uoddy managed to surprise at night
a large schooner lying at anchor in Harbor L'Elang, bound from Boston
to Annapolis Royal with provisions for the garrison. The schooner
carried six guns and had on board a crew of ten men besides her
captain and an artillery officer of the Annapolis garrison. The vessel
was carried to St. John and hidden on the lower part of the river. The
savages pillaged her so completely that on her arrival there remained
only a small quantity of bacon and a little rum. The prisoners were
sent by Boishebert to Canada along with others captured on various
occasions.

The Acadian refugees continued to come to the River St. John in
increasing numbers, and Boishebert and the missionaries soon found
themselves reduced to sore straits in their endeavors to supply them
with the necessaries of life. The Marquis de Vaudreuil was determined
to hold the St. John river country as long as possible. He wrote the
French minister, June 1, 1756: "I shall not recall M. de Boishebert
nor the missionaries, nor withdraw the Acadians into the heart of the
colony until the last extremity, and when it shall be morally
impossible to do better." It was his intention to send provisions and
munitions of war to the Acadians and Indians.

Boishebert was endeavoring at this time, with the approval of the
Marquis de Vaudreuil, to draw as many of the Acadians as possible to
the River St. John and to induce them to oppose any advance on the
part of the English. The French commander, however, soon found his
position an exceedingly difficult one. After sending many families to
Quebec and to the Island of St. John he had still six hundred people,
besides the Indians, to provide for during the winter, and many
refugees from Port Royal and elsewhere desired to come to the River
St. John. The number of Acadians dependent on him received additions
from time to time by the arrival of exiles returning from the south.
In the month of June five families numbering fifty persons, arrived
from Carolina and told Boishebert that eighty others were yet to
arrive.

The difficulties surmounted by these poor people in the pathetic
endeavor to return to their old firesides seem almost incredible. A
small party of Acadians of the district of Beaubassin, at the head of
the Bay of Fundy, were transported to South Carolina. They traveled
thence on foot to Fort Du Quesne (now Pittsburg) from which place they
were transported to Quebec. One might have tho