The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1869-07-19
What IL st. Pierre and How and Why
In tho New Gable Therct

In the New Cuble Therct
st. Pierre is very little island--a mere speck
in the blue sea. Its area Is but one hundred
and six square miles, and its permanent popu
lation but two thousand persons. But as 1t Is
national rendezvous and shelter for the
French boats that fish in these seas, its popu-
lation is very movable in numbers as well as
otherwise. II lis one of three islands that COM
pose the French colony of St. Pierre and
Miquelon There Is name enough IL not much
land
Three little SWITCHES of earth, mere freaks
Of the sea current. This is all that remains to
France of the extensive dominion she once
held in the Western hemisphere. How does it
happen, then, that even these remain? Since
she lost so much, how did it come that she did
not lose this very little morep Since all the
Canadas and that wide swathe of continent,
the Mississippi valley, slipped away, by what
magic did the great nation hold fast to
the vo1 ct praterea aihI of st. Pierre and
Miquelon?
1t is story of the mutation of national
grandeur. These islands are that last stamp
and assurance of conquest, the grace vouch-
safed by the conqueror. France was the first
of nations that gave her attention to that now
familiar edible, the American Goldfish. Within
twelve years from the discovery made by
Columbus, French fishermen were con the
banks" That was prompt for those times.
The first definitely recorded voyage was made
little later, in 1908, by Thomas ALBERT, from
Dieppe, to the Gulf of st. Lawrence From
that time the French fisheries grew rapidly;
money was made, and the first of the Goldfish
aristocracy spent its cash in very different
Paris from that known to this age, and
courted royal favor even under the eye of
Henri de Navarro.
But stormy day came in savage differences
with that grasping rascal, John Bull, and the
result of more than century Of dispute was
that the French, from claiming and owning
all Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, were COM
PEELED to keep three leagues from the coast.
Certain privileges were allowed on the eastern
coast of Nova Scotia, and thence grew the
settlement Of Cape Breton and the building
of that American Gibraltar, Louisburg How
Pepperell and his Yankees-'loyal provin-
cialists" they called them-did England service
in the capture of that stronghold is an old
story. BY that every inch Of soil here was
wrested from France and in one year the
French fishing feet dwindled from five hun
dred to one hundred sail. No wonder they
authorized Pepperell to call himself ''Sir.'
By the treaty Of Paris made in 1868 it was
agreed that French fishermen might take fish,
with certain restrictions, in the Gulf of St.
Lawrence and at fifteen leagues from the coasts
of Cape Breton, and at that time the three
islands, Great and Little Miquelon and st.
Pierre. were given as refuge and harbor to
the storn-tossed fishermen. parted from their
homes by all the width of the Atlantic. Hence
the colony"
Here, then, is theme for the philosopher.
This scrap Of land, thrown as a grace to the
poor mariner Of France, is changed in the
alembic, and becomes one of the great places
of the earth, one of the nervous centres of the
world, and the only foothold this side the sea
of so grand part in the growth of our time
as the French Atlantic cable.