rance of the French governor marks another
stage in the controversy concerning the limits of Acadia. He stoutly
contended that Gorham and all other British officers must be forbidden
to interfere with the French on the St. John river, or to engage them
to make submissions contrary to the allegiance due to the King of
France "who," he says, "is their master as well as mine, and has not
ceded this territory by any treaty."

The governors of Massachusetts and of Nova Scotia replied at some
length to the communication of Count de la Galissonniere, claiming the
territory in dispute for the king of Great Britain, and showing that
the French living on the St. John had some years before taken the oath
of allegiance to the English monarch.

The Acadians on the St. John, whose allegiance was in dispute, were a
mere handful of settlers. The Abbe le Loutre wrote in 1748: "There are
fifteen or twenty French families on this river, the rest of the
inhabitants are savages called Marichites (Maliseets) who have for
their missionary the Jesuit father Germain." His statement as to the
number of Acadian settlers is corroborated by Mascarene, who notified
the British authorities that thirty leagues up the river were seated
twenty families of French inhabitants, sprung originally from the Nova
Scotia side of the bay, most of them since his memory, who, many years
ago, came to Annapolis and took the oath of fidelity. He adds, "the
whole river up to its head, with all the northern coast of the Bay of
Fundy, was always reckoned dependent on this government."

Both Mascarene and Shirley strongly urged upon the British ministry
the necessity of settling the limits of Acadia, and a little later
commissioners were appointed, two on each side, to determine the
matter. They spent four fruitless years over the question, and it
remained undecided until settled by the arbitrament of the sword.
Shirley was one of the commissioners, as was also the Marquis de la
Galissonniere, and it is not to be wondered at that with two such
determined men on opposite sides and differing so widely in their
views, there should have been no solution of the difficulty.

The period now under consideration is really a very extraordinary one.
Ostensibly it was a time of peace. By the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in
1748 England gave back Cape Breton (or Isle Royale) to France and
France restored Madras to England, but there remained no clear
understanding as to the boundari