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 This site, too, had another advantage. Tatamagouche being the point of embarkation for St. John’s Island, and for Louisbourg, the main settlement was at a convenient place for the Acadians to load their vessels and embark. Tatamagouche is not favoured with bold water to the shore. But it has a neap tide rise of about five feet. "Campbell’s channel" has and probably had, a minimum low tide depth of another five feet, giving in all a depth of about ten feet at high water, sufficient for the small schooners, sloops and shallops of the tonnage used by the French. Then, too, the "Old channel"* was a continuation, along the South shore, of the present channel down the main river past the Government wharf. It would seem inevitable then that it was near here the first French would settle where they could watch the Rivers and Harbour and yet be near deep water. The hill between the two Rivers had both these advantages. All the traditions, which have come down to us from the French days, as well as what information we have been able to obtain from the maps and official and military documents of that period agree substantially in placing the site of the main settlement somewhere near the junction of the Rivers.

It was here they had their Chapel-at-ease and here they buried the few who had died during their occupation. In 1738 the Abbe Le Loutre, who was to play such a questionable role in the events leading up to the Expulsion was sent from France to have charge of the Indian Missions. In the Fall of that year, he arrived at Tatamagouche** from Louisbourg and thereafter set up his mission and built a Chapel on the Shubenacadie River, shortly above its junction with the Stewiacke River. From there, he exercised a powerful influence over both the Micmacs and the Acadians.

*The original channel known later as the "old channel" ran straight past what is now the Government wharf and turning at about right angles near Clark's culvert joined the present channel near the entrance of Campbell's channel. The present channel from there to the wharf was cut in dredging operations about 1878 and for years was known as "the cut." The mud from the dredging operations was used to fill up the "old channel" whose course, when we were boys was still distinguishable. It was regarded as a great resort for eels. One of my earliest recollections is of men spearing through the ice for eels in the "old channel" during the Christmas season.
**Le Loutre arrived at Tatamagouche on Oct. 1st, 1738. In a letter of that day from Tatamagouche he relates that it had taken him eight days to come by boat from Louisbourg.

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