|
Monsieur Nicholas Denys, who had obtained from the French Crown seignioral rights over territories including the North and Eastern coast of Nova Scotia and the sea shore North to Gaspe, visited Tatamagouche several years before 1671, and left a short and very general description of its Harbour. While Tatamagouche, along with the Northern shore of Nova Scotia , was within the limits of the territory over which he held feudal rights, Denys never resided nor made any improvements or settlements here. His headquarters and his Fort were at St. Peters, Cape Breton, and as he had fishing and fur trading posts so far North as Miscou Island, New Brunswick, he frequently sailed through the Northumberland Strait and possibly paid other cursory visits to Tatamagouche Harbour. But of these, we have no record. By the end of the Eighteenth Century, the Acadians spreading up the Annapolis River and down the Cornwallis River, had already founded what was to be their largest and best known settlement, Grand Pre. Many of the original Acadians had come from La Rochelle and nearby places on the East coast of France where the estuaries, marshes and tidal waters were similar to those on the Bay of Fundy. So there, as at La Rochelle they began the building of the dykes and aboiteaus and the reclaiming of the marshes from the tide. They stuck close to the shore and by 1700 had made small settlements on both sides of the Bay of Fundy, in what is now Hants and Colchester Counties. Back |
