Excerpt from Historical and Descriptive Account of the Island of Cape Breton: And of Its Memorials of the French Re gime; With Bibliographical, Historical, and Critical Notes During the first decade of the seventeenth century there happened three remarkable events in the history of the continent of America. In the western part of Nova Scotia, then Acadie or Cadie, on the banks of a beautiful basin where the tumultuous tides of the Bay of Fundy ebb and How, we see a sleepy old town which recalls another world and another century. In the June days the air is redolent with the perfume of the apple-blossom and the hawthorn, the bells of ox-teams tinkle in the quiet streets, and the whole town bears the aspect of a dignified old age, which, having had its share of the world's excitement, now only asks to be left alone to spend the remainder of its years in placid case. There it was, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, Sieur de Monts and his French compatriots laid the foundation of the old settlement of Port Royal, which was long the capital of Acadie and the beginning of the French regime in the great region of New France. Two years later, in 1607, a little colony of English ventured into Virginia, and although in these days the only vestiges of that settlement are a few tombstones and grassy mounds, which are themselves rapidly disappearing beneath the encroachment of the tides, the site of Jamestown must ever be interesting to the historian and the states man as the commencement of that remarkable experiment of colonization which has established a federal union of over sixty-four millions of people, distinguished for their energy, their enterprise, and their capacity for self-government. Only a year later, in 1608, Champlain, sailor, explorer and statesman, founded the colony of Canada on those picturesque heights on which, in the course of nearly three centuries, a city has grown, so remarkable for its natural beauty, its capacity for defence, and its memorials of the history of France in America. The first decade of the seventeenth century will ever be memorable for the found ation of that Old Dominion which must receive honourable mention as the pioneer colony in the plantations of English America, and for the genesis of that new Dominion which, two centuries and a half after the settlement of Quebec, was to stretch between two oceans, and comprise an area of territory almost as great as that of the nation which was born at Jamestown in 1607. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."