THE RIGHT AND THE WRONG OF IT
"For my own part," said Martine, "I am just as firmly on the side of the
Acadians as ever. They may have been stupid about the oath, and probably
they were too easily influenced by Le Loutre, but they had been handed
from England to France and from France to England so often that I don't
see how they could consider themselves English when really they were
French."
"You must have had Irish ancestors as well as French," said Amy, with a
laugh. "Your remark sounds almost like a bull."
"Well, I mean to take the bull by the horns," replied Martine; "you can
blame any one else for the deportation, but not the poor Acadians. They
certainly did not in the least know who they were. But I am glad," she
concluded, "that you have taken so much trouble to explain it all to me,
Miss Amy Redmond, for I have never before understood why the English
were so cruel."
"It is surely a fact"--Amy spoke decidedly--"that the English Government
would have preferred to keep the Acadians their subjects. They needed
them to supply provisions, and to man their garrisons. With their
knowledge of woodcraft, and of the Indians, the Acadians would have been
invaluable on the English side."
"But you couldn't expect them to fight against the French, who were
their own flesh and blood!" and Martine cast a glance of reproach at her
friend.
"That, of course, was the chief point in the dispute. The Acadians
claimed to be neutrals, when really they were sending their produce to
Louisbourg, or to the French in other places, to help them continue
their war with the English. Yet they expected the protection of the
English when in trouble, and they always had it, although their only tax
was the tithe that they spent for the support of their own church."
Amy and Martine were sitting on the broad sands of Evangeline's beach,
looking toward Blomidon, and waiting for Priscilla, who had strolled
some distance away. They had driven over from Wolfville in the omnibus,
and were to have an hour or two at the edge of the Basin before they
need return. In the midst of the discussion Priscilla rejoined them.
"More Acadians!" she cried with a smile. "Let me ask you a favor--"
"To say no more about them?"
"No, not that. When we leave the neighborhood of Wolfville we shall
think of other things; so, once for all I, for one, should be glad to
have the whole story straightened out. We know what happened after the
expulsion, for we've been at Clare, and we know about the earliest
French; we heard all that at Annapolis. But now, my dear Miss Amy
Redmond, you have been looking into this thing thoroughly, and if--"
"Yes," urged Martine, "if you'll please tell us what happened in the
years between, it will save our reading, and you will make it much
clearer to us than any book."
"Down with your flattery," rejoined Amy; "yet as there's no time like
the present, I will tell the story briefly. We might as well pass over
the various transfers of Acadia from France to England, and from England
to France, before 1710. But the conquest of Annapolis by General
Nicholson in that year gave Acadia finally to England. The change of
Government was confirmed by the treaty of Utrecht in 1713, and all
Acadians who did not wish to be subject to England were given time to
leave. Those who remained were required to take an oath of fidelity to
King George, and England on her part agreed to let them exercise their
own religion under their own priests. In spite of these arrangements
many of these simple-minded Acadians still considered themselves
subjects of the King of France, even up to the time of the expulsion.
Perhaps the priests encouraged them in this and delayed their taking the
oath of allegiance. By 1730, however, nearly all had signed the oath,
and if war had not broken out later between France and England there
might have been no further trouble. But when it was found that many of
the Acadians, instead of remaining neutral, were joining with French and
Indians in attacks on the English, Lord Cornwallis, the Governor at
Halifax, required them to take the oath again. This was necessary
because a new generation had grown up who had been encouraged by the
priests and politicians in enmity to England. Most of them would not
take the new oath, because it required them to defend Acadia against the
enemies of England, and this, they said, would oblige them to fight
against the French, their kinsmen. In 1751 there was a large immigration
of Acadians to Ile St. Jean, then in the hands of the French. These
exiles suffered much, but they were encouraged to hope that when France
reconquered Acadia they could go back to their deserted homes.
"Cornwallis continued firm, and at last the Acadians were informed that
all who would not take the oath must leave Nova Scotia. In the very
beginning deputies from the Acadian villages had gone to Halifax to say
that it would be impossible to take the oath and ask permission to
dispose of their farms and leave the country."
"Why didn't they go? It would have been so much better in the end."
"It is hard to say, Martine. Friends of the Acadians claim that the
English put all kinds of obstacles in their way, first refusing them
transportation in English vessels, then preventing their buying rigging
at Louisbourg for vessels of their own. But, as I have said, more than a
thousand did eventually pass over to the Ile St. Jean, and some of these
took part in the defence of Beausejour."
"Well, they were surely very conscientious," said Martine, "for they
knew that by taking the oath and becoming British subjects they could
live in comfort on their farms. It was very brave in them to choose
poverty and exile."
"It might seem braver, if behind it all they had not had the feeling
that the time was near when the French would drive the British from Nova
Scotia and so restore them to their own."
"It was all that Le Loutre, I suppose," commented Priscilla; "he was
responsible for so much."
"Whether he was really as bad as some represent him would be hard to
say; but this missionary to the Micmacs had great influence, and it was
all used against the English. We pity the Acadians, but we ought to pity
the innocent English settlers on the outskirts of Halifax, and at other
places, who were tortured and murdered by the Indians whom Le Loutre and
other French had stirred up. Now, to keep to our story without making it
too long, the Acadians dallied and dallied. They did not take the oath
of allegiance, and they did not seem to be preparing to leave the
country. At last Lieutenant-Governor Lawrence gave them only a short
time to decide.
"Well, the French and Indian War continued, and the English were
generally more successful than the French. At last Beausejour was
captured, chiefly by the help of a body of troops commanded by Colonel
Winslow. These men were New Englanders,--sturdy, conscientious men from
country towns, a large number of whom had been farmers and small
tradesmen.
"Beausejour fell the middle of June, and it may interest you, Priscilla,
to know that Le Loutre, rather than fall into the hands of the English,
fled to Quebec, where he was coldly received. Later he went to France,
and died in obscurity.
"In July, 1755, a memorial was sent to Lieutenant-Governor Lawrence,
signed by twenty-five leading Acadians, on the subject of the oath, and
requesting the return of their guns that the Government had obliged them
to give up on account of their sympathy with the French. When Governor
Lawrence sent for the signers to come to Halifax, fifteen appeared
before them. He pointed out the insincerity of their memorial, and when
he desired them to sign the oath they flatly refused. Finally, on the
twenty-eighth of July, these deputies and others from Annapolis appeared
before the Governor and Council, and although warned that the
consequences would be serious, they declined to take any oath differing
from that taken under Governor Phillips; that is, they were unwilling to
bear arms for the English against the French."
"That, I must say, seems noble to me, since they knew what risks they
were running," cried Martine.
"That is to an extent a matter of opinion. But their refusal decided
Governor Lawrence what to do. He immediately wrote to Colonel Monckton
that enough transports had been ordered up the Bay for the Acadians, and
that he must remove them. He was told that all the property of the
Acadians was now forfeited to the Crown, and that they would be allowed
to take on board ship only their money and their household goods."
"It is a wonder he left them anything," said Martine, sarcastically.
"He wasn't absolutely heartless, and he gave careful directions for
provisioning the transports for their long journey."
"I am sorry that it was a New Englander who had to carry out these cruel
orders," said Priscilla.
"Yes, it fell on Lieutenant-Colonel Winslow, and a detachment of those
New England troops that had fought at Beausejour to attend to the
deportation at Grand Pre. It was Tuesday, the second of September, when
he ordered all the male inhabitants from ten years upwards to assemble
on the following Friday in the church at Grand Pre, to hear what his
Majesty had to say to them. Then--but really I think one gets the story
better from Longfellow. It is from this point that we have our
sympathies so deeply touched, and we are willing to forget that the
simple-minded Acadians had brought much of their trouble on themselves."
"It doesn't make their sufferings less, even if they were to blame,"
interposed Martine.
"That is true. They may have been less peaceable and amiable than they
have been represented by the poet, and their homes and their ways of
living may have been less--less--"
"AEsthetic," suggested Priscilla, with a smile.
"Well, aesthetic, then. But all this does not alter the fact that they
deserved the greatest pity. Many of them, indeed, honestly believed that
they were still the subjects of Louis XV, and that to take the oath
required by the English would be a great crime."
"What they needed was a really good and disinterested man to advise
them; some one like Paul Mascarene, who was partly French, and yet could
get the English point of view," said Priscilla. "Some way I can't feel
that the English were altogether disinterested--although," she concluded
hastily, "I am more on the English side than the French,--and I am very
sorry that it was a man of Plymouth descent who carried away the
Acadians from Grand Pre."
This, in view of Priscilla's previous prejudice against the Acadians,
was really a very liberal statement, as the others realized.
"It should console you, then, to remember that Colonel Winslow was
simply a soldier acting under orders, and we have no reason to think
that he used needless cruelty. 'It hurts me to hear their weeping and
wailing,' he said in his journal, and this shows that he had a tender
heart."
"But I can't see why families were separated, and why all these Acadians
couldn't have been sent up to Upper Canada to the other French;" and
Martine sighed deeply.
"You forget that France and England were still at war, and to have put
so many able-bodied men at the service of France would indeed have been
madness. Governor Lawrence explained all this in letters to the
governors of the different colonies to whom he sent the Acadians. They
were sent to as many different colonies as possible, and broken up into
small groups, so that they could not unite in any plan for return."
"I suppose that Governor Lawrence thought it better for them to become
public charges,--people who had always been perfectly independent."
"Oh, well, there is a bright side. Many of them never lost hope for a
minute, and even those who went to the French West Indies soon began to
plan to get back to Acadia. In the end, after the Peace, they began to
take the oath, and receive their new grants of land, and since then
England has had no more devoted subjects--as we saw for ourselves in
Clare."
"All the same," said Martine, "this must be a haunted region around
here, and I can tell you I should hate to walk through Grand Pre alone
after dark, or even drive through."
"Speaking of haunted regions," said Priscilla, "though I don't know why
I think of him just now, what do you suppose has happened to Mr. Knight?
No one has seen him since our adventure."
"_We_ haven't seen him," responded Amy, "but I sincerely hope that he is
in the land of the living. I must have forgotten to tell you that mamma
had a letter from him the day after our drive, telling us that he had
been suddenly called to New Brunswick, and expressing his regret that
probably he should not see us again."
"That must have been a great relief to him," murmured Martine, "that
call to New Brunswick. Otherwise he might have had to see us again."
"Oh, he expressed great regret at having to go without doing so."
"That was kind in him, even if it wasn't quite sincere. It is my own
opinion that he went away on purpose. He couldn't bear to see us again
when he remembered how his hair was tumbled--not a sign of the
parting--and his cuffs wet. But _we_ remember, don't we, and I hardly
blame him for running away."
"Martine, my dear child, you are very absurd. No man could possibly be
so vain."
"Especially, my dear Miss Amy Redmond, one whose business is the
instruction of youth," rejoined Martine, flippantly.
"I had a letter from Eunice this morning," interposed Priscilla, "and
she said that Balfour had had a letter from Mr. Knight, who thanked him
for the introduction he had given him to us. She said that he had
written about our trip to Grand Pre, and was surprised to find Americans
so much interested in Acadian history."
"That is all very well. People always write that way after a letter of
introduction; they feel that they must. You cannot persuade me that Mr.
Knight had any other reason for running to New Brunswick except to avoid
us."
"Perhaps he wished to escape our thanks for the rescue."
"Rescue!" Martine's tone was scornful enough. "We weren't in the least
little bit of danger."
"We weren't exactly comfortable," responded Priscilla. "I was thankful
enough, I can tell you, when Mr. Knight and the dory came in sight. Why,
we might have had to stay there for hours."
"Oh, no; there would have been some way. The tide goes out as rapidly as
it flows in."
"Well, leaving out individuals, who certainly have been very kind to
us," interposed Amy, "considering that in their hearts many of them
think of us as 'those Yankees,' Wolfville has been fairly worth while."
"Yes," replied Martine, "though I haven't been able to paint Blomidon, I
have captured the Grand Pre willows. The subject may be trite, but I've
managed to give it a touch of individuality by adding a tree or two and
lopping off a branch or so, here and there, and this will set some
persons guessing as to what my view is."
"Oh, Martine!"
"But the artistic reputation of the party is kept up by your mother's
sketches. That one of the marshes is simply perfect. No one who had not
seen the colors could believe that nature up here in the north is so
brilliant. The water is so blue,--and she has caught it exactly,--and
the bright red of the shore at low tide, and the vivid green of the dyke
grass, varied here and there with clumps of yellow--"
"Stop, stop; you make me fairly dizzy."
"But it's a true picture, isn't it? and your mother has reproduced it to
perfection, and if she doesn't sell it before Christmas I shall get papa
to buy it for me."
So the three friends sat and chatted on this their last afternoon in
Evangeline's land, half regretting that the time was near when they must
bid good-bye to Acadia.
Though they had not tried to do all the things possible for the tourist,
they had gone to the Look-off, the highest part of the Blomidon ridge,
and from this spot had had a magnificent view of the Annapolis and
Cornwallis valleys, and the six rivers flowing into Minas, and the
hundreds of fertile farms and the picturesque seaports lying almost at
their feet; and they had made also several side trips.
Priscilla had slaked her thirst for information by setting down in her
note-books many facts about the productiveness of the region, and
declared that in future if she should meet a boy anxious to become a
farmer she would send him to Nova Scotia rather than to the unknown
West.
"Ah, but there's no government land for him to take up here, and farms
don't go for a song. Every inch is cultivated," rejoined Amy.
Thus at last, when Amy with her mother and her friends were ready to
leave Wolfville and Grand Pre and their neighborhood, their minds were
filled not only with the history of Acadia and the memories of the past,
but with pictures of the present that seemed likely to be lasting.
Mrs. Redmond, moreover, in balancing her accounts,--not a reckoning of
money, but of something more precious--counted as the greatest gain the
improvement in health made by Priscilla and the improvement in
disposition made by Martine.
Priscilla's gain was easily recognized. Even she herself could see it
when she looked in the glass, and she was daily growing more and more
conscious of it. But Martine's gain,--perhaps she herself did not
realize it. Perhaps she had not known in the beginning how much she
needed improving. Yet Mrs. Redmond, realizing it, had observed with
pleasure that Martine was not nearly as self-willed, was not nearly as
ready to ridicule the foibles of others as at the beginning of the trip.
Just as the angles of Priscilla's disposition were rounding off to a
certain degree, so Martine was much less likely than formerly to fly off
in a tangent. Although it could hardly be said that the two girls
understood each other perfectly, it was yet the fact that wishes
collided far less often than in the past. When Priscilla yielded, she
did so with a smaller show of helpless resignation than had been her
wont, and Martine no longer thought it clever to laugh at every
suggestion made by Priscilla.
As to Amy, her mother saw with pleasure that to her the summer had been
one of real refreshment. If she had been absolutely idle she could not
have been half as happy as now, with the sense of responsibility that
was hers in having the care, or at least the partial care, of Martine
and Priscilla; moreover the trip itself, opening as it did to her a
country of which previously she had known so little, was in every way a
delight to her. It had shown to her a world of history and poetry with
which she had not been familiar, even though she had known something
about it, and this in itself was worth much to her.