The Acadian Exiles | Page 5

which their country furnished abundance; these, with furs
from bears, beavers, foxes, otters, and martens, gave them not only

comfortable, but in some cases handsome clothing.' Although they had
large herds of cattle, 'they never made any merchantable butter, being
used to set their milk in small noggins which were kept in such order as
to turn it thick and sour in a short time, of which they ate voraciously.'
[Footnote: Public Archives, Canada, Brown Collection, M 651a, 171.]
The lands which the Acadians reclaimed from the sea and cultivated
were fertile in the extreme. A description has come down to us of what
was doubtless a typical Acadian garden. In it were quantities of 'very
fine well-headed cabbages and of all other sorts of pot herbs and
vegetables.' Apple and pear trees brought from France flourished. The
peas were 'so covered with pods that it could only be believed by
seeing.' The wheat was particularly good. We read of one piece of land
where 'each grain had produced six or eight stems, and the smallest ear
was half a foot in length, filled with grain.' The streams and rivers, too,
teemed with fish. The noise of salmon sporting in the rivers sounded
like the rush of a turbulent rapid, and a catch such as 'ten men could not
haul to land' was often made in a night. Pigeons were a plague,
alighting in vast flocks in the newly planted gardens. If the economic
progress of the country had been slow, the reason had lain, not in any
poverty of natural resources, but in the scantiness of the population, the
neglect of the home government, the incessant turmoil within, and the
devastating raids of English enemies.


CHAPTER II
THE BRITISH IN ACADIA
Almost from the first England had advanced claims, slender though
they were, to the ownership of Acadia. And very early, as we have seen,
the colony had been subjected to the scourge of English attacks.
Argall's expedition had been little more than a buccaneering exploit and
an earnest of what was to come. Nor did any permanent result, other

than the substitution of the name Nova Scotia for Acadia, flow from Sir
William Alexander's enterprise. Alexander, afterwards Lord Stirling,
was a Scottish courtier in the entourage of James I, from whom he
obtained in 1621 a grant of the province of New Scotland or Nova
Scotia. A year later he sent out a small body of farm hands and one
artisan, a blacksmith, to establish a colony. The expedition miscarried;
and another in the next year shared a similar fate. A larger company of
Scots, however, as already mentioned, settled at Port Royal in 1627 and
erected a fort, known as Scots Fort, on the site of the original
settlement of De Monts. This colony, with some reinforcements from
Scotland, stood its ground until the country was ceded to France in
1632. On the arrival of Razilly in that year most of the Scottish settlers
went home, and the few who remained were soon merged in the French
population.
For twenty-two years after this Acadia remained French, under the
feudal sway of its overlords, Razilly, Charnisay, La Tour, and Nicolas
Denys, the historian of Acadia. [Footnote: He wrote The Description
and Natural History of the Coasts of North America. An edition,
translated and edited, with a memoir of the author, by W. F. Ganong,
will be found in the publications of the Champlain Society (Toronto,
1908).] But in 1654 the fleet of Robert Sedgwick suddenly appeared off
Port Royal and compelled its surrender in the name of Oliver Cromwell.
Then for thirteen years Acadia was nominally English. Sir Thomas
Temple, the governor during this period, tried to induce
English-speaking people to settle in the province, but with small
success. England's hold of Acadia was, in fact, not very firm. The son
of Emmanuel Le Borgne, who claimed the whole country by right of a
judgment he had obtained in the French courts against Charnisay,
apparently found little difficulty in turning the English garrison out of
the fort at La Heve, leaving his unfortunate victims without means of
return to New England, or of subsistence; but in such destitution that
they were forced 'to live upon grass and to wade in the water for
lobsters to keep them alive.' Some amusing correspondence followed
between France and England. The French ambassador in London
complained of the depredations committed in the house of a certain
Monsieur de la Heve. The English government, better informed about

Acadia, replied that it knew of no violence committed in the house of
M. de la Heve. 'Neither is there any such man in the land, but there is a
place so called, which Temple purchased for eight thousand pounds
from La Tour, where he built a