ives and
families shared their lot; their sons, five hundred and twenty-seven
in number; their daughters, five hundred and seventy-six; in the
whole, women and babes and old men and children all included, nineteen
hundred and twenty-three souls. The blow was sudden; they had left
home but for the morning, and they never were to return. Their cattle
were to stay unfed in the stalls, their fires to die out on their
hearths. They had for that first day even no food for themselves or
their children, and were compelled to beg for bread.

The tenth of September was the day for the embarkation of a part of
the exiles. They were drawn up six deep; and the young men, one
hundred and sixty-one in number, were ordered to march first on board
the vessel. They could leave their farms and cottages, the shady rocks
on which they had reclined, their herds, and their garners; but nature
yearned within them, and they would not be separated from their
parents. Yet of what avail was the frenzied despair of the unarmed
youth? They had not one weapon; the bayonet drove them to obey; and
they marched slowly and heavily from the chapel to the shore, between
women and children, who, kneeling, prayed for blessings on their
heads, they themselves weeping and praying and singing hymns. The
seniors went next; the wives and children must wait till other
transport vessels arrive. The delay had its horrors. The wretched
people left behind were kept together near the sea, without proper
food, or raiment, or shelter, till other ships came to take them away;
and December, with its appalling cold, had struck the shivering,
half-clad, broken-hearted sufferers, before the last of them were
removed.

"The embarkation of the inhabitants goes on but slowly," wrote
Monckton, from Fort Cumberland, near which he had burned three
hamlets; "the most part of the wives of the men we have prisoners are
gone off with their children, in hopes I would not send off their
husbands without them." Their hope was vain. Near Annapolis a hundred
heads of families fled to the woods, and a party was detached on the
hunt to bring them in. "Our soldiers hate them," wrote an officer on
this occasion; "and, if they can but find a pretext to kill them, they
will." Did a prisoner seek to escape, he was shot down by the
sentinel. Yet some fled to Quebec; more than three thousand had
withdrawn to Miramachi and the region south of the Restigouche; some
found rest on the banks of the St