till it was entering upon the period preceding the Deportation. A thousand Acadians departed from Minas about 1750, so that in 1755 there were about three thousand remaining in the two parishes.

Leading Up to the Expulsion

The French colonists of Nova Scotia were constantly subjected to attacks by British colonial forces. In 1613, Port Royal, again in 1654, La Have, and in 1700, Minas were razed and completely destroyed by these armies. The older Acadians and their sons, accustomed to the conditions of the country, quickly recovered from these attacks. The later comers, however, were not so well fitted to cope with the difficulties of the new life, and the new names died out or did not increase so quickly as the original stock, the hardy, thrifty peasantry from the west coast of France.

These repeated expeditions against the French colonies were the outcome of strong inimical feeling both at home and abroad. The British colonies of America greatly outnumbered the French of Canada and the Province, and the desire to remove the Acadians from the peninsula, and thus break the backbone of the French colonial enterprise, had been growing for several years.

This sorry task finally fell to the lot of Lieutenant-Colonel Winslow, under the specific orders of Governor Lawrence of Halifax. In August, 1755, he came with three hundred men, and in conjunction with Captain Murray, then in command of Fort Edward, arranged the details for the capture and removal of the people.

At the time of Winslow’s arrival with his troops in ships, the priests of Grand-Pré and Canard had been removed to Halifax as prisoners. All the guns owned by the Acadians had been seized, yet the coming of the troops and their use of the church and burying-grounds as an encampment did not arouse suspicion as to the purpose of the visit. The people had frequently seen both French and English soldiers quartered in their country.

The Acadians were gathering their harvests when Winslow arrived from Cumberland and marched from Gaspereau Landing to the church at Grand-Pré. As we read his own account of that stay, we realize his repugnance at the harsh duty before him—the task of using military force to expel a quiet, happy people from its home-place—particularly in the face of the total inadequacy of ships provided for the purpose.

As the winter set in, the miseries of the people bore heavily upon him, and his feeling in the matter is thinly concealed in the account of the affair as set down in his Journal.

From this same Journal we learn that he used the Presbytery as his headquarters, and that in the churchyard the tents of the soldiers were pitched; that the camp was protected by a pallisade, and that full military discipline was enforced.

The Deportation

The poem, Evangeline, tells the story of the 5th of September, 1755, and what followed.

As the crops were to be gathered early in that dry year, this date was fixed upon for summoning the men and boys of the district to the church to receive their brutal orders—to hear the proclamation declaring them prisoners of the Crown; their homes, their lands, their holdings, confiscate. It was a bitter time for both those who spoke and heard. It is not difficult to imagine the emotion of Lieutenant-Colonel Winslow, as he delivered his blighting message of exile to these strong sunburnt fathers and sons of Minas, anxiously waiting his words.

When Winslow departed from Grand-Pré in November, all the outlying villages had been destroyed. Canard’s church, the mills, houses, and barns were in ashes. Except for the shelterless animals that wandered about close upon starvation, nothing remained. The inhabitants, carrying with them as many of their household effects as the weather and the cramped accommodations of the ships would permit, had gone. A pitiful season followed. The pathetic scenes of the deportation are almost indescribable. Through military necessity, perhaps fear of insubordination, parent was separated from child, lover from lover, brother from brother. As many as possible were loaded immediately upon the waiting vessels. Six hundred and fifty were quartered about the villages of the Le Blancs, three hundred of whom were embarked in December. A week later, the remainder were sent off, and the houses they had occupied destroyed. The church which the soldiers had used as quarters was probably the last building to stand.

Two Interesting Incidents

Two rather interesting incidents in connection with the Deportation which have come to notice, follow.

Although all records of births, deaths, etc., were destroyed or in part lost, one of the Piziquid exiles carried the deed of his grandfather’s property with him to Philadelphia. The writer saw this document in 1920, still held by a descendant as a precious relic.

René Le Blanc, mentioned above as figuring in history, came to notice at this time in the following manner. Winslow, evidently touched by the man’s age and gentleness of character, made a special request to headquarters that Le Blanc be permitted to return to his home in Marshfield, but the old man was sent to New York with his wife and two children, out of the twenty of his family. His grandchildren numbered over a hundred. Later he found three more of his children in Philadelphia, where René died.

The Acadians were scattered throughout the British colonies. A few who escaped, wandered over the country to be later apprehended and deported. A number more found their way unharmed into the wilderness of New Brunswick, but by 1763 there were less than 1,500 who had escaped the removal.

There is a tradition based upon traces of dwellings found in the woods south of New Minas, that a few escaped Acadians lived there through the following winter. These few either were captured or later joined those retreating into New Brunswick.

After the expulsion of the French settlers, Great Britain, to induce settlers to come to the country of Horton and Cornwallis from the older English colonies, sent out an invitation with a description of the country:—

“One hundred thousand acres, of which the country has produced wheat, rye, barley, oats, hemp, flax, etc., without failure for the last century; and another hundred thousand acres are cleared and stocked with English grass, planted orchards and embellished with gardens, the whole so intermixed that every individual farmer might have a proportionate quantity of plowed land, grassland, and woodland.”

This appeared in 1759. In June, the next year, after the country was viewed by agents from New England, the people came to occupy the vacated lands. With the assistance of the Acadian prisoners remaining at Fort Edward, the dykes were repaired, and the country began to thrive with new life upon the grave of the old.

The last written trace of the Acadians in a body, appears in an order issued from Halifax in 1762, causing one hundred and thirty of them to be sent from Hants and King’s counties, where they were working for English inhabitants.

For the English settlers, the farm lands were divided into hundred-acre lots. New roads were laid out, and the old Acadian landmarks are now gradually disappearing. A single farm to-day perhaps occupies the site of a whole village of Acadian times. Willows still mark roads or the buried foundations of their homes. Their apple trees yet bear fruit, sometimes found among the wild, recent growth, or in pastures. Roads and dykes may be traced, and numerous cellars in out-of-the-way places where they have not been disturbed.

In the history of the English colonies during the next