On the outer margin of the great bay into which the waters of the St. Lawrence discharge themselves, there lie certain British provinces which had till now maintained their colonial existence apart from the sister States of the interior. The oldest and most famous of these was Nova Scotia--the Acadie of the French period--within whose limits the Province of New Brunswick had been included. Northwards, across the entrance to the bay, was the island of Newfoundland. The Gulf Stream, moving northwards its vast currents of heated water, meets here an ice-cold stream descending from the Arctic Sea, and is turned eastward towards the coasts of Europe. The St. Lawrence deposits here the accumulations of silt which its waters have disengaged in their lengthened course, and forms great banks which stretch for many hundreds of miles out into the ocean. These banks are the haunt of icebergs escaping from the frozen North; perpetual fogs clothe them in gloom. But they offer to man wealth such as he cannot elsewhere win from the sea. The fisheries of the Newfoundland Banks were the earliest inducement which led Europeans to frequent those seemingly inhospitable shores. The Maritime Provinces were more easily accessible than Canada, for they abounded in commodious inlets where ships could enter and lie secure. They were placed at the difficult entrance to the St. Lawrence valley, and their value was more immediately apparent. Their possession was keenly contended for, at a time when England had not made up her mind to seek, and France scarcely cared to retain, the interior of the northern continent.