Bear River
Bear River nestles deep down in a little valley about five miles from the sea on a river from which it takes its name. At low tide there is very little river to be seen—it is reduced to a tiny stream that seems to trickle with difficulty through vast stretches of mud. But when the tide does come up it alters the whole appearance, and the place seems to come to life again as the strong current pushes its way up—running far up the little streams, and beneath the houses, which are built out over the river bed, at the bridge, on high wooden gates—giving a wonderfully picturesque effect, and reflecting all shades of color. The town scrambles up the steep hills, which rise sharply on either side, and beautiful views of the winding river may be seen from almost any point, and quantities of cherry trees everywhere add to the picturesqueness—whether in blossom or laden with the ripe fruit.
Conclusion—Acadia Then and Now
The memory of the courageous heart-high peasantry that first peopled and made home of a wilderness, remains fresh in the present-day Acadia.
The garden-plots cleared upon the uplands near their homes, their orchards laid out in rugged rows, still bloom for us who know that country. We still find the roads leading to the dykes by the rivers, even traces of the trails originally reaching back to the wild pastures; the dykes upon which so much time and labor were expended season after season—an arduous work when Acadia’s population was yet so small. The wild luxurious beauty of the place to-day, its blossoms, its fruit, its vivid dunes, its picturesque water-ways, the daily romance of the rushing tide for which the little boats thirst on the sand hour by hour—bring back afresh the quaint pictures of its early days. The quiet grazing cattle might still be the hardy kine that lived through those early winters on the abundant after-feed of the settler’s dyked lands. Every aspect of the place, the almost hidden ruins here and there, Evangeline’s well, the rough stone cross that marks the grave of a village, the virility of the bronze Evangeline, make real the pathos of this people now scattered broadcast through America, in whose souls the love of their country, Acadia, is as potent now as then. Neither time nor the Deportation have caused them to lose their identity as a distinct people, for a quarter of a million in America are the same Acadians who went into exile from Nova Scotia from 1755 to 1763.
The Origin of “Evangeline”
There is a close connection between the story which supplied the basis of the poem, Evangeline, and the Acadian people. In 1838, Hawthorne entered in his Note-Books the following:
“H. L. C.—Heard from a French-Canadian a story of a young couple in Acadie. On their marriage day all the men of the Province were summoned to assemble in the church to hear a proclamation. When assembled, they were seized and shipped off to be distributed through New England, among them the new bridegroom. His bride set off in search of him, wandered about New England all her lifetime, and at last found her bridegroom on his deathbed. The shock was so great it killed her likewise.”