The rapid progress of New England caused Louis XIV to express dissatisfaction at the slow development of Acadia, and he desired a report of the condition of the colony to be transmitted to Versailles. Monsieur de Meulles, the intendant, accordingly visited Acadia in 1686 where he found the French settlements "in a neglected and desolate state." He caused a census to be taken which showed the total population to be 915 souls, including the garrison at Port Royal. There were at that time only five or six families on the St. John river. Bishop St. Vallier made a tour of Acadia the same year, visiting all the Indians and French inhabitants he could find. The Marquis de Denonville in a letter to the French minister of November 10, 1686, announced the safe return of the bishop to Quebec after a most fatiguing journey and adds: "He will give you an account of the numerous disorders committed in the woods by the miserable outlaws who for a long while have lived like the savages without doing anything at all towards the tilling of the soil." [Illustration: ESTAT PRESENT DE L'EGLISE ET DE LA COLONIE FRANCOISE DANS LA NOUVELLE FRANCE _Par M. L'Eveque de Quebec_ A PARIS, Chez ROBERT PEPIE, rue S. Jacques, a l'image S. Basile, au dessus de la Fontaine S. Severin. M. DC. LXXXVIII.] Many interesting incidents of the tour of Mgr. St. Vallier are related in a work entitled "The Present State of the Church and of the French Colony in New France," printed in Paris in 1688. A fac-simile of the title page of the original edition appears opposite. As this rare little volume contains the first published references to the upper St. John region some extracts from its pages will be of interest. The bishop was accompanied by two priests and five canoe men. They left the St. Lawrence on the 7th of May and proceeded by way of the Rivers du Loup and St. Francis to the St. John. "Our guides," the bishop says, "in order to take the shortest road, conducted us by a route not usually traveled, in which it was necessary sometimes to proceed by canoe and sometimes on foot and this in a region where winter still reigned; we had sometimes to break the ice in the rivers to make a passage for the canoes and sometimes to leave the canoes and tramp amid snow and water over those places that are called portages (or carrying places) because it is necessary for the men to carry the canoes upon their shoulders. In order the better to mark our route we gave names to all these portages as well as to the lakes and rivers we had to traverse.