Acadia, Acadie--a name which the French took from the Indians[1]--included an ill-defined region. Whoever held it, at any given time, naturally claimed as large an area as possible, and, after it was ceded to Great Britain by the Treaty of Utrecht, the question of the boundary was a fruitful source of trouble. Under the French, Acadia was roughly coterminous with the present provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, and part of the State of Maine; but Acadia proper was the peninsula of Nova Scotia. There, and on the immediately adjoining coast of the mainland, the fighting and the raids took place. It was not until after the Peace of Utrecht was signed that Cape Breton Island, whose name recalls the nationality of early voyagers to North America, became, under the new title of Île Royale, a renowned stronghold of France; while Prince Edward Island, the Île de {171} St. Jean, played little part in the early history of North America. [Footnote 1: See above, p. 36, note.] [Sidenote: _The peninsula of Nova Scotia._] Linked to the continent by the isthmus of Chignecto, sixteen miles in breadth, the peninsula of Nova Scotia runs for some 300 miles north-east and south-west, parallel to the North American coast. From that coast it is separated on the southern side of the isthmus by the Bay of Fundy--the Baie Françoise as it was called in old days--a bay into which the sea runs strong and which divides at the head, forming on the left, the mainland side, Chignecto Bay, on the right the Basin of Mines. The shores of this latter land-locked basin were in the eighteenth century a well-known scene of Acadian settlement, and here stood the village of Grand Pré. On the same side of Nova Scotia, lower down than the Basin of Mines, is Annapolis harbour, better known in old days as Port Royal. The opposite sides of New Brunswick and Maine are deeply indented by the estuaries of various rivers--the St. John, the St. Croix, now the border stream between Canada and the United States, and, further south, the Penobscot and the Kennebec, names that constantly occur in the story of Acadian and New England warfare. Cape Sable--the sand cape--is the southernmost point of Nova Scotia: midway on the Atlantic side of the peninsula is Halifax harbour, formerly known as Chebucto; and on the north the narrow strait known as the Gut of Canso divides Nova Scotia proper from Cape Breton Island. Cape Breton Island on the south, Newfoundland on the north, mark the entrance of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. They are the buttresses of the main gateway of Canada. [Sidenote: _Geographical importance of Acadia._]