The Acadians in Exile.

We have now to follow the Acadians into exile, to relate the sufferings of their long pilgrimage in foreign lands. This chapter is still more obscure than the preceding one. Their lamentations and their anguish were lost in the din of arms. For eight years, with varied success, France and England kept up the struggle with increasing obstinacy, the latter, in order to seize upon and secure the definitive possession of this continent, witness of so many struggles and sacrifices; the former, in order to retain a shred of what was slipping from her grasp, and to withdraw without too great humiliation from the conflict upon which she had imprudently entered.

Added to the intense prejudices that then existed, this cruel war, which raged for the eight years of the captivity of the Acadians, was not calculated to foster the sympathy which their lamentable fate might have evoked. War stifles all sentiments of pity; whatever has the remotest connection with the enemy becomes an object of hatred and contempt. Those who, in ordinary circumstances, would allow themselves to be moved at the sight of suffering, close their hearts to compassion; and hardly are there found here and there a few elect souls who deign to sympathize and offer consolation. What could these unfortunate people hope for at such a time ? Nothing had been prepared for them. They arrived at the beginning of winter, when their presence was met by murmurs and marks of fear.

Dispersed by the orders of Lawrence, decimated by malady, grief and misery, deprived of spiritual succor and human consolations, received with mistrust and contempt, placed in a desperate situation without any visible way out, crushed under the burden of an overwhelming woe, could they again become attached to life, set themselves once more to work and resume their former hopes? Hope, however faint, is the last tie that binds us to life. Where was this hope? Would they ever be able to leave the place of their exile? Would they be able to go in quest of one another, to meet once more and iind a safe asylum against new persecutions? This hope was too distant to be seriously entertained. Scattered as they were on all shores from Georgia to Boston, along the coast of the Gulf, in the West Indies, in England and France, how could they ever unite again ? How many years would elapse before the husband could find his wife, the parents their children, deported no one knew where? Would they survive the grief, the hardships, the climate?

History has so far done no more than relate the principal fact, the tragic event that violently snatched them from their homes. It is' this forsaking of all their possessions, this loss of fatherland that has most forcibly impressed itself on the popular imagination. Unaware of the separation of the inhabitants of one and the same locality, of the dispersion of members of one and the •same family, people looked upon this exodus as an immense calamity but a calamity, after all, the traces of 'which time would blot out. Life is made up of an infinite variety of ties. There are some sudden, poignant griefs that rend the soul; sometimes misfortune has broken only some of these ties: grief has been keen, nay overpowering, but the wound had no great depth; a short time has sufficed to repair the tissues and close the scarred spot. This abandonment of their goods, this loss of fatherland were only the least important of those broken ties. The wife, cast upon a foreign shore, separated from her husband and children, themselves cast on other distant coasts, whom she despaired of ever seeing again; these are the broken ties which time could not renew, which memory could not efface. So long as the body was sound and vigorous, it might hold out; but grief wastes the strength, the body sinks, and this weeping mother, this inconsolable wife could but languish and die. She died of such and such a sickness, people said; but in reality moral suffering alone had killed her.

The extent of these sufferings can be realized by none but Acadians, the sons of the afflicted, who have heard at the family hearth the lamentable account of the transmigration of their forefathers, of their privations and their useless efforts to get together again after long years of captivity. Numerous as were the separations due to Lawrence’s orders or to the artifice or indifference of his subalterns, the separations traceable to the great mortality of the exiles were still more numerous. Rameau, who consecrated forty years of his life to patient researches on the number of the deported, their destination and successive transmigrations, ascertained beyond all doubt, by official statements or accurate general estimates, that, of the 18,000 Acadians who peopled the peninsula, the isthmus of Shediac, Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton, 14,000 were deported between 1755 and 1708; and that the number of those who perished during- this time was no less than 8,000. This reduction of forty-four per cent, in the population, when the yearly normal increase had till then been five per cent., represents many other separations besides those ordered by Lawrence. However, to those latter must be attributed, as a natural consequence, a considerable number of the former; and whatever may have been the cause of that terrible mortality, whether grief, destitution, epidemics or ordinary disease, it was none the less appalling. What mother will ever be comforted for the loss of her child who died in exile, far from her motherly care, and perhaps of hunger? And what a small proportion this 44 per cent, leaves of mothers that escaped this misfortune?

It is not by reading the bare narration of the historical events that cease at the embarkation in the ports of Acadia, or by giving only a passing thought to the inevitable anguish of this expatriation, that one can realize the extent of the misfortune which fell so heavily on this people. Where history stops, there the field is opened to the poet or the novelist. From the mute crosses planted along their route he restores and recomposes the life of this stricken nation; he brings vividly before us their peaceful happiness, their hopes, their virtues and their misfortunes. From these crumbs dropped by the historian there have risen works that honor humanity and elevate it by tender sympathy with the humiliations into which miscreants had changed their fellow-men. As long as history, as long as the human race lives, so long will the beautiful poem of Evangeline and the name of Longfellow live in the memory of men.

I had intended to reconstruct the hitherto obscure story of the deportation, following the exiles step by step in their successive and repeated migrations, in their efforts to gather together and find a secure asylum, where they might again enjoy the quiet and comfort of former days, far from the din of arms, far from conflicts occasioned by the cupidity and ambition of men and nations; but, I must confess, I have not the heart to do so. I long to withdraw far from these painful remembrances, from a subject that would throw a gloomy pall over my life by renewing wounds that cannot heal. Besides, it is too late, because there is nothing but distant tradition to build upon. What was possible thirty years ago, when the then existing generation had its mind replete with these recollections, is hardly possible at the present time. T shall restrict myself, therefore, to a short sketch of the principal facts, rather with a view to completing my task than in order to throw more light on the subject.

The researches of Rameau, in recent years, bear especially upon the wanderings of the Acadians after their deportation, and their grouping here and there, in France, in Louisiana, in Canada and in the maritime Provinces. He follows these groups from place to place, gives their exact or approximate number, describes the foundation and progress of their different colonies, etc., etc. He has rescued from oblivion many important facts, and his painstaking labors have made his name very dear to the descendants of this unfortunate people. For the present, at any rate, in order to the completeness of my work, I will give, in the next two or three chapters, a summary of the information furnished by Rameau, Cosgrain and Smith on this topic; after which I will enlarge on their researches and enter into a field hitherto unexplored. The feelings and opinions of those who will guide me through the subsequent chapters are immaterial. The climax of the tragedy is past; its consequences alone remain to be considered. Those who have had the patience to collect these facts deserve credit for their pains. The result, however, is often a mere matter of statistics, the sole object of which is to satisfy a praiseworthy curiosity. Quite different is the tenor of my preceding chapters; there, I have been very circumspect in the choice of authorities; I have sifted the character, the interests, the sentiments, the motives of the actors in the events and of those who related them, ltameau is by far the most complete of all the writers on the questions of which I have just treated; his character is above all reproach, his quotations are always sure and correct; he is often very severe to the French. However, as his patriotism is ardent, I have refrained from having recourse to his opinions on essential points and have sought to go deeply into questions that he has only lightly touched upon because they were obscure and supported by scanty evidence. For instance, the part played by Le Loutre and his influence on events were considerable: it cannot be denied that his conduct was irritating to the English and on more than one head unjustifiable; it was equally so to the Acadians; by his intrigues he intensified the national hatred and may have roused in Lawrence's mind the idea of the deportation; without him, without his repeated provocations, in spite of the perversity of the despot who effected this deportation, it would have been impossible. It is true that all the information we possess on the deeds and character of this fiery abbe is drawn entirely from two questionable, not to say, contemptible sources. Between the traitor Piclion and the author of the “Memoires,” it was indeed difficult to form well-grounded opinions. However, the r61e of Le Loutre was too important to be ignored. I cannot help thinking that the proper course was, not utterly to reject those two authorities, but so to utilize them as to arrive at a fairly satisfactory estimate of the truth. That is what I have done, and I should have had no fault to find with Parkman, if he had exercised discretion and prudence in his use of those questionable sources, if he had given them, not full credit, as he has done, but only a secondary importance, and especially if, wherever he quoted them, he had shown clearly who and what Pichon was, and what was the unmistakable animus of the author of the “Memoires.”