The soil, an open sandy loam, deep red in colour, which was slightly exhausted at the beginning of the cen tury by repeated crops of cereals, has been renewed by the application of fertilizers, mainly mussel mud dredged from the bays and tidal streams. All the staple crops are grown—espe cially oats, potatoes and turnips. Wheat is raised only for local consumption. The total area of field crops in 1926 was 519,693 acres. Cattle and pigs flourish. In the last years of the 19th cen tury the introduction of co-operation gave a great impetus to the manufacture of butter and cheese. The first cheese factory was opened in 1892, and the first creamery in 1894. Fruit is raised less extensively than in Nova Scotia, but enough is grown to supply the local market, and apples of good quality are exported.
Though smaller in value than those of any other sea-board province, the fisheries of Prince Edward Island are, in proportion to the total population, extremely productive. Lob sters are an important catch together with smelts, herring, cod and mackerel. The total value of the fisheries in 1926 was
In 1912 the local government acquired control of the oyster areas. Replanting has taken place, but with very little success, on leased sites.
The land with natural forest of birch, beech, maple, pine, spruce, cedar and other woods, covers 356,996 acres. The building of wooden ships, a flourishing trade till about 1886, has died away. The packing of pork and of lobsters is carried on near Charlottetown, and small factories have been established for the manufacture of boots and shoes, tobacco, con densed milk, etc., but the great bulk of the manufactured goods Used is imported from the other provinces. Silver fox breeding is extensively carried on and pelts are sent to the U.S.A. and to Europe. Foxes are also sold for breeding purposes.
The Prince Edward Island branch of the Intercolonial Railway, runs from Souris and Elmira in the east to Tignish in the north-west, with branches to Georgetown, Mur ray Harbour, Charlottetown and Cape Traverse. The railway is owned by the State, 276 m. being operated in 1926. Nearly all the villages and country districts are connected by telephone. Ice impedes winter navigation in Northumberland straits and at Charlottetown from mid-December to early April, but, thanks to ice breakers, daily communications, including a rail-car ferry, have been maintained since the winter of 1917-18.
Jacques Cartier sighted Prince Edward Island in June 1534. Later it was called Ile St. Jean until renamed after the Duke of Kent in 1708. Under the French little attention was paid to the island prior to the Peace of Utrecht, when they began to make efforts to colonize it ; and the creation of a feudal pro prietorship gave to the French settlers a precarious existence. In 1758 the island, with its capital at Port La Joie (Charlottetown), was occupied by a British force under Lord Rollo, and a partial ex pulsion of the French inhabitants took place, comparable with that of the Acadians from the mainland of Nova Scotia. Ceded finally to England in 1763, it became a separate government ten years later. During this ten years an unfortunate land settlement was made, dividing the island among a few large proprietors, often non-resident; and in consequence no satisfactory cultivation fol lowed, whilst the inflow of American loyalists and Scottish immi grants brought constant friction between proprietors and settlers.
In 1864 a conference met at Charlottetown to consider a pos sible union of the maritime provinces ; and the visit of a dele gation from Canada widened this into the general conference on confederation which brought into existence the Dominion of Canada. The strong local patriotism and prosperous self-sufficing condition of the island defeated the attempt to include it in the greater union; but by 1873 the offer of better terms and assist ance in railway difficulties induced it to come in. Two years later the long-standing question of land tenure was settled by a Land Purchase Act, which compelled the proprietors to sell their great holdings. After entry into the confederation, the popula tion of Prince Edward Island grew more slowly and soon began to decrease steadily, largely because of emigration over the bor der to the United States. The decrease reached its maximum in the census of 1911.
See Canada and its Provinces (Toronto, 1914) ; A. B. Warburton, A History of Prince Edward Island,
(St. John, N.B.,
; D. C. Harvey, The French Regime in Prince Edward Island (New Haven, 1926).