In this his most Christian Majesty has been faithfully served by these missionaries, in all points, except that political injunction of not giving a handle for just complaints, which they overshot in the ardor of their zeal; since it is undoubted matter of fact, that the missionaries openly employed all their arts, and all the influence of religion, to invenom the savages against us.  Thence, besides a number of horrid cruelties, the most treacherous and base murder of captain How, at a conference, by some savages they set on, who perpetrated it within sight of the French forces.  The publishing, however, of the foregoing memorial may have this good effect, that it will apprise the English of the matter of accusation against them, and enable them to counter-work those holy engines of state, and emissaries of ambition.  It is also certain, that this very memorial was drawn up by a French priest, purely to furnish the French ministry a specious document to oppose to the most just representations of the British government.  Besides the fictions with which it abounds, he has taken care to suppress the acts of cruelty committed, and the atrocious provocations given by the savages, at the instigation of his fellow-laborers sedition and calumny.]

LETTER

FROM

Mons. DE LA VARENNE,

TO HIS

FRIEND at ROCHELLE.

Louisbourg, the 8th of May, 1756.

Though I had, in my last, exhausted all that was needful to say on our private business, I could not see this ship preparing for France, especially with our friend Moreau on board, without giving you this further mark of how ardently I wish the continuance of our correspondence.  It will also serve to supplement any former deficiencies of satisfaction to certain points of curiosity you have stated to me; this will give to my letter a length beyond the ordinary limits of one:  and I have before-hand to excuse to you, the loose desultory way in which you will find I write, as things present themselves to my mind, without such method or arrangement, as a formal design of treating the subject would exact.  But who looks for that in a letter?

I need not tell you how severely our government has felt the dismemberment of that important tract of country already in the possession of the English, under the name of Acadia; to say nothing of their further pretentions, which would form such terrible encroachments on Canada.  And no wonder it should feel it, considering the extent of so fruitful, and valuable a country as constitutes that peninsula.  It might of itself form a very considerable and compact body of dominion, being, as you know, almost everywhere surrounded by the sea, and abounding with admirable and well-situated ports.  It is near one hundred leagues in length, and about sixty in breadth.