In the course of years, however, the Miscou mission increased, and the chapel proving insufficient to accommodate the congregation, the Jesuits built another at the entrance of the river Nipisiguit.

Father de Lyonne was the real founder of this new mission.  Nipisiguit was a good trading and fishing-station, and a general rendezvous for the French as well as the Indians; it was also a safe harbour.  Between the years 1650 and 1657, Father de Lyonne crossed the ocean three times in the interest of his mission, and in the year 1657 he founded another mission at Chedabucto, where he ended his career.

The field of the missionaries was divided after the year 1650.  Father de Lyonne took charge of the mission at Chedabucto, while the stations at Miscou and Nipisiguit were under the control of Father Richard, and Father Fremin was given charge of the Richibucto mission.  In the year 1661, Father Richard replaced Father de Lyonne at Chedabucto, but he only remained there one year.

The missions of the Jesuits in Acadia and Baie des Chaleurs closed with the departure of Father Richard.  Some historians of Acadia mention the labours of Father Joseph Auberi, whom Chateaubriand has immortalized in his “Atala.”  Father Auberi prepared a map of Acadia, and also a memorandum of the boundaries of New France and New England in the year 1720.

The mission-station at Cape Breton was commenced in 1634, and Father Julian Perrault, a Jesuit, took up his residence there and gave religious instruction to the Micmacs, whom he found very attentive.  The Micmacs were a hardy race, of great stature.  Some of the men who were upwards of eighty years of age had not a single white hair.

Champlain gave to Cape Breton the name of St. Lawrence Island.  The name was originally given to the cape but it was afterwards applied to the island.  Bras d’Or was called Bibeaudock by the Indians, and Louisburg was commonly known as Port aux Anglais.  The Portuguese had formerly occupied the island, but they were forced to leave it on account of the temperature and other causes.  Nicholas Denys, who had been obliged to abandon Chedabucto, in Acadia, came to the island and founded Fort St. Pierre, which was taken from him in the year 1654 by Emmanuel le Borgne de Belle Isle, and by one Guilbault, a merchant of La Rochelle.  Denys then took up his residence, sometimes at Miscou, sometimes at Gaspe or at Nipisiguit.  His son Charles Denys, Sieur de Fronsac, had settled on the shores of the river Miramichi.

The first Jesuits who were invited to take charge of the Cape Breton mission were Fathers Vimont and de Vieux-Pont, who had been brought out by Captain Daniel, who, it will be remembered, lost a great deal of time in attacking the fort which had been built on the river du Grand Cibou by Stuart.  The two Jesuits and forty men were left here.  The Jesuits, however, returned to France in 1630.  Fathers Davost and Daniel were missionaries at Cape Breton in 1633, and when Champlain visited the place on May 5th of that year, he met the two Jesuits, who soon afterwards returned with him to Quebec.