erprise. The legislature made military
service compulsory, quartered soldiers in private houses without consent
of the owners, impressed sailors, and altogether was quite arbitrary
and high-handed. The people, however, would bear almost anything if only
they could crush Port Royal, the den of privateers who seized many New
England vessels. On the 18th of September, to the great joy of Boston,
the frigates and the transports sailed away, with Nicholson in command
of the troops and Vetch as adjutant-general.

What we know today as Digby Basin on the east side of the Bay of Fundy,
is a great harbor, landlocked but for a narrow entrance about a
mile wide. Through this "gut," as it is called, the tide rushes in a
torrential and dangerous stream, but soon loses its violence in the
spacious and quiet harbor. Here the French had made their first
enduring colony in America. On the shores of the beautiful basin the
fleurs-de-lis had been raised over a French fort as early as 1605. A
lovely valley opens from the head of the basin to the interior. It
is now known as the Annapolis Valley, a fertile region dotted by the
homesteads of a happy and contented people. These people, however, are
not French in race nor do they live under a French Government. When on
the 24th of September, 1710, the fleet from Boston entered the basin,
and in doing so lost a ship and more than a score of men through the
destructive current, the decisive moment had come for all that region.
Fate had decreed that the land should not remain French but should
become English.

Port Royal was at that time a typical French community of the New World.
The village consisted of some poor houses made of logs or planks, a
wooden church, and, lying apart, a fort defended by earthworks. The
Governor, Subercase, was a brave French officer. He ruled the little
community with a despotism tempered only by indignant protests to
the King from those whom he ruled when his views and theirs did not
coincide. The peasants in the village counted for nothing. Connected
with the small garrison there were ladies and gentlemen who had no
light opinion of their own importance and were so peppery that Subercase
wished he had a madhouse in which to confine some of them. He thought
well of the country. It produced, he said, everything that France
produced except olives. The fertile land promised abundance of grain and
there was an inexhaustible supply of timber. There were many excellent