e
or inclination for agriculture. This title then the French settlers had;
and in short, the whole body of the inhabitants of Acadia, from time
immemorial, may be averred to have been French, since a few families of
English, and other Europeans, cannot be said to form an exception, and
those, as I have before observed, soon became frenchified. Except a few
families from Boston or New-England I could never learn there were above
three of purely British subjects, who also, ultimately conforming both
in the religious and civil institutions to the French, became
incorporated with them. These families were the _Peterses_, the
_Grangers_, the _Cartys_. These last indeed descended from one Roger
John-Baptist Carty, an Irish Roman-Catholic. He had been an indented
servant in New-England, and had obtained at length his discharge from
his master, with permission to remain with the French Acadians for the
freer exercise of his religion. Peters was an iron-smith in England, and
together with Granger, married in Acadia, and was there naturalized a
Frenchman. Granger made his abjuration before M. Petit, secular-priest
of the seminary of Paris, then missionary at Port-Royal (Annapolis).
These and other European families then soon became united with the
French Acadians, and were no longer distinguished from them. Most of
these last were originally from _Rochelle_, _Xaintonge_, and _Poitou_;
but all went under the common name of Acadians; and were once very
numerous. The Parish of _Annapolis-Royal_ alone in 1754, according to
the account of father _Daudin_, contained three hundred habitations, or
about two thousand communicants. The _Mines_, which are about
five-and-thirty leagues from Port-Royal, and the best corn country in
Acadia, were also very populous; nor were there wanting inhabitants in
many commodious parts of this peninsula.

The character of the French Acadians was good at the bottom: their
morals far from vitious; their constitution hardy, and yet strongly
turned to indolence and inaction, not caring for work, unless a point of
present necessity pressed them; much attached to the customs of the
country, which have not a little of the savage in them, and to the
opinions of their fore-fathers, which they cherished as a kind of
patrimony; it was hard to inculcate any novelty to them. They had many
parts of character in common with the Canada French. A little matter
surprises, and sets them a staring, without stirring their cur