Exile
Wandered back to their native land to die in its bosom.
In the fisherman's cot the wheel and the loom are still busy,
Maidens still wear their Norman caps and their kirtles of homespun,
And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline's story."
Resolved to see these curious "Clare settlements," extending for fifty
miles on the coast, where descendants of the French Acadians live in
peace and unity, we reluctantly take our departure at last from dear old
Annapolis, which has been our restful haven so long, and where we have
been reviving school days in studying history and geography seasoned
with poetry and romance. Although it was expected that the W. C. R. R.
would be completed from Yarmouth to Annapolis by the latter part of
1876, we are pleased to find that this is not the case, and that we
shall have to take steamer, train, and carriage to our destination;
anticipating that any place so out of the beaten track must be
interesting.
The French settlements, a succession of straggling hamlets, were
founded by descendants of the exiles, who, -
"a raft as it were from the shipwrecked nation,...
Bound by the bonds of a common belief and a common misfortune,"
drifted back to "L'Acadie" in 1763, the year of the treaty between
France and England.
The lands of their fathers in their old haunts on the Basin of Minas
were in possession of people from New England; and, having a natural and
inherited affection for localities by the sea, they wandered down the
coast and scattered along shore as we find them now.
A pleasant excursion by steamer to Digby, thence proceeding some miles
by rail, finally a long but charming drive by the shore of St. Mary's
Bay, and we are set down at the house of a family of the better class,
among these kindly and old-fashioned farming and fisher folk. This
beautiful bay is thirty-five miles long, was christened Baie St. Marie
by Champlain, and here the four ships of De Monts lay in calm and secure
harbor for two weeks in 1604, while the adventurers were examining the
shores of Nova Scotia, - explorations in which the discovery of iron
pyrites deluded them with the belief that this would prove an El
Dorado.
Madame M. at first looks dismayed at the appearance of such a group of
strangers at her door, and is sure she cannot accommodate us; but her
daughters slyly jog her elbow, saying something in an undertone, as if
urging her to consent, and we are made most comfortable.
At first the family are a little shy, but in a couple of days we become
quite well acquainted; and, when the time comes for our departure they
"wish we could stay longer", - a wish which we heartily re-echo.
