Gesner, inventor of kerosene. Over 200,000 tonnes of the mineral were shipped to Boston within 30 years. Large deposits of gypsum found eight kilometres (five miles) from the mining site were shipped around the globe as well. The Petitcodiac River was used as the primary means for transporting the minerals at the time. History Colonisation (1604–1698) The Petitcodiac River region was first settled by the Mi'kmaq, who used the river's upstream current as part of a portage route between Shubenacadie and a winter camp at the confluence of the Anagance and North rivers. The first Europeans arrived in early 1604, when a French expedition to Acadia (now Nova Scotia and New Brunswick), led by the explorer Pierre Dugua de Mons and accompanied by cartographer Samuel de Champlain and future Acadian governor Jean de Biencourt, sailed into the Bay of Fundy. Hoping to find an ideal site for a settlement, they passed Advocate Harbour and the Saint John River before Dugua chose to settle on Saint Croix Island in present-day Maine. Although they did not explore the Petitcodiac region, they returned to the coasts of eastern Nova Scotia, where they founded Port Royal. In 1676, Jacques Bourgeois, a colonist from the Nova Scotian settlement, settled in the area of Beaubassin (now the Tantramar Marshes). By 1685, its population had grown to 129, with 19 out of the 22 families living permanently in the region. Pierre Thibodeau, also from Port Royal, founded Chipody (now Shepody, New Brunswick) near Shepody Bay in 1698. At this time, the inhabitants often referred to the Petitcodiac, Memramcook, and Shepody River area as "Trois-Rivières" (Three Rivers) (not to be confused with Trois-Rivières, Quebec). Acadian History (1698–1763) The French and Indian War erupted in 1754 amid tensions between the British and the French over control of the Ohio Valley. Initially, the inhabitants of Acadia were uninvolved in the conflict because the French had already ceded the land to Britain under the Treaty of Utrecht (1713). The Acadians were asked to take an oath declaring complete fidelity toward the British monarch on several occasions, but they refused. At first, they were not punished for doing so. A declaration of neutrality was signed in 1730 and was accepted by Nova Scotia governor Richard Philipps. This earned the Acadians the nickname the "neutral French". At the outbreak of war in 1754, the British again demanded unconditional oaths of fealty, perceiving the