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    In 1884 the French villages on the peninsula possessed a variety of domestic animals which would have produced fresh and, after the purchase of bulk salt, salt meat. In 1884 the five Mainland families shared 14 cows and 31 sheep. These animals would have provided milk, butter and wool which was made into clothing. In Cape St. George at the same date there were 12 milch cows, 89 sheep and two pigs. One must assume that the settlers had bought their livestock from the St. George's Acadians.

    These were fishing villages. At Cape St. George in 1884, 1503 quintals of cod were salted and 41 kegs of herring produced. Mainland, a smaller village, had produced 195 quintals of cod, four kegs of herring and nine of caplin.

    The study of successive censuses shows a slow but steady growth in the population of each village, given the variation in defining the communities. In 1891, Mainland had a population of 33, rising to 110 in 1911, at which date eleven people admitted to having been born in a foreign country. Cape St. George in the same period passed from 147 in 1884 to 75 in 1891, and 99 in 1901. The figure is different again in 1911, but the variations are due in the main to changes in the boundaries of census sub-divisions. Thus one may conclude that the figure of 147 given for Cape St. George in 1884 also included the populations of Little Gardens, Green Gardens and Big Gardens, Cape St. George, Degras and Red Brook. The three first named "villages" are all part of the present community of Cape St. George but they appear at different dates as independent villages. With these divisions in mind, the total population of Cape St. George in 1911 was 203,243 if one adds the village of Red Brook. This total was spread among 35 families.