er
was increased in the time of war by the inhabitants of the adjacent
ports and bays.

[Illustration: View of Louisbourg in 1731.--From a sketch in the Paris
Archives.]

During the thirty years that elapsed between the Treaty of Utrecht and
the breaking out of war between France and Great Britain, the people of
New England found that the merely nominal possession of Acadia by the
English was of little security to {212} them, while the French still
held the island of Cape Breton and had the fealty of the Indians and
Acadians, who were looking forward to the restoration of the country to
its former owners. England systematically neglected Nova Scotia,
where, until the foundation of Halifax, her only sign of sovereignty
was the dilapidated fort at Annapolis, with an insignificant garrison,
utterly unable to awe the Acadian French, and bring them completely
under the authority of the British Crown. French emissaries, chiefly
priests,--notably the treacherous Le Loutre--were constantly at work
among the Acadians, Micmacs, and Abenakis, telling them that France
would soon regain her dominion in Acadia. For years the Abenakis
tomahawked the helpless English colonists that had made their homes in
the present State of Maine, in the vicinity of the Kennebec and the
Penobscot. The insidious policy of Vaudreuil and other governors of
Canada, acting under instructions from France, was to keep alive the
hostility of the Abenakis so as to prevent the settlement of that
region known as Northern New England, one of whose rivers, the
Kennebec, gave easy access to the St. Lawrence near Quebec. From
Annapolis to Canseau the Micmacs destroyed life and property, and kept
the English posts in constant fear.

New England took a signal revenge at last on the cruel and treacherous
Abenakis, and inflicted on them a blow from which they never recovered.
At Norridgewock perished the famous missionary, Sebastian Rale, beneath
whose black robe beat the heart of a dauntless soldier, whose highest
{213} aspirations were to establish his creed and promote the ambitious
designs of France in Acadia. A peace was made in 1726 between the
colonists and the Abenakis, but New England felt she had no efficient
security for its continuance while Acadian and Indian could see in the
great fortress of Cape Breton powerful evidence that France was not yet
willing to give up the contest for dominion in Acadia. Northern New
England became now of relatively