d soon cease to yield a
sufficient support for the population. The stranger said, 'My friends,
if you come with me, I will give you fruitful plains in exchange for
your rocky wastes.' They accepted the proposal with a condition that
they should gain the consent of their families, and with the hope that
they would be accompanied by others. The inhabitants of the Valleys did
not wish to make any determination before knowing to what kind of
country they were invited, and commissioners were therefore sent to
Calabria, with the youths to whom the lands had been offered.

"In this country," says Gilles, "there are beautiful ranges of fertile
soil, clothed with every kind of fruit trees, such as the olive and
orange; in the plains, vines, and chestnut trees; along the shore, the
hazel and the oak; upon the sides and summits of the mountains, the
larch and the fir tree, as in the Alps--every where were signs both of a
land promising rich rewards to the laborer, and but few inhabitants. The
expatriation was decided on; the young, ready to depart, married;
proprietors sold their farms; some member of every family prepared for
the journey." The joys of the nuptial ceremony mingled with the sorrow of
departure from home, and more than one marriage cortege took its place
in the caravan of exile. But they could say, as the Hebrews going forth
to the promised land, _The tabernacle of the Lord is with us_, for the
travellers took with them an ancestral Bible, the source of all
consolation and courage. At the foot of the mountains, father and son,
and mother and daughter embraced, weeping and praying together, that the
God of their fathers would bless them. And the blessing of heaven was
not wanting to this colony. The industrious cities of Saint-Sixte, la
Quardia, and Montolieu, arose as by magic amid this land of ignorance,
and presented the spectacle of a praying and working Christian people,
refusing homage to the superstitions of the age. The reformation in the
West brought many fears, and the wrath of the Roman pontiffs was not
stayed; the emissaries of the inquisition hunted these faithful people
through their peaceful valleys; they were destined to perish; and the
massacre of the Vaudois of Provence was a mournful pendant to the
extermination of the Vaudois of Calabria. The historian weeps that he
cannot cast a veil over this picture; yet the mind, agonized with scenes
so atrocious, finds repose in the contemplation of such an ad