The English Begin Hostilities on the Sea: Grand Pre and Nova Scotia

Consternation suddenly filled every household in Grand Pre. Nineteen hundred and twenty-three men, women and children were driven on board British vessels at the point of the bayonet, from Grand Pre alone. The men and boys assembled at the church, went first; the sisters, wives and daughters had to wait for other transports. They marched from the church to the water's edge, some in sullen despair, others with hands clasped and eyes uplifted, praying and weeping, and others singing hymns, while on each side of the sad procession was a row of women and children on their knees imploring blessings upon the heads of the dear ones.

The fate of the people of Grand Pre was the fate of all. The wrath of the English excited against the French for their long and cruel warfare upon the frontier settlements of New England, with their savage allies, was poured out in full measure upon the heads of this innocent pastoral people, who had never voluntarily lifted sword nor spear nor firebrand to harm the English. Many, forewarned, tried to escape. A hundred families near Annapolis fled to the woods, where they were hunted by the troops like noxious wild beasts. Many were shot dead by watching sentinels. An English officer wrote in cool blood: "Our soldiers hate these French Catholics, and if they can find a pretext to kill them, they will." Some hid in the forests and among the rocks in remote parts of the peninsula; some found their way to Quebec, and many were sheltered from the English and fed in the wigwams of the so-called savages. But seven thousand were borne away by English ships, and scattered among the English colonies. To prevent their return, their villages and rural homes in Nova Scotia were laid waste by flames, and their live-stock was used by English officials. A large, beautiful and fertile tract of country became a solitude and desolation-a precious offering upon the altar of greed, hatred, bigotry and fear.

The sufferings of the Acadians were acute in exile. Many families, separated at the outset by the cruel arrangements for their transportation, were never re-united, and the English colonial newspapers contained advertisements seeking information about parts of dismembered families. They were dropped along the shores of the colonies from the Penobscot to the Savannah without resources, and ignorant of the language of the people among whom they were cast excepting in South Carolina, where they received great kindness from the Huguenot families there. They abhorred the almshouse, and dreaded servitude in English families. They yearned for their native land with sadness as intense as that of the Hebrews on the borders of the rivers of Babylon; and many wandered through the forests to Louisiana and Canada-men, women and children-sheltered by bush-camps and partaking of the hospitalities of the Indians, that they might rest under French dominion. Some families actually went to sea in open boats, to find their way back to Acadie, and coasting along the shores to New England, were there met by orders from Nova Scotia to stop all returning fugitives.

Many touching stories are told of parents seeking and finding children; of children seeking and finding parents, and of the wanderings of lovers in search of each other, and of unexpected meetings. This portion of the history of these captive exiles lends beauty and pathos to many a page of Longfellow's Evangeline. When I was in Montreal, many years ago, the following well-authenticated story was told to me:

A beautiful maiden, daughter of a wealthy citizen of Grand Pre, was to be married in the church there, to a son of the local magistrate of that village, on the day when Winslow pronounced the doom of the colony. They were dressed for the nuptials that were to be celebrated immediately after the conference with the English officers, in the presence of the "old and young men and lads of ten years," there assembled. Alas! the young man was among the prisoners then made and doomed to perpetual exile. As he passed to the ship in the sorrowful procession, he kissed the kneeling, weeping, heart-broken maiden, and said hurriedly: "Adele, trust in God and all will be well!" He was landed at the city of New York, and made his way to the St. Lawrence, where he became a trader with the Indians. The maiden and her mother followed a fortnight later, and were also landed at New York. They accepted the hospitalities of a Huguenot family far up the Hudson River. Soon afterward a band of Mohawks, because of some affront, made a raid into the settlement, and the maiden was carried away captive by an old chief who led the band, into the deep wilderness of the Saeondaga.