e mouth of the river
Annapolis and that of the small stream now called Allen's River, whence
it looked down the long basin, or land-locked bay, which, framed in
hills and forests, had so won the heart of the Baron de Poutrincourt a
century before.[97] The garrison was small, counting in 1704 only a
hundred and eighty-five soldiers and eight commissioned officers. At the
right of the fort, between it and the mouth of the Annapolis, was the
Acadian village, consisting of seventy or eighty small houses of one
story and an attic, built of planks, boards, or logs, simple and rude,
but tolerably comfortable. It had also a small, new wooden church, to
the building of which the inhabitants had contributed eight hundred
francs, while the King paid the rest. The inhabitants had no voice
whatever in public affairs, though the colonial minister had granted
them the privilege of travelling in time of peace without passports. The
ruling class, civil and military, formed a group apart, living in or
near the fort, in complete independence of public opinion, supposing
such to have existed. They looked only to their masters at Versailles;
and hence a state of things as curious as it was lamentable. The little
settlement was a hot-bed of gossip, backbiting, and slander. Officials
of every degree were continually trying to undermine and supplant one
another, besieging the minister with mutual charges. Brouillan, the
governor, was a frequent object of attack. He seems to have been of an
irritable temper, aggravated perhaps by an old unhealed wound in the
cheek, which gave him constant annoyance. One writer declares that
Acadia languishes under selfish greed and petty tyranny; that everything
was hoped from Brouillan when he first came, but that hope has changed
to despair; that he abuses the King's authority to make money, sells
wine and brandy at retail, quarrels with officers who are not
punctilious enough in saluting him, forces the inhabitants to catch seal
and cod for the King, and then cheats them of their pay, and
countenances an obnoxious churchwarden whose daughter is his mistress.
"The country groans, but dares not utter a word," concludes the accuser,
as he closes his indictment.[98]

Brouillan died in the autumn of 1705, on which M. de Goutin, a
magistrate who acted as intendant, and was therefore at once the
colleague of the late governor and a spy upon him, writes to the
minister that "the divine justice has at last taken pity