'The Indians,' I repeated. 'Father Bourg——'
But I could say no more.
Chapter XIV
Victory and Reward
It was three weeks later. There were fully five thousand people on the river in boats or canoes, and about our home. The great search was over; the governor had been found.
The honour of finding him had fallen upon two Indians and myself, who, on the tenth day of the search, had somewhat unexpectedly come upon him sitting on a knoll eating winter-green berries and fern-bulbs.
He was somewhat reduced in flesh and strength; but as the season was late June, and the weather had been dry and warm, he had not suffered materially. We conveyed him to the stream, where a large and comfortable canoe was secured; in this he had been safely brought down the stream, then up the river to our home; and now, three days after this, the morning of the day had arrived when the whole St. John was to give expression to its feelings of joy and gratitude over the finding of the governor, in a grand and loyal celebration of the event.
Before entering upon the search, Father Bourg had sent out to all parts of the province swift runners to call the Indians to the St. John. It so happened, that the day before that set for the celebration, many of the tribes from the remoter sections had just arrived. From the far Restigouche and Madawaska; from the Miramichi and the Richibucto; from the sandy reaches and pine-studded bluffs that jutted far into the broad Grand Lake; from Shediac, from the beautiful Kennebecassis and the still Neripeis; from Mispec and Lepreau; from Passamaquoddy and Bocabec, even from the Penobscot and the surrounding country far over the American line—from every corner of the land to which the news had run as on the wings of the wind—there came the Indians, expectant, anxious, interested, in swarms like bees that seek a new hive, in flocks like birds that fly north in spring.
Nor were the Indians all. The city had sent up its councillors, its merchants, its shipowners, its fine ladies who had graced courts in Britain or old colonial Boston, its handsome men, cold, dignified, and English in tone and manner. The French were also there from the Jemseg and Sainte Anne's; 'old inhabitants' of the river who had long since successfully striven to wipe off the stain of their treasonable correspondence with Washington and the government of Massachusetts; several 'refugees,' now anxious to show the loyalty they had smothered during the war for the sake of self; honest men who had foolishly been deluded into following Jonathan Eddy to an attack on old Fort Cumberland in '76—all these, as well as Loyalists of '83, in countless numbers, of all classes and conditions, were there on that great day in July.