As an appropriate close to this sentimental journey, we drive through
the secluded Gaspereau valley, along the winding river, which is hardly
more than a creek, toward its wider part where it flows into the Basin,
which stretches out broad and shining. With such a view before us, we
cannot fail to picture mentally the tragic scenes of that October day
in 1755, when the fleet of great ships lay in the Basin, and
"When on the falling tide the freighted vessels departed,
Bearing a nation, with all its household gods, into exile,
Exile without an end, and without an example in story,"
those whom Burke describes as "the poor, innocent, deserving people,
whom our utter inability to govern or reconcile, gave us no sort of
right to extirpate," were torn from their happy homes, and
"Scattered like dust and leaves, when the mighty blasts of October
Seize them, and whirl them aloft, and sprinkle them far o'er the ocean."
In the midst of these peaceful scenes was perpetrated a cruel wrong,
and an inoffensive people banished by the mandate of a tyrant!
In that beautiful poem, parts of which one unconsciously "gets by
heart", or falls into the habit of quoting when sojourning in this
lovely region, Basil the blacksmith says: -
"Louisburg is not forgotten, nor Beau-Séjour nor Port Royal;"
and having held an impromptu history class on the subject of the last
mentioned, we turn our attention to the other fortified points of which
"the hasty and somewhat irascible" sledge-wielder spoke.
By the treaty of Utrecht in 1713 Acadia was ceded to the English; but
the French colonists, in taking the oath of allegiance to their new
rulers (1727-28), were promised that they should not be required at any
time to take up arms against France. They were now in the position of
Neutrals, and by that name were known; but this placed them in an
awkward predicament, as they were suspected by both contending powers.
The English hated them, believing their sympathies to be with the
French; while even their countrymen in Canada were distrustful of them,
urging them to withdraw.
The English colonists, fearing the extension of the French possessions,
and having Puritanical aversion of Roman Catholicism, - of which the
Neutrals were devout adherents, - entered upon the expedition against
the French forts with the zeal of fanatics, seeming in some instances to
consider their incursions in the light of religious crusades.
These "men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands",
whose descendants are to this day childlike and simple hearted, could
not understand these political distinctions, and naturally clung to the
pleasant farms which they had reclaimed from the sea and cultivated so
diligently, being most reluctant, of course, to leave those
"Strongly built houses, with frames of oak and of chestnut,
Such as the peasants of Normandy built in the reign of the Henries.
Thatched were the roofs, with dormer windows, and gables projecting
Over the basement below protected and shaded the doorway."
The French dominions were guarded by a chain of forts extending all
along the Atlantic coast, from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico.
That on Cape Breton Island, which protected the approach to the St.
Lawrence, was considered invincible, its walls being thirty feet high,
forty feet thick, and surrounded by a moat eighty feet in width.
