The Acadians on the St. John, whose allegiance was in dispute, were a mere handful of settlers. The Abbe le Loutre wrote in 1748: "There are fifteen or twenty French families on this river, the rest of the inhabitants are savages called Marichites (Maliseets) who have for their missionary the Jesuit father Germain." His statement as to the number of Acadian settlers is corroborated by Mascarene, who notified the British authorities that thirty leagues up the river were seated twenty families of French inhabitants, sprung originally from the Nova Scotia side of the bay, most of them since his memory, who, many years ago, came to Annapolis and took the oath of fidelity. He adds, "the whole river up to its head, with all the northern coast of the Bay of Fundy, was always reckoned dependent on this government." Both Mascarene and Shirley strongly urged upon the British ministry the necessity of settling the limits of Acadia, and a little later commissioners were appointed, two on each side, to determine the matter. They spent four fruitless years over the question, and it remained undecided until settled by the arbitrament of the sword. Shirley was one of the commissioners, as was also the Marquis de la Galissonniere, and it is not to be wondered at that with two such determined men on opposite sides and differing so widely in their views, there should have been no solution of the difficulty. The period now under consideration is really a very extraordinary one. Ostensibly it was a time of peace. By the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 England gave back Cape Breton (or Isle Royale) to France and France restored Madras to England, but there remained no clear understanding as to the boundaries between the possessions of the rival powers in America. So far as the French and English colonies were concerned the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle scarcely deserved the name of a truce. It was merely a breathing time in which preparations were being made for the final struggle. The treaty was so indefinite that a vast amount of territory was claimed by both parties. The English were naturally the most aggressive for the population of the English colonies was 1,200,000 while Canada had but 60,000 people.