Shubenacadie, in small cabins of
logs, mixed with wigwams of birch-bark. They were not a docile flock;
and to manage them needed address, energy, and money,--with all of which
the missionary was provided. He fed their traditional dislike of the
English, and fanned their fanaticism, born of the villanous counterfeit
of Christianity which he and his predecessors had imposed on them. Thus
he contrived to use them on the one hand to murder the English, and on
the other to terrify the Acadians; yet not without cost to the French
Government; for they had learned the value of money, and, except when
their blood was up, were slow to take scalps without pay. Le Loutre was
a man of boundless egotism, a violent spirit of domination, an intense
hatred of the English, and a fanaticism that stopped at nothing. Towards
the Acadians he was a despot; and this simple and superstitious people,
extremely susceptible to the influence of their priests, trembled before
him. He was scarcely less masterful in his dealings with the Acadian
clergy; and, aided by his quality of the Bishop's vicar-general, he
dragooned even the unwilling into aiding his schemes. Three successive
governors of New France thought him invaluable, yet feared the
impetuosity of his zeal, and vainly tried to restrain it within safe
bounds. The bishop, while approving his objects, thought his medicines
too violent, and asked in a tone of reproof: "Is it right for you to
refuse the Acadians the sacraments, to threaten that they shall be
deprived of the services of a priest, and that the savages shall treat
them as enemies?"[106] "Nobody," says a French Catholic contemporary,
"was more fit than he to carry discord and desolation into a
country."[107] Cornwallis called him "a good-for-nothing scoundrel," and
offered a hundred pounds for his head.[108]

[Footnote 106: _L'Eveque de Quebec a Le Loutre_; translation in _Public
Documents of Nova Scotia_, 240.]

[Footnote 107: _Memoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760_.]

[Footnote 108: On Le Loutre, compare _Public Documents of Nova Scotia_,
178-180, _note_, with authorities there cited; _N.Y. Col. Docs._, X. 11;
_Memoires sur le Canada, 1749-1760_ (Quebec, 1838).]

The authorities at Halifax, while exasperated by the perfidy practised
on them, were themselves not always models of international virtue. They
seized a French vessel in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, on the
charge--probably true--that she was carrying arms and ammunition to th