"On the banks of the Teche are the towns of St. Maur and St Martin,"
to the parish of Attakapas
"and the prairies of fair Opelousas"
in Louisiana, some of the exiles wandered. Their descendants live there
at the present time, and are known as Cajeans. Though sometimes harshly
treated in the towns where they were quartered, though shouldered off
from one village to another when one grew weary of or made excuses for
not maintaining them, the poor wanderers were mild, gentle, and
uncomplaining.
A writer in "Canadian Antiquities" says: "None speaks the tongue of
Evangeline; and her story, though true as it is sweet and sorrowful, is
heard no more in the scenes of her early days."
The way in which it came about that Longfellow wrote his poem was in
this wise: one day, when Hawthorne and a friend from Salem were dining
with the poet, the Salem gentleman remarked to the host, "I have been
trying to persuade Hawthorne to write a story based on a legend of
Acadie and still current there, - the legend of a girl who, in the
dispersion of the Acadians, was separated from her lover, and passed
her life in waiting and seeking for him, and only found him dying in a
hospital when both were old." The host, surprised that this romance did
not strike the fancy of the novelist, asked if he himself might use it
for a poem; and Hawthorne, readily assenting, promised not to attempt
the subject in prose until the poet had tried what he could do with it
in metrical form. No one rejoiced more heartily in the success of the
world-renowned poem than the writer who generously gave up an
opportunity to win fame from his working up of the sad theme.
Authorities differ widely regarding the number of persons expelled from
Acadia, many historians giving the estimate at seven thousand. In a
letter from Governor Lawrence to the governors of the different colonies
to which the exiles were sent, he says: "As their numbers amount to near
seven thousand persons, the driving them off with leave to go whither
they pleased would have doubtless strengthened Canada with so
considerable a number of inhabitants." Bryant says: "Seven thousand
probably represented with sufficient accuracy the total French
population of Acadia in 1755; but the entire number of the exiled did
not exceed, if Minot be correct, two thousand, of whom many
subsequently returned to Acadia."
Five years after the departure of the exiles a fleet of twenty-two
vessels sailed from Connecticut for Grand Pré with a large number of
colonists, who took possession of the deserted farms. They found sixty
ox carts and yokes, while on the edge of woods of the inland country and
in sheltered places heaps of bones told of cattle which had perished of
starvation and cold after their owners were forced to leave them to such
a fate.
