Of the
transports permitted," they were "to be allowed to carry their household
goods with them." They were also promised that families should not be
separated, and that the transportation should be made as easy as
possible.
Then they were declared prisoners, and the church became the guardhouse.
Ten men at a time were allowed to leave the building, to pack their
goods and assist in the preparations for departure; and when they
returned ten others were also permitted to leave for a time. While
Moncton was destroying Remsheg, Shediac, and other towns on the Gulf
coast, Handfield gathered up the French Annapolitans, and Murray those
about Windsor, putting them on shipboard; and on the 21st of October the
ships, with their wretched passengers, set sail. In the confusion and
hurry of embarkation some families were separated; and it is on this
fact that the story of Evangeline is founded.
Most of the exiles were scattered among the towns of Massachusetts; and
in the State House in Boston some curious old records relate to them,
one town desiring compensation "for keeping three French pagans", from
which it seems that there was still prejudice against them because of
their religion.
"From the cold lakes of the north to sultry southern Savannahs,"
to the region where
"On the banks of the Teche are the towns of St. Maur and St Martin,"
to the parish of Attakapas
"and the prairies of fair Opelousas"
in Louisiana, some of the exiles wandered. Their descendants live there
at the present time, and are known as Cajeans. Though sometimes harshly
treated in the towns where they were quartered, though shouldered off
from one village to another when one grew weary of or made excuses for
not maintaining them, the poor wanderers were mild, gentle, and
uncomplaining.
A writer in "Canadian Antiquities" says: "None speaks the tongue of
Evangeline; and her story, though true as it is sweet and sorrowful, is
heard no more in the scenes of her early days."
The way in which it came about that Longfellow wrote his poem was in
this wise: one day, when Hawthorne and a friend from Salem were dining
with the poet, the Salem gentleman remarked to the host, "I have been
trying to persuade Hawthorne to write a story based on a legend of
Acadie and still current there, - the legend of a girl who, in the
dispersion of the Acadians, was separated from her lover, and passed
her life in waiting and seeking for him, and only found him dying in a
hospital when both were old." The host, surprised that this romance did
not strike the fancy of the novelist, asked if he himself might use it
for a poem; and Hawthorne, readily assenting, promised not to attempt
the subject in prose until the poet had tried what he could do with it
in metrical form. No one rejoiced more heartily in the success of the
world-renowned poem than the writer who generously gave up an
opportunity to win fame from his working up of the sad theme.
Authorities differ widely regarding the number of persons expelled from
Acadia, many historians giving the estimate at seven thousand. In a
letter from Governor Lawrence to the governors of the different colonies
to which the exiles were sent, he says: "As their numbers amount to near
seven thousand persons, the driving them off with leave to go whither
they pleased would have doubtless strengthened Canada with so
considerable a number of inhabitants." Bryant says: "Seven thousand
probably represented with sufficient accuracy the total French
population of Acadia in 1755; but the entire number of the exiled did
not exceed, if Minot be correct, two thousand, of whom many
subsequently returned to Acadia."
Five years after the departure of the exiles a fleet of twenty-two
vessels sailed from Connecticut for Grand Pré with a large number of
colonists, who took possession of the deserted farms. They found sixty
ox carts and yokes, while on the edge of woods of the inland country and
in sheltered places heaps of bones told of cattle which had perished of
starvation and cold after their owners were forced to leave them to such
a fate. A few straggling families of the Acadians were also found, who
had escaped from the search of the soldiers, and had lived in hiding in
the wilds of the back country for five years, and during that time had
not tasted bread.
CLARE
"Only along the shore of the mournful and misty Atlantic
Linger a few Acadian peasants, whose fathers from exile
Wandered back to their native land to die in its bosom.
In the fisherman's cot the wheel and the loom are still busy,
Maidens still wear their Norman caps and their kirtles of homespun,
And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline's story."
Resolved to see these curious "Clare settlements," extending for fifty
miles on the coast, where descendants of the French Acadians live in
peace and unity, we reluctantly take our departure at last from dear old
Annapolis, which has been our restful haven so long, and where we have
been reviving school days in studying history and geography seasoned
with poetry and romance. Although it was expected that the W. C. R. R.
would be completed from Yarmouth to Annapolis by the latter part of
1876, we are pleased to find that this is not the case, and that we
shall have to take steamer, train, and carriage to our destination;
anticipating that any place so out of the beaten track must be
interesting.
The French settlements, a succession of straggling hamlets, were
founded by descendants of the exiles, who, -
"a raft as it were from the shipwrecked nation,...
Bound by the bonds of a common belief and a common misfortune,"
drifted back to "L'Acadie" in 1763, the year of the treaty between
France and England.
