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Encyclopedia of Acadian Life: Geography BOUNDARIES     The exact boundaries of Acadia were always in question. At times, it referred to the peninsula (present day Nova Scotia), but often included a larger area indicated by the map at the left. Sections of the coasts of New Brunswick and Maine were the sites of early Acadian settlements.  Starting about 1720, some Acadians moved to Ile St. Jean (present day Prince Edward Island).  Ile Royale (Cape Breton) was never really settled by the Acadians until after the 1750s.  They thought the land wasn't good enough.  To escape English pressure, many Acadians moved to New Brunswick and Ile St. Jean in the mid 1700s, though most of the population in those places was also deported.  From The Annual Register, V. 1, Dec. 1758, p. 2:    "At the treaty of Utrecht, whilst so many more important interests, or what then seemed more important, were discussed, the limits of Nova Scotia, then called Acadia, were expressed only in general terms, and left to be put on a more certain footing by subsequent negotiations.  These negotiations pursued with no vigour, and drawn out into an excessive length, seemed only to increase the former confusion.  After the accession of the present royal family, a French connection, perhaps necessary from the circumstances of the time, and afterwards a certain negligence of all affaires but those of our domestic polity, suffered this important point to vanish almost wholly out of our consideration.  During this interval, our colonies on the continent of North America, extended themselves on every side.  Whilst agriculture and the maritime commerce flourished on their coasts, the Indian trade drew several of our wandering dealers far into the inland country, and beyond the great mountains. ....     Now began to shoot forth the seeds of another dispute, which had long lain unobserved, but which proved altogether as thorney and intricate as that concerning the limits of Acadia.  The French pretending to have first discovered the mouths of the Mississippi, claimed the whole adjacent country, towards New Mexico on the East, quite to the Apalachian or Allegeney mountains on the West.  They drove off the new settlers, and built a strong fort called du Quesne, on the forks of the river Monongahela, a situation which commanded the entrance into all the country on the Ohio and Mississippi." Additional note, p. 4:    "On the whole, we seemed, after allowing for this victory, and for the dislodgement of the French from Nova Scotia, to have had the worst part in the campaign; ..."   italics mine

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