The Lady of Fort St. John

The Lady of Fort St. John

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Title: The Lady of Fort St. John
Author: Mary Hartwell Catherwood

Release Date: June 19, 2006 [eBook #18631]
Language: English
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THE LADY OF FORT ST. JOHN
by
MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD
Author of "The Romance of Dollard"

[Illustration]

Boston and New York Houghton, Mifflin and Company The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1891 Copyright, 1891, By Mary Hartwell Catherwood. All rights reserved. The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.

This book I dedicate
TO
TWO ACADIANS OF THE PRESENT DAY;
NATIVES OF NOVA SCOTIA WHO REPRESENT THE LEARNING AND GENTLE ATTAINMENTS OF THE NEW ORDER:
DR. JOHN-GEORGE BOURINOT, C. M. G., ETC. CLERK OF THE CANADIAN HOUSE OF COMMONS, OF OTTAWA; AND
DR. GEORGE STEWART, OF QUEBEC.

PREFACE.
How can we care for shadows and types, when we may go back through history and live again with people who actually lived?
Sitting on the height which is now topped by a Martello tower, at St. John in the maritime province of New Brunswick, I saw--not the opposite city, not the lovely bay; but this tragedy of Marie de la Tour, the tragedy "which recalls" (says the Abb�� Casgrain in his "P��lerinage au pays d'Evang��line") "the romances of Walter Scott, and forces one to own that reality is stranger than fiction."
In "Papers relating to the rival chiefs, D'Aulnay and La Tour," of the Massachusetts Historical Collection, vol. vii., may be found these prefatory remarks:--
"There is a romance of History as well as a History of Romance. To the former class belong many incidents in the early periods of New England and its adjacent colonies. The following papers ... refer to two persons, D'Aulnay and La Tour, ... individuals of respectable intellect and education, of noble families and large fortune. While the first was a zealous and efficient supporter of the Roman Church, the second was less so, from his frequent connection with others of a different faith. The scene of their ... prominent actions, their exhibition of various passions and talents, their conquests and defeats, their career and end, as exerting an influence on their associates as well as themselves, on other communities as well as their own--was laid in Nova Scotia. This phrase then comprised a territory vastly more extensive than it does now as a British Province. It embraced not only its present boundaries, which were long termed Acadia, but also about two thirds of the State of Maine."
It startles the modern reader, in examining documents of the French archives relating to the colonies, to come upon a letter from Louis XIII. to his beloved D'Aulnay de Charnisay, thanking that governor of Acadia for his good service at Fort St. John. Thus was that great race who first trod down the wilderness on this continent continually and cruelly hampered by the man who sat on the throne in France.

CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
Prelude. At the Head of the Bay of Fundy 1
I. An Acadian Fortress 13
II. Le Rossignol 21
III. Father Isaac Jogues 40
IV. The Widow Antonia 55
V. Jonas Bronck's Hand 64
VI. The Mending 73
VII. A Frontier Graveyard 82
VIII. Van Corlaer 96
IX. The Turret 107
X. An Acadian Poet 121
XI. Marguerite 133
XII. D'Aulnay 143
XIII. The Second Day 155
XIV. The Struggle between Powers 173
XV. A Soldier 191
XVI. The Camp 211
XVII. An Acadian Passover 227
XVIII. The Song of Edelwald 252
Postlude. A Tide-Creek 273

LADY OF FORT ST. JOHN.

PRELUDE.
AT THE HEAD OF THE BAY OF FUNDY.
The Atlantic rushed across a mile or two of misty beach, boring into all its channels in the neck of Acadia. Twilight and fog blurred the landscape, but the eye could trace a long swell of earth rising gradually from the bay, through marshes, to a summit with a small stockade on its southern slope. Sentinels pacing within the stockade felt the weird influence of that bald land. The guarded spot seemed an island in a sea of vapor and spring night was bringing darkness upon it.
The stockade inclosed a single building of rough logs clumsily put together, and chinked with the hard red soil. An unhewn wall divided the house into two rooms, and in one room were gathered less than a dozen men-at-arms. Their officer lay in one of the cupboard-like bunks, with his hands clasped under his