Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/367

Rh commander of the British troops in North America. Cartier explored the southerly shore and found Indians there in 1534. The earliest settlement of white men was made by Acadians in 1715. Others came in the eviction year and after the fall of Louisbourg. When France ceded "Canada with all its dependencies" to Great Britain, St. John Island was made part of Nova Scotia. On becoming a separate province it was apportioned to British adventurers who received land free for the ploughing and undertook to colonise their grants in the proportion of five settlers to each parcel of a thousand acres. When, a century later, the province allied itself with the Canadian Confederation the heirs to these baronies were paid by the Provincial Government £160,000 for their holdings of 845,000 acres, which were in turn sold to the tenants whose protests against absenteeism had brought the land question to a climax.

The natural fruitfulness of the native red loam is preserved by dressings of shell mud, seaweed and fish refuse. The decayed jackets of mussels, oysters, clams, crabs and lobsters form a highly valued deposit which the farmer hauls from the outlets of bays and rivers to spread upon his grain and truck fields. Fourteen thousand Island farmers produce each year about $8,000,000 worth of grains, hay and vegetables.

The sea as well as the land yields this Midas isle an inexhaustible harvest. In a year, 10,000