Michael Franklin's long and fruitful administration (1766-1776)— He does all in his power to carry out the wishes of the Home Authorities and to alleviate the distress of the Acadians—They settle wherever they please, at Prospect, Chezetcook, Isle Madame, Memramcook and other places—The d’Entremonts are restored to their former lands at Cape Sable—A party of 800 gather at Boston and settle mostly at Baie St. Marie.

At Wilmot's death, in the whole- extent of the Maritime Provinces, there remained only some fifteen hundred or two thousand Acadians. After eleven years of a persecution unprecedented in history, this was the only remnant of a population of 18,000 souls. If any of them had for a brief space cherished the hope that they might repossess their lands, their treatment by Lawrence, Belcher, and Wilmot must have convinced them that this hope was groundless ; for we hear of no such claim. The spoilers had no longer anything to fear: the abject misery to Which the scattered relics of this people were reduced, together with the long series of disappointments they had gone through, made the interests of their oppressors sufficiently secure.

Michael Franklin, who succeeded Wilmot, was as kind to the Acadians as the latter had been cruel to them. His whole administration shows that he made special efforts to alleviate their sufferings and to make them forget tlie wrongs they had endured. To be sure, the Home Government’s positive instructions were to that effect; but he seems, in all his words and deeds, to have acted in obedience rather to the impulse of his kindly nature than to the orders of his superiors. We may also note, by the way, how the Lords of Trade appear full of justice and good-will as soon as they cease to be deceived by interested misrepresentation.

“His Majesty,” Lord Hillsborough writes to Franklin, “was so well pleased to find by your letter that the Acadians are so well disposed: this disposition should be encouraged by holding out every advantage that can be given to them consistent with public safety, and therefore you will not fail to give them the fullest assurances of His Majesty’s favor and protection. . . . His Majesty considers ivith tenderness and attention the situation of those who have made settlements in Cape Breton under the protection of temporary licenses from the Government of Nova Scotia.”

All subsequent letters of the Lords of Trade are in the same spirit, which also permeates Franklin’s instructions to the officers or magistrates of the Province. He writes to Colonel Denson in the following, touching terms, which breathe his humane feelings:-

“Some of the Acadians who reside in King’s County and at "Windsor, have informed me that they have been warned to train with the other militia, which they conceive as a hardship, being unprovided with arms, and unable to purchase them just now, were they to be bought.

“I am therefore to desire that you do exempt them from mustering or training, until you have orders to the contrary. And I am further to signify to you, that it is the King's intention, and I do expect, they be treated with all possible mildness and tenderness upon every occasion.”

Why this complete change of manner ? How comes it that, under Lawrence, Belcher, and Wilmot, we hear nothing but complaints and fears, whereas now all is peace and contentment? What had happened? Nothing, save that a new governor, full of kindliness, had succeeded to men that had none, to governors who, for selfish motives, had purposely misled the Lords of Trade and worried the Acadians in every way. This accounts adequately for the change : falsehood and oppression on the one hand, rectitude and kindness on the other. The Acadians had not changed; but the wise and considerate administration of Hopson was revived by Franklin.

From the foregoing we may infer that the British Government was now fully informed of the injustice done to the Acadians and of the motives of their persecutors. Were it. not so, those touching expressions of tenderness and solicitude on Lord Hillsborough’s part would seem out of place in an official communication. Of course I do not advance this as a necessary inference ; but there is cumulative and more cogent evidence to support it. Many incidents, some of which have been mentioned elsewhere in this work, show that, after the peace of 1763, public opinion, generally speaking, condemned the deportation. We have seen, for instance, that even in Lawrence’s time, the censure of the citizens of Halifax was sufficiently pronounced to disquiet him and make him unbosom himself about it to his accomplice Boscawen. Such a proceeding on the part of so bold a man, who at that very time was manifesting in a thousand ways his contempt for the opinion of the persons under his jurisdiction, is fraught with significance.

So long as the war lasted, the civilized world had no leisure to examine, into the causes and incidents of this deportation; but all this was changed when mimls became calm after the peace of 1763. Witnessing the sufferings of these exiles, their migrations, their vain attempts to find their lost relatives, and to get back to tlieir old home or make a new one, the public was moved to. take an interest in their fate. Wherever the lot of these exiles was cast, the civilized world could bear testimony to their meekness and the purity of their morals, to their peaceable and laborious habits. The dismemberment of their families proved to all observers that the dispersion had been executed with cruelty; people were astonished that persons so virtuous could have deserved in any way so barbarous a punishment; this led to inquiries into the character of Lawrence, Belcher, and Wilmot, and soon the persuasion grew that a great crime had been committed. Outside of a small group at Halifax, condemnation became general. Students of history sought to clear up the mystery by consulting documents. Meanwhile, the authors of the deportation, or their sons, who either had the care of the Archives or easy access to them, became alarmed; they would have to explain, to justify themselves; they must do something to avoid exposure, to lessen the shame and obloquy that threatened them. Then began that withdrawal of documents which seems to have been practised at intervals for a long time.

Evidently it was public censure that provoked these withdrawals ; else we should have to suppose that the documents were suppressed in dread of future disclosures, and this would be a still more convincing proof of guilt and shame.

“At last,” says Rameau, “the frightful series of disasters which had befallen the Acadian people during eleven years, was drawing to a close. After having been proscribed, transported, retransported, plunged and replunged into want and misery, those who were left in Acadia had a breathing spell amidst the ruins and deaths heaped up around them. . . . Each one settled as best he could in the place where fate had cast him. The prisoners around Halifax betook themselves, some to Prospect, south of the town, others to the north at Chezetcook, most of them to the Straits of Canso and to the Madame, islands; others, in tine, gathered together on the Baie des Chaleurs, at Nipisigny, Caraquette and Tracadie." Perhaps the most fortunate were those who established themselves at Memramcook, on lands formerly occupied by them, where they could take advantage of clearings already made. Though these lands were still unoccupied, they had been granted, like all the rest, to favorites of the governors and councillors. These in particular had been granted to Frederick Wallet Desbarres, who had the wise foresight to allow many improvements to be made before asserting his claim. Happily the Acadians here, unlike those of the St. John River, were not obliged to quit. They obstinately clung to the soil, and ultimately they entered into an arrangement allowing them to keep the land on payment of a lease. Desbarres was satisfied with cultivating another property that had been granted to him at Menoudy, where later on he leased to the Acadians the farms which they had owned a few years before.-)-Among the more favored were some families called d’Entremont of Cape Sable; they were not onty reinstated in their possessions but provided once more with legal titles to their property, and this was the beginning of the strong Acadian colony that has grown up there since that time. They owed this favor to the following incident.1 About 1765, several members of this family, descended from the ancient barons of Pobomcoup (Pubnico), had set sail from Boston with the intention of taking up their abode in Quebec. When they put into port at Halifax, they met an English officer who recognized them and warmly welcomed them, because one of them had formerly saved his life. He dissuaded them from settling in Canada, promising to get their property and titles restored to them, which he succeeded in doing.

“When peace was concluded in 1763”—I am quoting, with slight additions of my own, from Rameau—out of about 6,500 Acadians who had been deported to the United States, there remained a little more than one half. Often had they in vain begged tlie authorities to allow them to leave the place of their exile; but after the peace their homeward rush was resistless. Divers groups made for Canada, where they settled, some at l’Acadie, near St. John, P. Q., others at Saint-Gregoire, Nicolet and Becancour, in the District of Three Rivers, and others at Saint-Jacques-l’Achigan, in all of which places they formed rich and prosperous parishes.

Those who had not been able to join this exodus, met together three years later in the spring of 1766, at Boston, with the intention of wending their way back to their lost and lamented Acadia. There then remained in foreign lands only a small minority, riveted to the spot by infirmity or extreme want. We must, however, except those who had been deported to Maryland, where the presence of English Catholics and of a few priests had made their lot less intolerable, and where some of their descendants may still be found.*

“The heroic caravan” which formed in Boston and determined to cross the forest wilderness of Maine on its return to Acadia, was made up of about 800 persons. “ On foot, and almost without provisions, these pilgrims braved the perils and fatigues of a return by land, inarching up the coast of the Bay of Fundy as far as the isthmus of Shediac, across 600 miles of forests and uninhabited mountains; some pregnant women of this pitiful band were confined on the way; I have known some of the sons of these children of sorrow% who told me this story as they had it from their fathers born in the course of this painful journey.

“No one will ever know all that these unfortunate people, forsaken and forgotten by everybody, suffered as they hewed their way through the wilderness; the many years gone by have long since stifled the echoes of their sighs in the forest, which itself has disappeared; all the woes of these hapless beings are now lost in the shadows of the past; others are joyously reaping harvests on their obliterated camping-grounds, and there hardly remains aught but a few dim traditions of this sublime and sorrowful exodus scattered among the fireside tales of aged Acadians in the Bay of Fundy.

"General Phil. Sheridar was a grandson of one of these Acadians.

Abbe Hobin, attached to the army of Comte de Rochambeau, has drawn a. touching picture of the little Aqpdiail colony at Baltimore in 1781: “They still keep up the French language and remain greatly attached to all that belongs to the nation of their ancestors, especially to their religion, which they follow with a strictness worthy of the first ages of Christianity. The simplicity of th*'ir manners is a remnant of what obtained in happy Acadia. . . The sight of a French priest seemed to recall to them their former pastors. They begged me to officiate in their church. In fulfilling this holy function. I could not refrain from congratulating them on their piety and from depicting to them the virtues of their forefathers. I was reviving memories that were too dear: they burst into tears.”

“In the wild paths that wound in and out through the interminable forests of Maine, this long line of emigrants walked painfully on; there were small groups of women and children, dragging the slender baggage of misery, while the men, scattering hither and thither, sought in the chase, in fishing and even among wild roots something wherewith to feed them. There were very small children, who were hardly able to walk and were led by the hand, the larger children carrying them from time to time; many of these unfortunate mothers held an infant in their arms, and the cries of these poor babes were the only sound that broke the gloomy and dismal silence of the woods.

“How many died on the way, children, women and even men? How many breathed their last, overpowered by weariness, suffering from hunger, sitting down to be forgotten forever in some wild path, without priest, without consolation, without friends? The last agony of death was embittered, for these innocent victims, by all the anguish of regret and neglect.

“While this sorrowful caravan advanced, some indeed were found whose failing strength refused to carry them any further; however all did not succumb, and one after another a few groups remained along the road to form the nuclei of future colonies. It was thus that, on the banks of the River St. John, several families fixed their abode amid the ruins of the settlements formerly occupied by the French in this district,” where, in the ancient fief of Jemsek (of which La Tour had been the owner) and in that of Ekoupag, some few Acadian families still dwelt.

“When the column of exiles, thinned out by tha fatigues of the journey, reached the banks of the Petitcodiac, they had been four months on the road. There, at length, they could taste a few moments of repose and consolation; the first to come out at the foot of the wooded mountain-range along this river met there some men, lialf-hunters, half-husbandmen, who spoke their language, and among whom they were not slow to recognize fellow-countrymen and relatives. This was the remnant of the former inhabitants of Memramcook, Chipody and the isthmus of Shediac. . . . Buildings and clearings were already to be seen along the river bank, when the band of captives returning from the United States joined them at the close of the summer of 1766.”

How touching must have been the meeting, after a separation of eleven years, of these beings whose hearts were wrung by a common calamity! Here, at least, the wayfarers could rest for a moment in peace after their excessive fatigues, without any risk of rebuff or ill-will from indifferent or hostile strangers; the friends they had just found again were themselves very poor, but their welcome was cordial and sympathetic.

“Unfortunately, after this first burst of joy, they had to suffer a great heaviness of heart. They had cherished the hope that, away on the other side of the Bay of Fundy, at Beausejour, Beaubassin, Grand Pre, Port Royal, they would find once more their lands and perhaps their houses, that they might be allowed to settle on the farms that were not yet occupied' hut they soon realized that all this was a dream; everything had been allotted to their persecutors or to new colonists. The great and painful journey they had just made was now useless; they had no longer either home or country! These discouraging tidings overwhelmed most of them; they were utterly worn out, and, without seeking to advance, they remained on the very spot to which Providence had led them.

“However a certain number of them could not believe that all was lost and that they were hopelessly despoiled of those rich lauds, formerly wrested from the sea by the laborious still of their forefathers. Fifty or sixty families, men, women and children, once more set out; they rounded the innermost shore of the old Baie Frangaise, which had become Fundy Bay; they visited in turn Beaubassin, Pigiguit, Grand Pre; but Beausejour was now called Cumberland; Beaubassin, Amherst; Cobequid had taken the name of Truro; Pigiguit, that of Windsor, and Grand Pi e was named Horton; everything was changed! English names, English villages, English inhabitants; wherever they appeared, they looked like ghosts come back from a past age; nobody had thought of them for a long time.

“The children were frightened at them, the women and the men were annoyed as by a threatening spectre from the grave, everybody was angry with them, and the poor wretches dragged themselves from village to village, worried and worn out by fatigue, hunger and cold, and a despair that grew at every halting-place; the last was-Port Royal (Annapolis), where the same irritation oil the one hand and the same disappointment on the other were repeated.

“Yet, what was to be done with this caravan of poor people in rags, weary unto death, crushed by want and grief? The officers of the garrison adopted the plan of conducting them a little further south, on St. Mary s Bay, the unoccupied shores of which were lined with vast forests. The wretched Acadians, driven to exhaustion and despair by so many misfortunes, not knowing whither to go, allowed themselves to be led and so ended by stranding on this deserted shore, where lands were granted to them on December 23d, 1767. Thus, without counting the long tramps they had to undertake to meet together in Boston, they had traversed on foot a distance of about a thousand miles before reaching the end of their journey.

“The most cruel crosses do not always wholly crush human energy; the calm after the tempest, the faintest glimmer of hope reviving, allow our eased spirits to cling once more to life, to resume work and make a fresh start. Under pressure of necessity these unfortunate outcasts raised log-huts; they took to fishing and hunting; they began to clear the land, and soon out of the felled trees some roughly-built houses were put up.” Such was the origin of the colony that now covers all the western portion of the Peninsula.

During many subsequent years there were numerous migrations. Acadians arrived from France, from the West Indies, from Louisiana. Canada and the United States, going from one settlement to another in search of a father, a mother, a brother, a relative whose whereabouts they had not yet found. Often death had claimed the long-sought one ; sometimes, on the other hand, he that was supposed to be dead was unexpectedly discovered. Slowly the scattered members of one family succeeded, not infrequently, in all getting together once more. Those who were in better circumstances collected their poorer brethren around them; the bereavements of the past were gradually softened by new ties, and finally each group took on the aspect of a distinct and homogeneous community.