KINGSFORD'S _History of Canada_, vol. ii. Sir J. BOURINOT'S _Cape Breton_ (referred to above, p. 34, note). The same author's _Canada_, in the 'Story of the Nations' Series, chap. vii, and Dr. PATTERSON'S Paper on _Sir William Alexander and the Scottish Attempt to Colonize Acadia_, published in the _Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada_, vol. x, 1892. For the second part, see KINGSFORD'S _History of Canada_, vol. iii. Two books have recently been published on the Hudson Bay Company, viz: _The Remarkable History of the Hudson's Bay Company_, by GEORGE BRYCE, M.A., LL.D., and _The Great Company (1667-1871)_, by BECKLES WILSON. {191} CHAPTER VII LOUISBOURG [Sidenote: _Cape Breton Island under the provisions of the Peace of Utrecht._] [Sidenote: _Importance of the island to France._] The Treaty of Utrecht provided that 'the island called Cape Breton, as also all others both in the mouth of the river of St. Lawrence and in the gulf of the same name, shall hereafter belong of right to the French, and the Most Christian King shall have all manner of liberty to fortify any place or places there.' It was an important provision. Driven from Acadia and Newfoundland, with the reservation of certain fishing rights along a specified part of the Newfoundland coast, the French would have lost the seaboard altogether but for the possession of these islands at the entrance of the river of Canada. A French eye-witness of the siege of Louisbourg in 1745 described, in a contemporary pamphlet, the value of Cape Breton Island to France. It was used, he says, to provide a place for the French settlers who were leaving Newfoundland after the cession of that island to Great Britain by the Treaty of Utrecht, but 'this was not all. It was necessary that we should retain a position that would make us at all times masters of the entrance to the River which leads to New France.'[1] Similar testimony to its value is given by an English writer. 'Cape Breton Island is a subject no good Englishman can write or read with pleasure. The giving of it to the French by the Treaty of Utrecht may prove as great a loss to the Kingdom, as the Sinking Fund amounts {192} to or even the charge of the last war.'[2] Cape Breton, in short, kept open for France the mouth of the St. Lawrence, and the story of New France became more than ever the story of that river, and of the waterways which connected it with the far West, and with the newborn French colony in Louisiana. [Footnote 1: _Louisbourg in 1745_, the anonymous _Lettre d'un habitant de Louisbourg_, translated and edited by Professor Wrong (Toronto, 1897), p. 26.] [Footnote 2: Oldmixon's _British Empire in America_ (1741 ed.), vol. i, p. 37.]