ers in a
strange land--the victims of persecution in their own.

Daring all this dark and bloody period, no name is more conspicuous in the
annals than that of the Chief of the Abenaquis. Like a frightful ogre, he
hovers in the background, deadly and ubiquitous--the terror of the
colonies. It was he who had stirred up the Indians to do the work. Then
come reports of a massacre in some town on the frontier, and with it is
coupled a whisper of "Castine!" a fort has been surprised, he is there!
Some of Church's men have fallen in an ambuscade; the baron has planned
it, and furnished the arms and ammunition by which the deed was
consummated! Superstition invests him with imaginary powers; fanaticism
exclaims, 'tis he who had taught the savages to believe that we are the
people who crucified the Saviour.

But in spite of all these stories, the wonderful Bernese is not captured,
nor indeed seen by any, except that sometimes an English prisoner escaping
from the enemy, comes to tell of his clemency and tenderness; he has bound
up the wounds of these, he has saved the lives of those. At last a small
settlement of French and Indians is attacked by Church's men at Penobscot,
every person there being either killed or taken prisoner; among the latter
a daughter of the great baron, with her children, from whom they learn
that her unhappy father, ruined and broken-hearted, had returned to
France, the victim of persecutors, who, under the name of saints,
exhibited a cruelty and rapacity that would have disgraced the reputation
of a Philip or an Alva!

"It is a matter of surprise to the historical student," said the little
man, "that with a people like yours, so conspicuous in many rare examples
of erudition, that the history of Acadia has not merited a closer
attention, throwing as it does so strong a reflective light upon your
own. Such a task doubtless does not present many inviting features,
especially to those who would preserve, at any sacrifice of truth, the
earlier pages of discovery in America, pure, spotless, and unsullied. But
I think this dark, tragic background would set off all the brighter the
characters of those really good men who flourished in that period, of whom
there were no doubt many, although now obscured by the dull, dead
moonshine of indiscriminate forefathers' flattery. I know very well that
in some regards we might copy the example of a few of the first planters
of New England, but for the rest I believe w