First visited by the Cabots in 1497, it was not until 1604 that European colonization was attempted in Nova Scotia, under the Frenchman De Monts (page 35, § 13). In 1613, the Virginia privateer, Argall, basing his excuse on Cabot's previous discovery, swooped down on the French settlements, demolished the cabins, and expelled the inhabitants. A grant of the peninsula--called Acadia by the French, but in this document styled Nova Scotia by the king--was made by James I. to Sir William Alexander; the latter was, however, prevented by the French (1623) from carrying out his colonizing scheme. Nevertheless, several Englishmen and Scotchmen came into the country and mingled with the French, who were slowly re-populating it. Sidenote: New England captures the country. Recaptured by an English force in 1654, Nova Scotia was, thirteen years later (1667), ceded to France. But the ease of communication by water made the colony an uncomfortably close neighbor for the English colonies farther south. In 1710 the Massachusetts men captured Port Royal; and in 1713 France relinquished possession to England by the treaty of Utrecht. Again in 1745, Massachusetts volunteers captured Louisbourg on Cape Breton (§§ 111, 112). Sidenote: Deportation of the Acadians. England paid little attention to Nova Scotia until 1749, when four thousand emigrants were sent over to found Halifax. The French settlers, known as Acadians, had meanwhile become numerous, and greatly abused their privileges as neutrals by fostering and joining Indian war-parties against the New England settlers. In 1755, the Acadians were easily reduced by General Monkton, and seven thousand transported to the British provinces southward, many of them finally drifting to the French settlement at the mouth of the Mississippi. Sidenote: An asylum for Tories. A colonial constitution of the regulation English pattern was granted to Nova Scotia in 1758, and France formally released her claim by the treaty of 1763. At the same time Cape Breton, which had been a second time captured (1758), was added. The Englishmen in Nova Scotia were largely of the official and trading class, having little in common with their neighbors of the more southern colonies. In the Revolution several thousand loyalist refugees found an asylum in the peninsula. For the remaining French colony, Canada, special treatment will be necessary. 106. Hudson's Bay Company. Sidenote: Similarity to the Massachusetts Bay Company. The Hudson's Bay Company, from the time it was chartered by Charles II. (1670) until its lands were sold to the British Government (1869), was a joint-stock association, with exclusive commercial and political privileges, very similar to the Company of Massachusetts Bay. To-day it trades as a private corporation; its former territory--the lands draining into Hudson's Bay--is now open to all on equal terms. Sidenote: French opposition.