treaty of St. Germains in 1634, and the
Alexanders were indemnified for the loss by the Crown of England.

In the subsequent cessions to France after its occupations by the arms
of Massachusetts, and in its final cession to Great Britain by the
treaty of Utrecht in 1713, the country ceded is described as Acadie or
Nova Scotia, with its ancient bounds (_cum finibus antiquis_). The
uncertainty arising from this vague description became in 1750 a subject
of controversy between France and England, and was one of the causes
which led to the war of 1756. In this discussion both parties admitted
that the names Acadie and Nova Scotia were convertible terms. England
maintained that the territory thus named extended to the St. Lawrence;
the French, on the other hand, insisted that their Acadie had never
extended more than 10 leagues from the Bay of Fundy; while by
geographers, as quoted by the British commissioners, the name was
limited to the peninsula which forms the present Province of Nova
Scotia.[62] If Acadie had been limited to the north by the forty-sixth
degree of north latitude, as expressed in the charter of De Monts,
that parallel is to the south of Mars Hill. The British Government,
therefore, derives no title to the disputed territory from this source,
as the title of Massachusetts and of Maine as her successor is admitted
to all country south of that parallel.[63]

[Footnote 62: Report of Featherstonhaugh and Mudge, p. 8.]

[Footnote 63: It can not be seriously pretended that when by the treaty
of St. Germains, in 1632, Acadie was restored to France the intention
was to cede to her the colonies already settled in New England. Yet the
language of the British commissioners would imply that this was the case
were it not that they evidently consider the forty-sixth parallel as the
southern boundary of the grant to De Monts, whereas it is the northern.]

It is very easy to tell what country was actually settled by the French
as Acadie. Its chief town was Port Royal, now Annapolis, at the head of
the Bay of Fundy. Nearly all the settlements of the Acadians were in
that vicinity, and for the most part within the peninsula.

From these seats they were removed in 1756 by Great Britain, and to
them a remnant was permitted to return. The most western settlement of
Acadians was on the St. John River near the present site of Fredericton,
and no permanent occupation was ever made by them of country west of the
St. Croix. It