to very valuable manuscript materials, which greatly enlarge our knowledge on not a few points previously obscure.1 The Cours d'Histoire du Canada of the Abbé Ferland is mainly devoted to what is now known as Canada; but there are several chapters in it on Acadian affairs. By birth and choice a Canadian, "and above all a Catholic," as he himself avows, his statements and inferences need to be scrutinized carefully. He had, however, gathered considerable new material, his narrative is clearly and compactly written, and his work must rank among the best of the modern compilations.2 1 A History of Nova Scotia, or Acadie. By Beamish Murdoch, Esq., Q.C. Halifax, N. S.: James Barnes. 1865-1867. 3 vols. 8vo. pp. xv and 543, xiv and 624, xxiii and 613. [Some later works deserve a word. Moreau's L'Acadie Françoise covers the interval, 15981755, and draws upon the Paris archives. Rameau's Une Colonie féodale en Amérique: L'Acadie, 1604-1710, published at Paris in 1877, is called by Parkman (Boston Athenæum Bulletin, where his comments appear far too seldom) a rather indifferent book, carelessly written ; containing, however, some facts not elsewhere to be found about certain small settlements.” James Hannay's History of Acadia, St. John, 2 Cours d'Histoire du Canada. Par J. B. A. Ferland, Prêtre, Professeur d'Histoire à l'Uni The same, or nearly the same, may be said of Garneau's Histoire du Canada. The chapters on Acadia are based on materials easily accessible, and they add no new facts to those given by the earlier writers; but his narrative is clear and exact, and not much colored by the writer's point of view. He had not, however, so firm a grasp of his subject as had Ferland; and for the period covered by this inquiry the latter may be read with much greater pleasure and profit.1 An English translation of Garneau's work was published some years after its first appearance, with omissions and alterations by the translator, who regarded the subject from an entirely different point of view, and who did not hesitate to modify occasionally the statements of the author, besides adding a great body of valuable notes.2 Another recent work which may be profitably consulted on the early history of Acadia is Henry Kirke's First English Conquest of Canada.3 This work deals mainly with the lives of Sir David Kirke and his brothers, and its chief value is biographical; but it comprises some hitherto unpublished documents from the Record Office, and throws considerable light on obscure portions of the early history of Canada and Acadia. Among these more recent writers the highest place belongs to Francis Parkman. In his Pioneers of France in the New World1 he has given an account of the first settlement of the French in Acadia which is not less accurate in its minutest details than it is picturesque in style and comprehensive in its grasp of the subject. Mr. Parkman needed only a story of wider relations and more continuous influence to secure for his book a foremost place among American histories. In his Frontenac 5 he has told with equal vividness the story of the marauding warfare which devastated the coast of Acadia and the contiguous English settlements from 1689 to 1697. No one of our historians has been more unwearied in research, as no one has been more skilful in handling his materials. Based in great part on original manuscripts from the French archives and on contemporaneous narratives, his volumes leave nothing to be desired for the period which they cover. versité Laval. Première Partie. 1534-1663. 8 The First English Conquest of Canada: with Some Account of the Earliest Settlements in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. By Henry Kirke, M.A., B.C.L., Oxon. London: Bemrose & Sons. 1871. 8vo. pp. xi and 227. ↑ Pioneers of France in the New World. By Francis Parkman. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 1865. 8vo. pp. xxii and 420. [Mme. de Clermont-Tonnere has translated this and other of Mr. Parkman's works, but with liberties prompted Chr. C. Smiths no doubt by disagreements in matters of religious faith. The Pioneers was the earliest, chronologically, in the series of France and England in North America, - a general title under which Mr. Parkman has already told a large part of the story of the French colonization in North America; but a later subject, the struggle of the Indians under Pontiac after the final English conquest, had before this engaged his pen. The characterization of later volumes of this series belongs to other chapters, in which will also be found further estimates of the other general historians here particularized. The Abbé Casgrain published at Quebec in 1872 an essay on Francis Parkman, pp. 89, with a lithographic portrait. Cf. a review by the Comte Circourt in the Revue des Questions Historiques, xix, 616; and references in Poole's Index to Periodical Literature. The Editor would take this occasion to express his constant obligations to Mr. Parkman in the preparation of the present volume. — ED.] 5 Count Frontenac, and New France under Louis XIV. By Francis Parkman. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 1877. 8vo. pp. xvi and 463. EDITORIAL NOTES. A. A Commissioner of Public Records of Nova Scotia was appointed in 1857, and by his list, printed in 1864, it appears that but one of the two hundred and four volumes in which the archives were arranged had papers of a date earlier than 1700, and that this volume contained copies of copies from the archives in Paris made for the Canadian Government, and covered the years 1632-1699. The Library of Parliament The Library of Parliament Catalogue, p. 1538, shows that vol. i. of the third series of manuscripts (1654-1699) is devoted to Acadia. A Nova Scotia Historical Society, instituted a few years ago, has as yet published but one volume of Reports and Collections for 1878, but it contains contributions to a later period in the history of Acadia than that now under consideration. ton, 1736 (see Mem. Hist. Boston, ii. 336). The story, more or less colored, under new lights or local associations, is told in Hutchinson's Massachusetts, Thornton's Ancient Pemaquid, Johnston's Bristol, Bremen, and Pemaquid (p. 170), and of course in Williamson and Parkman. The Relation of Monseignat (N. Y. Col. Doc., vol. ix.) and La Potherie are the chief French accounts on the surprise at Salmon Falls, in March, 1690, and according to Parkman, "Charlevoix adds various embellishments not to be found in the original sources." On the English side, it is still Mather's Magnalia upon which we must depend, and, as a secondary authority, upon Belknap's New Hampshire and Williamson's Maine. Parkman points out the help which sundry papers in the Massachusetts Archives afford; and Dr. Quint, in his notes to Pike's Journal (Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xiv. 125), has indicated other similar sources. B. THE WAR IN MAINE AND ACADIA. The revolution which deposed Andros in Boston was also the occasion of withdrawing the garrisons from the English posts toward Acadia; and this invited in turn the onsets of the enemy. It was calculated in 1690 that there were between Boston and Canso four thousand two hundred and ten Indians, - a census destined to be diminished, indeed, so that in 1726 the savages were only rated for the same territory at five hundred and six (N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., 1866, p. 9). But this diminution meant a process of appalling war. In the spring of 1689 came the catastrophe at Choceco (now Dover). Belknap, in his New Hampshire, gives a sufficient narrative; and Dr. Quint, in his notes to Pike's Journal (Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., xiv. 124), indicates the manuscript sources. For the capture of The attack on Fort Loyal (Portland), in May, 1690, is studied likewise from Monseignat, La the stockade at Pemaquid, which quickly followed, we have the French side in the Relation of Father Thury, the priest of the mission to the Penobscot Indians, who was in the action, and La Motte-Cadillac's Mémoire sur l'Acadie, 1692. Cf. the references in Shea's Charlevoix, iv. 42. The English side can be gathered from Mather's Magnalia; Andros Tracts, vol. iii.; 3 Mass. Hist. Coll. vol. i.; Hough's “Pemaquid Papers," in Maine Hist. Soc. Coll., vol. v.; Hubbard's Indian Wars, and John Gyles's Memoirs, Bos POSITION OF FORT LOYAL. Potherie, Mather, with some fresh light out of the "Declaration" of Sylvanus Davis, in 3 Mass. Hist. Coll., i. 101, and Bradstreet's letter to Governor Leisler, in Doc. Hist. N. Y., ii. 259. Le Clercq gives the French view; cf. Shea's Charlevoix, iv. 133, and Le Clercq, ii. 295; Willis's Portland, p. 284, and N. Y. Col. Doc., ix. 472. Meanwhile Phips had sailed from Boston in April to attack Port Royal. He anchored before its defences on the 10th of May. The place was quickly surrendered to Phips, on the 11th of May, by De Meneval, its governor, who summaries of Williamson and of the general historians. emene vaf Parkman says Charlevoix's own narrative is er- val In June, Portneuf and St. Castin, with their savage followers, left Pentagöet to attack the frontier post of Wells, but they were foiled, and retreated. Villebon is here the principal French authority; and on the English side, to the more general accounts of Mather, Hutchinson, Williamson, and to the eclectic summary of Niles's Indian and French Wars, we must add the local historian Bourne's History of Wells. The reader can best follow Parkman (Frontenac, p. 357, etc.), who carefully notes the authorities for the way in which Frontenac was foiled in 1693 in an attempt to capture the English post at Pemaquid; and for the attack on Oyster River the next year (1694), Parkman's references may be collated with Shea's (Charlevoix, iv. 256). The expedition was under the conduct of Villieu and the Jesuit Thury, and what was then known as Oyster River is now Durham, about twenty miles from Portsmouth. LeChevalier Devillebon instructions to Phips and an invoice of the During Phips's ill-starred expedition to Que- Two years later the rapine began afresh. York in Maine was captured and burned in 1692 by the Abenakis, one of whose chiefs gave to Champigny the narrative which he sent to the Minister, Oct. 5, 1692, which Parkman calls the best French account. The Indians also gave Villebon the exaggerated story which he gives in his Journal de ce qui s'est passé à l'Acadie, 1691-1692. On the English side, we have the account in Mather's Magnalia, and the later Villieu's own Journal is preserved: Relation du PEMAQUID. Callières in their reports adopt Villieu's statements. Belknap's New Hampshire has the best English account, which may be supplemented by various papers in the Provincial Records of New In 1696 Iberville, in charge of two war-ships which had come from France, uniting with such forces and savage allies as Villebon, Villieu, St. Castin, and Thury could gather, appeared on the 14th of August before the English fort at Pemaquid, which quickly surrendered. Pemaquid is a peninsula on the Maine coast between the mouths of the Kennebec and Penobscot, and the fort was situated as shown in the accompanying sketch. It was the most easterly of the English posts in this debatable territory, as the French fort at Biguyduce (Pentagöet or Castine) was the most westerly of the enemy's. The fort at Pemaquid had been rebuilt of stone by Phips in 1692. (Mather's Magnalia, Johnston's Bristol and Bremen.) Baudoin, an Acadian priest, accompanied the expedition, and wrote a Journal d'une voyage fait avec M. d'Iberville, and Parkman also cites as contemporary French authorities the Relation de ce qui s'est passé, etc., of 1695-1696, and Des Goutin's letter to the Minister of Sept. 23, 1696; cf. N. Y. Col. Docs., vol. ix. informed the King of his intention to go to Acadia (Nov. 2, 1671), hoping for a conference with Temple, whom he reports as disgusted with the government at Boston, "which is more republican than monarchical;" and the Minister, in response, June 4, 1672 (Ibid., ii. 265), intimates that it might do to give naturalization papers and other favors to Temple, if he could be induced to come over to the French side. In 1678 new hopes were entertained, and under date of March 21, we find (Ibid., ii. 359) the French had procured a description of Boston and its shipping. Frontenac and Duchesneau were each representing to the Court the disadvantages Canada was under in relation to the trade of the eastern Indians, with Boston offering such rivalry (Ibid., ii. 363; iii. 12); and Duchesneau, Nov. 14, 1679, enlarges upon a description of Boston and its defenceless condition (Ibid., ii. 371). When the English made peace with the Abenakis in 1681, Frontenac reported it to the Court, with his grievances at the aggressions of the Boston people, to whom he had sent De la Vallière to demand redress (Ibid., iii. 29, 31); and to end the matter, Duchesneau, Nov. 13, 1681, proposed to the Minister the purchase of the English colonies. "It is true," he says, "that Boston, which is an English town, does not acknowledge the sovereignty of the Duke of York at all, and very little the authority of the English King" (Ibid., iii. 35). The French meanwhile had assumed a right to Pemaquid, The immediate result of the capture of Pema- and Governor Dongan of New York had orquid was to release D'Iberville for an attempt dered them to withdraw (Ibid., iii. 81), while to drive the English from the east coast of Newfoundland in 1697. Parkman tells the story in his Frontenac, p. 391, and by him and by Shea in his Charlevoix, v. 46, the original sources are traced. Mather and Hutchinson are still the chief writers on the English side, while everything of local interest is gathered in Johnston's History of Bristol and Bremen, in Maine, including Pemaquid, Albany, 1873. Le Moyne Diccmuille Mr. Parkman (Frontenac, p. 408) has an important note on the military insufficiency of the English colonies at this time. C. THREATENED FRENCH ATTACKS UPON BOSTON. Ever after the surrender of the region east of the Penobscot to the French in 1670, there were recurrent hopes of the French to make reprisals on the English by an attack on Boston, and emissaries of the French occasionally reported upon the condition of that town. Grandfontaine, on being empowered to receive the posts of Acadia from the English (Massachusetts Archives: Documents Collected in France, ii. 209, 211), had been instructed, March 5, 1670, to make Pentagöet his seat of government; and it was at Boston, July 7, 1670, that he and Temple concluded terms of peace; and we have (Ibid., ii. 227) a statement of the condition of the fort at Pentagöet when it was turned over. Talon (Ibid., ii. 247) shortly after VOL. IV. -21. complications with the "Bastonnais" increased rapidly (Ibid., iii. 49). De Grosellier sent to the Minister new accounts of the Puritan town and its situation (Ibid., iii. 450); and the Bishop of Quebec remonstrated with the King for his permitting Huguenots to settle in Acadie, since they held communication with the people of Boston, and increased the danger (Ibid., iii. 95). The King in turn addressed himself rather to demanding of the Duke of York that he should see the English at Boston did not aid the savages of Acadia. In 1690 more active measures were proposed. On the day before Phips anchored at Port Royal, a " Projet " was drawn up at Versailles for an attack on Boston, in which its defenceless state was described: "La costé de Baston est peuplée, mais il n'y à aucun poste qui veille. Baston mesme est sans palissades à moins qu'on n'en ait mis depuis six mois. Il y a bien du peuple en cette colonie, mais assez difficile à rassembler. Monsieur Perrot connoist cette coste, et le Sieur de Villebon qui est à la Rochelle à present, |