. John's and its branches; some found
a lair in their native forests; some were charitably sheltered from
the English in the wigwams of the savages. But seven thousand of these
banished people were driven on board ships, and scattered among the
British colonies, from New Hampshire to Georgia--one thousand and
twenty to South Carolina alone. They were cast ashore without
resources, hating the poorhouse as a shelter for their offspring, and
abhorring the thought of selling themselves as laborers. Households,
too, were separated; the colonial newspapers contained advertisements
of members of families seeking their companions, of sons anxious to
reach and relieve their parents, of mothers moaning for their
children.

The wanderers sighed for their native country; but, to prevent their
return, their villages, from Annapolis to the isthmus, were laid
waste. Their old homes were but ruins. In the district of Minas, for
instance, two hundred and fifty of their houses, and more than as many
barns, were consumed. The live stock which belonged to them,
consisting of great numbers of horned cattle, hogs, sheep, and horses,
were seized as spoils and disposed of by the English officials. A
beautiful and fertile tract of country was reduced to a solitude.
There was none left round the ashes of the cottages of the Acadians
but the faithful watch-dog, vainly seeking the hands that fed him.
Thickets of forest-trees choked their orchards; the ocean broke over
their neglected dikes, and desolated their meadows.

Relentless misfortune pursued the exiles wherever they fled. Those
sent to Georgia, drawn by a love for the spot where they were born, as
strong as that of the captive Jews who wept by the rivers of Babylon
for their own temple and land, escaped to sea in boats, and went
coasting from harbor to harbor; but when they had reached New
England, just as they would have set sail for their native fields,
they were stopt by orders from Nova Scotia. Those who dwelt on the St.
John's were torn from their new homes. When Canada surrendered, hatred
with its worst venom pursued the fifteen hundred who remained south of
the Restigouche. Once those who dwelt in Pennsylvania presented a
humble petition to the Earl of Loudoun, then the British
commander-in-chief in America; and the cold-hearted peer, offended
that the prayer was made in French, seized their five principal men,
who in their own land had been persons of dignity and substance, and