“Ah, boys,” said the doctor, mournfully, “how much of human anguish may we read there! how many broken hearts! how much despair appears before us in those remorseless figures! Think of the name of Hancock being associated with a thing like that. “Neutralls” they were—two hundred and thirty “neutralls” at so much per head. Perhaps among those poor exiles, contracted for at so much per head by that Boston firm, there was some Evangeline looking over the sea, with her white lips and her eyes of despair.
“Still,” continued the doctor, after some silence, “the English didn’t have it all their own way. There were several occasions in which the Aca-dians were able to baffle them. One place was at the head of the Bay of Fundy, the River Pelilcodiac. Here the French were in league with the Indians, as indeed they were throughout the whole of Canada and Acadie; and when a detachment of troops was sent there to capture them, they retreated to the woods. The troops made a descent at one place, where they found twenty-five women and children. These they were merciless enough to make prisoners. Then they went through the country devastating it, and seeking thus to ruin the poor fugitives. It was villanous work. They burned more than two hundred and fifty houses and a church. At last the French made an attack on them, and they were forced to retreat. Had the French shown a little more enterprise, they could have destroyed them; as it was, the troops got off without much loss. There was another instance when the French got the better of their enemies. It was a vessel that was carrying over two hundred of them from Annapolis to Carolina. The French rose, and got command of the vessel, and put into the River St. John. The English heard of it, and sent a vessel after them with British soldiers disguised as French. But the fugitives discovered the trick, and not being able to cope with their enemies, they set fire to the vessel, and escaped to the woods.
“There was a great deal of abominable cruelty in different parts. Wherever they could not make prisoners, they burned their houses, in the hope of starving them to death. Whole districts were thus devastated. The descendants of these peopie remember all this yet, and can tell many a tale of misery. Many of the exiles gradually worked their way back, and found new homes for themselves in other parts of the country, and their descendants are scattered all about the coasts of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. They are curiously like their ancestors. Simple, innocent, joyous, peaceful, there is but little crime among them; and though they are not so progressive as we are, yet they have other qualities which may compensate for the absence of our more practical faculties. They are certainly very stationary; so much so, indeed, that some acute observers declare that they have not advanced so much as their kindred in France. They say that our Aca-dians are more like the French peasantry of a hundred years ago than the French themselves are at the present day. This is particularly the case in the more remote districts, such as the Bay de Chaleur. I have often been there myself, and every time I visit one of their villages in that district, I recall some of the descriptions of the Grand Pré Acadians in Longfellow’s Evangeline.”
Here the doctor began to tell some anecdotes, and then went on speaking of other things, until at length he stopped in front of a rusty cannonball, which lay on a table in the middle of the room.
“Here,” said he, “is something which I received a few days ago, and I think it is almost equal to the Acadian plough.”
“What is it?”
“It’s a cannon-ball from Louisbourg; and though I don’t know, of course, for certain, yet I have made up my mind that it is a relic of the first siege.”