the Acadians on the River St. John in 1757
was pitiable in the extreme. They were cut off from every source of
supply and lived in fear of their lives. The Marquis de Vaudreuil says
that in consequence of the famine prevailing on the river, many
Acadian families were forced to fly to Quebec and so destitute were
the wretched ones in some instances that children died at their
mother's breast. The parish records of l'Islet[23] show that Pierre
Robichaux and his wife lived there in 1759.

[23] A child of Pierre Robichaud and Francoise Belleisle his wife was
interred at l'Islet, December 10, 1759.

Francoise Belleisle Robichaux died at l'Islet January 28, 1791, at the
age of 79 years, having outlived her husband six years. They had a
number of children, one of whom, Marie Angelique, married Jean
Baptiste d'Amour, de Chaufour, and had a daughter, Marguerite d'Amour,
whose name seems very familiar to us.

The parish records at l'Islet give considerable information concerning
the descendants of the families d'Amours, Robichaux and Belleisle, but
the space at our disposal will allow us to follow them no further.

CHAPTER X.

RIVAL CLAIMS TO THE ST. JOHN RIVER.

The St. John river region may be said to have been in dispute from the
moment the treaty of Utrecht was signed in 1713 until the taking of
Quebec in 1759. By the treaty of Utrecht all Nova Scotia, or Acadia,
comprehended within its ancient boundaries, was ceded to Great
Britain, and the English at once claimed possession of the territory
bordering on the St. John. To this the French offered strong
objection, claiming that Nova Scotia, or Acadia, comprised merely the
peninsula south of the Bay of Fundy--a claim which, as already stated
in these pages, was strangely at variance with their former contention
that the western boundary of Acadia was the River Kennebec.[24] For
many years the dispute was confined to remonstrances on the side of
either party, the French meanwhile using their savage allies to repel
the advance of any English adventurers who might feel disposed to make
settlements on the St. John, and encouraging the Acadians to settle
there, while the English authorities endeavored, with but indifferent
success, to gain the friendship of the Indians and compel the Acadians
to take the oath of allegiance to the British crown. The dispute over
the limits of Acadia at times waxed warm. There were protests and
counter-protests. Letters frequ