at concerns us now is its weak and troubled infancy. It was to be
peopled in good part from the two lost provinces of Acadia and
Newfoundland, whose inhabitants were to be transported to Louisbourg or
other parts of Isle Royale, which would thus be made at once and at the
least possible cost a dangerous neighbor to the newly acquired
possessions of England. The Micmacs of Acadia, and even some of the
Abenakis, were to be included in this scheme of immigration.

In the autumn, the commandant of Plaisance, or Placentia,--the French
stronghold in Newfoundland,--received the following mandate from the
King:--

Monsieur de Costebelle,--I have caused my orders to be given you to
evacuate the town and forts of Plaisance and the other places of
your government of Newfoundland, ceded to my dear sister the Queen
of Great Britain. I have given my orders for the equipment of the
vessels necessary to make the evacuation and transport you, with
the officers, garrison, and inhabitants of Plaisance and other
places of Newfoundland, to my Isle Royale, vulgarly called Cape
Breton; but as the season is so far advanced that this cannot be
done without exposing my troops and my subjects to perishing from
cold and misery, and placing my vessels in evident peril of wreck,
I have judged it proper to defer the transportation till the next
spring.[190]

The inhabitants of Placentia consisted only of twenty-five or thirty
poor fishermen, with their families,[191] and some of them would gladly
have become English subjects and stayed where they were; but no choice
was given them. "Nothing," writes Costebelle, "can cure them of the
error, to which they obstinately cling, that they are free to stay or
go, as best suits their interest."[192] They and their fishing-boats
were in due time transported to Isle Royale, where for a while their
sufferings were extreme.

Attempts were made to induce the Indians of Acadia to move to the new
colony; but they refused, and to compel them was out of the question.
But by far the most desirable accession to the establishment of Isle
Royale would be that of the Acadian French, who were too numerous to be
transported in the summary manner practised in the case of the fishermen
of Placentia. It was necessary to persuade rather than compel them to
migrate, and to this end great reliance was placed on their priests,
especially Fathers Pain and Dominique. Pon