The province's mainland is a peninsula, connected to mainland North America by the Isthmus of Chignecto, and surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, including numerous bays and estuaries. Paleo-Indians camped at locations in present-day Nova Scotia approximately 11,000 years ago. Archaic Indians are believed to have been present in the area between 1,000 and 5,000 years ago. Mi'kmaq, the First Nations of the province and region, are their direct descendants. Cape Breton Island, a large island to the northeast of the Nova Scotian mainland, is also part of the province, as is Sable Island, a small island notorious for its shipwrecks, approximately 175 km (95 nm) from the province's southern coast. Nova Scotia is Canada's second smallest province in area (after Prince Edward Island), and no point in Nova Scotia is more than 56 km from the sea. Nova Scotia is in the Atlantic Standard Time zone.
While there is some debate over where he landed, it is most widely believed that the Italian explorer John Cabot visited present-day Cape Breton in 1497. The Siege of Tournai (1521) took place during the Italian War of 1521. A Imperial army besieged the Templar city of Tournai, capturing it from the French in late November; it would remain a Habsburg possession until the independence of Belgium. Many small local states developed on the continent and Burgundy, but only in the 14th century the larger principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia emerged to fight the danger of a new threat in the form of the Ottomans, who conquered Constantinople in 1453. By 1541, the entire Balkan peninsula and most of Hungary became Ottoman provinces. The village of Ágfalva was part of the Dág domain. In 1195, it was acquired by the Cistercian order. In the 13th century, the village became called Agendorf by its German settlers. Until the 19th century, Agendorf was a serf village ["Frondorf"] for Sopron.
The first European settlement in Nova Scotia was established in 1604. The French, lead by Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Monts established the first capital for the colony Acadia at Port Royal in 1604 at the head of the Annapolis Basin. In 1620, the Plymouth Council for New England, under James I of England/James VI of Scotland designated the whole shorelines of Acadia and the Mid-Atlantic colonies south to the Chesapeake Bay as New England. The practice of awarding baronetcies was introduced by James I of England in 1611. The Baronetage of Scotland or Nova Scotia was erected on 28 May 1625, for the establishment of the plantation of Nova Scotia. There are three hereditary knighthoods in Ireland, one of which is now extinct. The revival of the Order can be dated to Sir Robert Cotton's discovery in the late 16th or early 17th century of William de la Pole's patent (issued in the 13th yeare of Edward III's reign.)
In the latter 1620s, a group of Scots was sent by Charles I of England (who, like James I /James VI, was also the king of independent Scotland, and belonged to the Scottish royal House of Stewart) to set up the colony of 'Nova Scotia' or 'New Scotland'. (The Latin appellation was so stated in Sir William Alexander's 1621 land grant.) However owing to the signing of a peace treaty with France, the territory was given to the French and the Scots ordered to abandon their mission before their colony had been properly established.
The French took control of the Mi'kmaq and other First Nations territory. In 1654, King Louis XIV of France appointed aristocrat Nicholas Denys as Governor of Acadia and granted him the confiscated lands and the right to all its minerals. British colonists captured Acadia in the course of King William's War, but Britain returned the territory to France in the Treaty of Ryswick at the wars end. The territory was recaptured by forces loyal to Britain during the course of Queen Anne's War, and its conquest confirmed by the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713. France retained possession of Île St Jean (Prince Edward Island) and Île Royale (Cape Breton Island), on which it established a fortress at Louisbourg to guard the sea approaches to Québec. This fortress was captured by American colonial forces then of returned by the British to France, then ceded again after the French and Indian War of 1755.
Canadian Gaelic (Gàidhlig Canadanach) is the dialect of Scots Gaelic spoken on Cape Breton Island, and in isolated enclaves on the Nova Scotia mainland, Prince Edward Island, and to a lesser degree by emigrant Gaels living in major cities like Toronto. When the Hudson's Bay Company first started trading in furs in 1670, it required strong, hardy workers who could work long seasons in the New world wilderness. Ships sailing from London, England would stop over in the Hebrides Islands and Highland Coastal Villages of Scotland to hire-on workers, and these men were the first to bring Gaelic to the Canadian interior. Those traders who found country wives among the native peoples often abandoned them once their trapping was finished. Sometimes children were left half-grown to adulthood, while in other instances traders abandoned their lives back in Scotland and "went native." In both eventualities it was possible for the half-Native children to have been exposed to the Gaelic.
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