presumably one factor was the shorter trans- Atlantic journey from lle Saint—Jean. It is unlikely that Charles Fleury had ever visited ile Saint-Jean, and thus his comments on the island’s timber stocks are likely to have been partly supposition, though what he says is in general agreement with the reports that the Company’s agents on the island, Robert Gotteville and Louis Denys de La Ronde, had sent back to France some five years earlier.44 Fleury then added that there were some masts from the island already at La Rochelle which were available for inspection — presumably some of those cut two years before referred to in Saint-Ovide’s letter of the previous December.45 ‘2 Baudry 1969; Rodger 1974. See also Miquelon 1987, pp. 12e27. ‘3 Rodger 1974. “ Gotteville 1720; La Ronde 1721. ‘5 Saint-Ovide 1725: 18 December. A letter of Maurepas (1726: 28 May) to Saint-Ovide and Mézy says the masts at La Rochelle were out six years before (his source for this must have been Fleury). which if true would mean 1720, the first year of the Count of Saint Pierre‘s settlement. 165 In fact all of the above information comes not from Fleury’s original letter, which is not in Canadian archival sources and may be lost“, but from a letter47 that the Count of Maurepas sent to Francois de Beauharnois, the Marine's intendant at the naval port of Rochefort, just eleven miles south of La Rochelle.4B In the letter Maurepas directed the intendant to organise an inspection of Fleury’s masts at La Rochelle. After a short delay due to the illness of the mast inspector, on 6 April Beauharnois sent the inspector's report back to the minister at Versailles.49 It contained bad news for Charles Fleury. The inspector had found the masts from lle Saint-Jean to be ”full of knots, of a wide-grain and dried out” — all properties unacceptable for masts on French naval ships. All that Fleury could proffer by way of excuse, wrote Beauharnois in the letter, was that their dryness was due to their having been cut some time before. However, Fleury did not give up. Not only does it appear that he prompted Beauharnois to recommend to the minister that Commissaire Mézy at Louisbourg be asked to obtain a new sample of ”quelques Pins et Epinettes rouges et blanches” [a few pines and red and white spruces], (a recommendation approved by the minister in a return letter of 16 April to Beauharnois5°) but he also sent a memorandum on the mast resource of the island directly to the minister himself“. However, by 28 May when the Count of Maurepas dispatched his annual correspondence to his officials at Louisbourg, the minister was no longer asking that a small sample of trees be sent to France for inspection, as suggested by Beauharnois. Rather, in a lengthy three page ‘6 See Endnote 3 for a list of ‘lost' documents. ‘7 Maurepas1726: 1 March to Beauharnois. ‘8 Francois de Beauharnois (or the Baron de Beauville — to give him his full title) was 60 in 1726 and had been a protégé of Maurepas‘ father, the previous minister of the Marine. He also held the intendancy for the port of La Rochelle, and — like Charles Fleury — had Canadian experience: he had spent three years at Quebec (from 1702 to 1705) as the intendant of New France. the second highest post in the colonial government (see Dubé 1974). ‘9 Beauharnois 1726: 6 April. 5° Maurepas 1726: 16 April to Beauharnois. 5‘ Fleury’s memorandum is referred to both in Beauharnois‘ letter of 6 April 1726 to the minister and in the minister's letter of 28 May 1726 to Saint-Ovide and Mézy, but otherwise does not occur in Canadian archival sources (see Endnote 3).