Character sketch of Parkman—His ideas and ways—Murdoch, Haliburton, Campbell, Brown, Longfellow, the compiler—Brook Watson, Moses de les Derniers.

Tins dispersion of a people, this “Lost Chapter in American History” as the title of Philip H. Smith's remarkably honest work puts it, has hitherto been a riddle that has both attracted and repelled many writers. Some of them, honest and upright, incapable of conceiving the gigantic fraud at the bottom of it all, or of guessing the cause of the absence of documents, found themselves, in good faith, constrained to magnify the Acadians’ faults,, to suppose more than facts warranted, in order to harmonize and explain what seemed, in any other hypothesis, unexplainable and discordant. Not being in a position to penetrate the motives of Lawrence and his accomplices, they have accepted all their unproved and interested accusations. Among such writers may be ranked Murdoch, Campbell and Ilan-nay. Others, like Haliburton, Smith, Bancroft, Rameau and Casgrain, more wary, and perhaps more perspicacious, discerned and pointed out this absence of documents; their suspicions were aroused, and their conclusion was an unequivocal condemnation of the crime. Brown is the only one who, thanks to his position, to the time and place in which he lived, has succeeded in clearing up the mystery. His manuscript, found after a long interval, is the answer to this riddle of a century.

Another writer, I regret to say, superficial and dishonest, improving on his predecessors of the first category, torturing documents already tortured and mutilated, taking no account of the judicial temper that ought to accompany the true historian, has tried his hand at every kind of subterfuge to justify what is unjustifiable. I allude, of course, to Parkman. To be frank, I believe him to be, of all writers I am acquainted with, the most subtilely one-sided, the most expert in the art of deception. His work is the first I read on the subject I am now handling, and I confess, in all humility, that he deceived me ; for a long time I believed in his sincerity and took his part against those who attacked him. It was only when I went on to consult official sources and then to compare his methods, that I became firmly convinced what a thorough imposture his work is. He has reduced historical trickery to a fine art, which presents a curious, though not difficult study, of the use of language to conceal one’s thoughts.

By temperament he stands midway between the historian and the novelist. He lacks the exquisite delicacy of the latter, the kindness, lofty character and love of truth necessary for the former. Not wishing to remain a mere story-teller, he preferred to rise to the level of history, for which he was in no way adapted, as he possessed none of the essential requisites of the historian. His brilliant qualities as a narrator were, however, of great assistance for transient success, and he used and misused them to the utmost. To interest and charm was his principal object, and he pursued it most successfully; on this score his merits are as great as they aie unchallenged. But this exclusive quest obliged him to skip the arid tracts of history and to devote himself to the unearthing of stirring tales and spicy anecdotes. Wherever he found a bauble, were it on a dunghill, he would eagerly pick it up, if he thought that, by polishing it, he could make it sparkle and attract attention.

Nevertheless, while attempting history, Parkman has remained what nature made him, a charming story-teller, and nothing more. He is always interesting, captivating, and generally plausible, owing to the skill with which he constructs a theory and to the crumbs of praise he bestows on those whom he intends to smash with a sledge-hammer. When he flatters, then is he especially dangerous. He aims at effect in everything. He seeks to please, to delight, to leave the reader in a state of at least semi-satisfaction. His turn of mind seems to be quite that of those society story-tellers, those agreeable talkers who can cap any anecdote with another more marvellous. Such men we do not despise; they sometimes possess, in a high degree, the faculty of keenly appreciating the humorous and whimsical aspects of society, the spiciness and point of a situation. We listen to them with interest; they amuse us; but we know what to think of the core of the matter, we are fully aware that the amount of truth contained in their tales bears the same proportion to the latter as a pippin does to a ripe apple. To this class of men does Parkman belong. The misfortune is that he transferred to the field of history his talent for narrative. It would be unreasonable to expect from such a man that reverence which is due to truth. He is astride his hobby, galloping after sensations, to which history lends itself but seldom. The moment he entered upon historical work, Parkman ought to have adopted a different style, he ought to have changed his dispositions and drunk more deeply of the springs of truth. A mere society storyteller leaves no traces behind him; no one examines into the value of his proofs; he chooses them where he wills, or he gives none at all; his anecdote is finished, and there is an end of it. Not so, the historian, as Parkman knew full well; but he could not change his character, and, even if he could, he would not; above all he was anxious to please and charm, whereas true history implies many slow and dry details.

Just follow him a little and you will see how, while attempting history, he has remained an anecdote-hunter. He cannot stick to one thing, he skips from one subject to another, from one place to another. Following the bent of his whim, he is now at Detroit, now at Port Royal, again in Europe and the next moment in the Big Horn Mountains or with the Outagamis. He comes, goes, and twists about, apparently without any definite object, always on the hunt and taking but little of what he finds. He settles down on nothing; like the bee, he pilfers here and there, and his honey is the anecdote, the sharp saying. Everywhere he is all agog for this, on the dirt-heap as well as on the flower. When he linds it, he hugs it with delight. Should he in his erratic gyrations come across any ecclesiastic that has an off-hand way about him, and whom legend lias bedecked with arabesques, what a jolly humor Parkman is in! What a windfall he has had! Woe to you if at such a moment you say to him: But, my dear friend, perhaps this story is not authentic, the authority on which it rests is undeserving of any trust and has been rejected by all serious writers. No, no; he won’t listen to you. Do you think lie is going to lose such a spicy anecdote.

He clings to it as the dog does to his hone. Hands off!

Though I have no other know ledge of Parkman than what I gather from his works, yet I venture to maintain that, unless all intrinsic evidence is illusory, my estimate of his character and of the special bent of his mind is fairly accurate. He himself is never accurate. He is continually deceiving his readers as much by what he says as by what he omits to say. Were all his works submitted to a searching examination, not one page perhaps would stand scrutiny, not even the titles of some of his books. The one that treats of the dispersion of the Acadians is entitled “Montcalm and Wolfe,” though it contains very little about these two men, as may be judged from the titles of most of the chapters: “Prussia and her foes;” “Siege of Havana;” “M. de Choiseul;” “The New Czar;“ Frederick of Prussia;” “George III.;” “Pitt—his character;” “Conflict for Acadia;” “Shirley;” “Loudun;” “Wm. Johnson;” “Removal of the Acadians.” A veritable hotch-potch, with which the title of the book has almost nothing to do. With his nomadic instincts, his feverish restlessness, it was indeed a very difficult matter to hit upon a title suited to his works. Tie understood that, at this latter end of the age of electricity and rapid manufacture, if he wished to reach the mass of readers, he must fall into line with the busy public, which calls for “go,” rush, new sights and sounds, frequent and varied changes of scene. This was all the easier for him because it agreed with his tastes and his irresistible need of new sensations.

It is evident that Parkman lias conceived a downright antipathy to the Acadians. He seems to have been disgusted with hearing everywhere about him, in Longfellow's land, his countrymen pitying the fate of the Acadians. It looks as if he had long made up his mind to crush them. In conversation with his friends Parkman must have often striven to destroy the effect produced by Longfellow’s poem. At first, he probably meant merely to bring back men’s minds to the sterft reality of fact, from which Longfellow’s poetic effusions were necessarily a slight departure. But a new theory is apt to carry one too far; an ardent one-ideaed man soon loses the judicial temper; Parkman’s wits were sharpened for an onslaught. Such. I firmly believe, is the true explanation of his bitterness. To realize this, we should bear in mind that Longfellow and Parkman were both residents of Boston; the one, much older, surrounded with the respect and veneration of his fellow-countrymen, his fame being largely due to the poem of Evangeline, was the greater glory; the other, much younger, was the lesser glory, the budding glory. Their characters were as the poles asunder: Longfellow had a great soul attuned to the noblest inspirations, taking high views of life; Parkman’s tendencies were the exact opposite. He, the lesser glory, seems to have experienced feelings of jealousy in the neighborhood of the greater luminary before which all other lights paled. There runs through all that he has written about the Acadians a thread of veiled spiteful allusions to Longfellow’s view. Parkman’s discussions with his own friends become chapters, his theory is crystallized in print. He takes great pains to make us understand his aversion for'“ medievalism,” “humanitarianisni," New England humanitarianism melting into sentimentality,” “the effusive humanitarianism of to-day;” all which its intended to counteract the effect produced by his fellow -Bostonian’s touching poem. Incapable of literary excellence in the same line, he thought lie could create a .sensation by a startling contrast. The way he girds at his great rival betrays his secret envy of him, and he strikes at him through the unfortunate Acadians just when Longfellow had disappeared from the scene.

Amid the travailing of our time toward the birth of a new social order, amid the groping about of science and modern thought, some men become so infatuated with the dominant note of progress at the moment of their entrance into life, that they cannot advance beyond that initial and narrow horizon. When Parkman began his career, men were on the threshold of that great movement toward material progress which lights up this nineteenth century. The world was absorbed in this idea. Continents covered with a network of railways and electric wires, oceans crossed by steamships, begot dreams of prodigious developments. Inventive genius was hard at work in every direction ; manufactures received a marvellous impetus; the wealth of nations advanced with unexpected strides. Parkman fell in love with all that, so much so that he came to detest whatever was not precisely that; hence his contempt for the past, for medicevalism; hence his seeming aversion for humanitarianism, for all higher progress. Tie fastened his soul to what was the popular fad at the beginning of his conscious life; to that he still clings, albeit the world of thought has moved on. Doubtless the material progress movement was a fine field for a certain kind of enthusiasm that absorbed second-rate minds; but a higher criticism was waiting to see its fruits and consequences. Parkman seems to share the immobility of the many men whom this movement enriched and filled with unprogressive satisfaction. He never asked himself if the wealth thus increased has been more equitably distributed, if the condition of the poor has thereby been improved as greatly as had been hoped, if the inoral benefits have been at all commensurate with the material; and yet these are grave questions which men of light and leading have been studying all these years.

One can hardly entertain a doubt that material progress, which is begotten of science, which itself is begotten of creative wisdom, is a providential part of the divine plan; but, in order to its remaining so, it must be studied, analyzed, understood, made subservient to the higher interests of morality. All human progress carries with it potencies for good and evil; the general effect is what constitutes its true value; it is because the general effect is capable of being made to subserve morality that we admire progress. That outburst of progressive tendencies which is the leading feature of the present century has not yet borne its best fruits, the promise of which is as yet vague and remote. Hitherto the material aspect has absorbed most of these progressive tendencies, because the movement began with revelations of the possibilities of matter; but, after all, matter, be it ever so deftly fashioned, can be but the medium, the vehicle of the designs of Providence making for the interests of civilization and true Christianity; it can have no real value unless it produce this result. Though no one can study this great question without admitting that much has been done and that a revolution has been wrought in the world of ideas, still it must be borne in upon the patient and thoughtful observer that the greatest results are yet far off.

In material progress itself a distinction should be drawn between merely ingenious inventions and those that have a marked influence on civilization. The greatest inventions are those that diminish distance and bring together in more friendly contact nations and individuals: for their social effect is to destroy national antipathies and prejudices, to make war more difficult, to bridge the gulf between the classes and the masses, to smooth down all kinds of asperities arising from misunderstandings between men of different nations and creeds, and to help all men toward the realizing of that brotherhood of the race which is one of the foundation-stones of Christianity. Considered as mighty auxiliaries of Christian thought, these inventions may be said to be preparing the overthrow of heathenism and the spread of true civilization in all parts of the globe, and more especially in India, Japan and China. As light expels darkness, so will the true culture introduced by these inventions gradually bring about the voluntary relinquishment of heathen forms of worship.

Christianity, while ever containing in itself the essence of all moral progress, has often had to struggle with absolutism and arbitrary power; in this environment it could not produce all the fruits it is capable of bearing. Wherever men were divided into a handful of oppressors and a mass of slaves, material progress and true moral progress had to remain at a stand-still. Liberty is the spring that sets both in motion. This is quite within the purview of that divine wisdom which presides over the destinies of the world. The oppressed multitude rises gradually, rises continually ; freed from oppression, it becomes its enemy; a wise tolerance, a spirit of justice, and i kindly feeling towards one’s fellow-men, penetrate deeper and deeper into the hearts of the people; the great maxims of Christianity are more and more fully understood, no longer only by chosen groups of men, but by the common people. The God of vengeance and terror becomes still more to them the God of love and mercy. Men that were once cruel are becoming daily more humane. We have entered upon an era of that brotherly love which Lies at the root of Christianity.

This is what Parkman does not seem to have realized. He stopped short at mere material progress, with a marked aversion for whatever came before or was to follow the early crystallizing of his own views. He seems to hate "humanitarianism” and “sentimentalism” just as bitterly as “medievalismhe" involves the future as well as the past in one common hatred. He is as much behind his age as the Acadians were behind theirs, with this essential difference that the higher interests of morality were for them the mainspring of their lives, whilst Parkman is too much taken up with material progress to care as he ought for moral progress and in particular for the spread of humanizing influences.

With reference, to progress men may be ranged under three heads: those who are interested in all kinds of progress, and more especially with the highest kind; those who look upon morality as everything and the rest as nothing, because they fail to notice the correlation between all things ; and those tor whom material progress is everything. To this last class Parkman seems to belong. He would go into ecstasies over an invention that would reduce by thirty seconds the time needed for converting a hog into sausages. Dr. Ox’s gas, which transformed slow Dutchmen into firebrands, would probably give him intense delight. He abhors the very word “ medievalism.” It rings in his ears like an echo of “diabolism.” He speaks of it as if, 150 or 200 years ago, the Acadians were a rare and exceptional example of it, and as if that were a sufficient reason to hold them up to public contempt and to justify their deportation. These two fads, his hatred of medievalism, his persistent dragging in of this question in season and out of season, as if he had just made an important discovery that was to give him rank among deep thinkers, and above all his undiscrimiiiating aversion for “humanitarian” ideas, as if, together with the platitudes this term often covers, there was not a great amount of good in any humanizing agency, show that he is still in the A B C of social science. He reminds one of a schoolboy picking his first steps through the field of knowledge. If Parkman’s animus were the highest expression of our civilization, we should almost be willing to return to mediavalium, especially if we were assured of finding it associated with the rectitude and moral worth of the Acadians. But, thank heaven, in all ranks of society there are many men that love progress in all its forms, and can seize the higher aspects of our civilization, while Parkman can appreciate only the lower. They like material progress as a means to spread a lofty moral tone and those humanitarian ideas which he sneers at. Material progress, viewed in any other light, is worthless. He who fails to appreciate the humanizing influences that are the outcome of material progress and are rapidly girdling us about, must have a very limited intellect, closed to tlie noblest and highest thoughts. He who hates medievalism so intensely has arestless, superficial mind, incapable of breaking through the trammels of vulgarity. The statesman and the philosopher indulge in no such hatred : they know that all things are developed and evolved in various ways and that rapid evolution is not always the best; they study the past and the present and the hidden connection between the two, striving to deduce therefrom principles according to which they may forecast the future ; they are patient, nay, indulgent; they are aware that a few years more or less are of small account in the history of mankind, and that, amid our joys and sorrows, our failures and successes, we are ever marching onward in the path of progress, which, like the asymptote of an hyperbola, is continually approaching, though it can never hope to reach perfection.

Parkman has some fellow-feeling for the Canadians of the first period in French colonization. That spirit of adventure which carried them to the great lakes, the Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains had a special charm for him. He had the same feeling for the Acadians in the days of La Tour, Denys and 1’iencourt, when some of them were traders, forest rangers, adventurers, corsairs. Their life was neither moral nor civilized, but it was full of excitement; and what Parkman cannot stand is a humdrum, peaceful life, be it ever so moral, happy and fruitful, while the other life, which he revels in, is vicious, demoralizing, wretched and useless. Morality! What in the world is that?said a brilliant and flippant French writer. Humanitarian ideas! What in the world are they? would Parkman say. He is not more moved at the deportation and its attendant woes than is the country bumpkin who sets the heel of his boot on an ant-hill. Whatever does not smack of the feverish activity of to-day deserves none of his sympathy. Those simple and ignorant Acadians have no claim on his pity; they may have been moral, very moral indeed; but they were too fond of their nationality, their customs, their language. Morbid sentimentality! They should have put all that rubbish behind them to fuse themselves with their masters into a homogeneous mass. Ignorant, backward people l'ke them ought to make way for others. He speaks frequently of “hard facts;” which, being interpreted, signifies: Down with every obstacle, never mind liow ! Lawrence’s audacity has particularly captivated Park-man: “He was resolute, unbending; his energetic will was not apt to relent under the softer sentiments.” The effusive hewmanitarianism of to-day had no part in it Well done, Lawrence!

Parkman may have deemed himself safe from the severe judgments of his contemporaries; but impunity is not eternal; a nemesis awaits the historian not less surely than it brands the facts he relates. Sooner or later comes the hour of retribution; and if the public are indulgent to eccentricities of mind and errors of judgment, they have no mercy for dishonesty. Then will he be judged by his own “hard facts.”

Parkman, in his “Montcalm and Wolfe,” speaks of the ecclesiastical tutelage over the French-Oanadians, which (r aids the tamer virtues ”that“ need the presence of a sentinel to keep them from escaping, but ”which“ is fatal to mental robustness and moral courage. This sounds well indeed. I do not wish to dispute anything of Parkman’s where diversity of opinion is permissible, or where his guilt does not go beyond mere exaggeration; but how beautiful are the “mental robustness and moral courage" of those he so much admires, of Lawrence, of Shirley and of himself! Friend Parkman, “if that can be called a virtue which needs the constant presence of a sentinel to keep it from escaping,’’ I thank thee, as Gratiano thanked Shylock, for teaching me that word. Aye, if an historian needs a sentinel to watch him lest lie escape beyond the pale of truth, can his tamer virtues of graphic word-painting and crisp narrative be called virtues at all? Here have 1 been standing sentinel over you, or rather dogging your steps, and I have found you escaping, whenever you thought you safely could, from the precincts of truth! Is this what you understand by mental robustness and moral courage?

Very different is the temper of Brown, Haliburton and Murdoch. Kindness,' rectitude and love of truth are their chief characteristics. They are not, nor do they seem to wish to be thought, charming story-tellers; evidently their only ambition is to get at the truth and set it forth without artifice, with sinplicity and candor. Haliburton proved elsewhere that he had all the gifts of fancy needed for a good story; but here he confines himself to a simple narrative of events. For him history is not a series of disjointed and highly spiced pen-pictures, a swallow’s flight dipping here and there athwart two continents; it is a labor of deep thought and great patience wherein the dry bones of uninteresting facts underlie the more pleasing features of thrilling adventure and clever sayings. As we see that he is no dissembler, we read him without distrust % we feel that we have in him a safe guide, a man of lofty and perspicacious mind who collects his facts, analyzes them and states them frankly, while his documents are handled with perfect order and sequence.

Murdoch belongs to the same school { but lie had not the same firm grasp of facts as Haliburton, and therefore fell short of perfection as an historian. In moral worth, as is transparently clear from his writings alone, he is second to none; it would be difficult to conceive of a man with more winsome gifts; but some of those very gifts, when applied to history, became defects. Thus his extreme indulgence and good-natuie led him into excusing everything, into seeing good actions or at least good intentions everywhere. Seldom does he attempt censure, and, when he reluctantly does, he seeks to lessen the weight of his charges by all the excuses which his gentle and kindly nature can suggest. Sometimes he goes so far as to be ingeniously apologetic. For instance, after exhibiting Armstrong as an odious tyrant and frankly proving this by all relevant documents, he palliates his conduct on the score of pecuniary losses which had occurred twelve or fifteen years before his suicide. Generally speaking, however, he prefers to be silent about defects and faults, and hazards an opinion only on good qualities or indifferent actions which may be construed as good or bad according to circumstances. Of the expulsion he merely says:

“In the expulsion itself he—Lawrence—was deeply engaged, and the praise or blame of it—perhaps both—belong largely to liim. He was a man inflexible in his purposes, and held control in no feeble hands. Earnest and resolute, he pursued the object of establishing and confirming British authority here with marked success. He won the respect and confidence as well of the authorities in England as of the settlers in this country.”

He has not a word to say against the Acadians, whose virtues he admires, while commiserating their sad lot:

In the melancholy fate of the Acadians, removed by force, scattered in strange lands, among an uncongenial people, the retrospect is anything but agreeable. While we see plainly that England could never really control this province while they remained in it, all our feelings of humanity are affected by the removal, and still more by the severity of the attendant circumstances. Sent to the other colonies without any previous consent on their part to receive them, and with little or no provision made for their support when they arrived there, scattered among communities to whom their religious worship was odious, and deprived of all their property, it is not to be wondered at that the poet and the novelist have made capital of their sufferings. It is, however, some consolation to know, that many of the exiles returned to their native land, and, though not restored to their original farms, they became an integral and respected portion of our population, displaying under all changes those simple virtues that they had inherited; the same modest, humble and peaceable dispositions that had been their early attributes."

It is impossible to withhold one’s esteem from such a man, whose shortcomings were but an exaggeration of his virtues. He is so scrupulously honest as to inform us that one of Lawrence’s councillors was an ancestor of his, as if he thought himself obliged to make this avowal, in order that the public might make allowance for his involuntary bias. And yet, notwithstanding the unlimited respect I entertain for him, I cannot help observing that this excessive indulgence for everything and everybody often warps his judgment of facts, which are thus necessarily distorted. Murdoch lacked the sagacious acumen of Brown and Haliburton; these latter had all the kindliness that is expected of an historian, while at the same time they were possessed of that dauntless spirit which affronts all obstacles, that constancy which, having once undertaken to sift a question, goes thoroughly into all its intricacies and entanglements and throws into relief responsibilities, intentions and ultimate results. Murdoch, on the contrary, trips rapidly over the deportation, as If he felt himself unequal to the disentangling of such a skein of schemes, or as if his sensitive nature winced at the sight of such shocking ruthlessness. Besides, he had not the opportunities Parkman so egregiously misused, for he wrote before the publication of the Archives and the discovery of Brown’s manuscript. The latter, more especially, would have greatly enlightened him as to Lawrence’s character and the motives of the deportation. At any rate this much should be said of Murdoch, that he distorts nothing that he has learnt, and still less does he resort to any subterfuge to disguise the truth. Though his History is a mere journal of events, it will remain and increase in value, whereas Parkman, with all his witchery of style and wealth of anecdote, will be more and more discredited in proportion as his statements are more carefully dissected.

However, with all his ingenuousness, Murdoch could not write a truthful history of these events by making a mere summary of the documents that were left. The course I have adopted may look like special pleading, but it is the only one available to reach a satisfactory conclusion, and it is, moreover, the only one to be followed by those who would differ from me. When a crime is committed, almost all the evidence must have the same drift, if the true culprit stands for judgment.

So it is here, and this explains what appears to he special pleading. If I could possibly be wrong as to the motives of the deportation and Lawrence’s guilt, then, of course, much of what I have said would fall at the same time. The exceptional circumstances of the case forced me to examine carefully, in all their bearings, the documents I have produced, and to detect, by close comparison and analysis, the hidden connection between apparently isolated events ; no other course is open to a man who tackles a period of history that is so poor in documentary evidence. If the most impartial of men were to coniine himself to a mere summary of the documents that have escaped destruction, he would be guilty of grave injustice and would put before the public a work that would lack the very semblance of history. Still more would this be the result, if he restricted himself to the volume of the Archives, which, as I have superabundantly proved, is but the one-sided and mutilated collection of the documents for the defence, made after the counsel for the defence had expunged with the greatest care from its own documents whatever could throw light on the difficulties of the case. It is the volume of the Archives which, in the guise of mere materials for history, is pre-eminently a record of special pleadings. What, then, should be thought of those writers, happily few in number, who, not content with comming themselves to this one-sided and dishonest record, cull therefrom only such passages as may seem to support their extreme views? Even if that record were unmutilated, it would represent, after all, only the version of Lawrence and the authorities, and little or nothing of the Acadian view; but, imperfect as it is in itself, mutilated by Lawrence and his accomplices.

In order the better to understand how unfair it would be to write the history of this province with these garbled documents, and even with the Archives if complete, it is necessary to recall to mind the malversations with which Lawrence is charged, the tyranny he exercised over the English colonists of Halifax and the humiliations he heaped upon them, as their petitions show. Of all this what do the official documents say? Nothing, absolutely nothing. And the reason is plain. Lawrence, whose immediate rule was uncontrolled, would surely not insert in state papers the complaints of the people against himself, and still less would he transmit them to the Lords of Trade. All these important facts were unknown to the public for more than a century, and, without Brown’s manuscript, would be still unknown. There is, it is true, one official paper that could throw much light on the tyranny and malversations of Lawrence, I mean the letter the Lords of Trade wrote to Belcher on March 3d, 1761, which I have given; but the time-serving Compiler has simply suppressed it.

When first I became aware of the Compiler’s systematic omissions, I purposed consulting all the originals of the documents that appear in the volume of the Archives, collating the two texts and restoring the expunged portions. But I soon acquired sufficient experience to understand quite well the meaning of those asterisks staring at me up and down the compilation. Whenever I found elsewhere the missing passages indicated by those asterisks, these passages invariably proved to be more interesting than that part of the documents which the Compiler chose to produce, and they always tended to weaken or ruin the pretension, which he thus put forward as exclusive of all others. Ere long 1 had collected more than enough instances of his deliberate system of mutilation to convince the public, and, from that moment, the inductive process being satisfactorily conclusive, the task of completely restoring all the omitted passages became useless. Doubtless, further research would have led to many curious discoveries; but the chronicling of them all would have overloaded my work with repetitions ad nauseam of the same tricks. Of course, if my proofs be challenged, I will pursue the restitution of the missing passages; for, far from dreading, I invite criticism; but I feel confident that any such provocation could only prepare fresh humiliations for the Compiler.

His usual practice is to take from the correspondence of the Governors those passages only which seem unfavorable to the Acadians; the omitted portions are either indicated by asterisks or not indicated at all. Their replies, those of their priests or of the French Governors of Cape Breton, are almost invariably omitted. And what are the grievances of the English Governors? When specific, they mostly refer to delay in answering gubernatorial communications, to passive resistance when it was enjoined upon them to take an unrestricted oath, to efforts and negotiations with a view to substituting therefor a compromise. Surely, there is not much here to complain of, especially if we bear in mind the utter powerlessness of the English Governors to enforce their will, with a handful of soldiers, upon so large and sturdy and scattered a population. And yet, because certain parts of this volume contain only such documents ;is recite these grievances, and because these grievances are intensified by the stiffness of military language, the careless or prejudiced reader is prone to draw inferences unfavorable to the Acadians. Seldom does the ordinary reader take the trouble of comparing dates; he takes the documents as they come, in the order in which he finds them, without noticing the time that intervenes between them. This document follows that one; therefore, he infers, they are closely connected in point of time; yet it happens occasionally that long periods are skipped without the insertion of a single despatch from the Lords of Trade or the Governors. For example, during the three years that preceded Armstrong's suicide, when he had almost lost his head and was too absorbed in his quarrels with his Council and the people about him to pay any attention to the Acadians, there is a complete blank in the volume of the Archives.

The Compiler is less exclusive and more generous in that part of his volume which relates to the foundation and growth of Halifax, though here also the gaps are wide and important. Generally, he avoids whatever points to a spirit of insubordination or to a moral condition inferior to that of the Acadians; but, on the whole, he is more circumstantial: though he inserts none of the colonists’ complaints, he gives us glimpses of their daily occupations, of their disappointments and their quarrels, for they are far from being a happy family. Military rule, to which the Acadians had cheerfully submitted for forty years, seems a grievous burden to the Halifax colonists, though it was purposely lightened for them. Without in the least degree wishing to depreciate these early colonists, we quite understand how, among these recruits from anywhere and everywhere, there must have been worthless men, just as there must have been scamps among the Acadians in De la Tour’s time. Certain extraordinary facts confirm this very natural inference, and indicate no very high degree of morality. Six months after the foundation of Halifax, when already twenty-nine licenses had been granted for the sale of spirituous liquors, forty persons were arraigned before the grand jury for selling liquor without license ; and note that this occurred after the Government had distributed ten thousand gallons of rum between July and December. Moreover the officers of Annapolis, at most a dozen, had consumed three thousand gallons of the same in a space of time which cannot have exceeded a twelvemonth.

Haliburton cites a strange specimen of Halifax manners:

“We may,” he says, “form some opinion of the state of public morals at that time, from an extraordinary order of Governor Cornwallis, which, after reciting that the dead were attended to the grave by neither relatives, friends or neighbors, and that it was even difficult to procure the assistance of carriers, directed the justices of the peace, upon the death of a settler, to summon twelve persons from the vicinity of the deceased’s last place of abode, to attend his funeral, and carry his corpse to the grave; and as a penalty for not complying with the orders, directions were given to strike out the name of every delinquent from the mess books of the place, etc. etc.”

The Compiler reproduces only tlie latter part of this order; he omits the reasons why it was issued; so that one would think it was merely a preventive command against the possibility of such an offence, whereas it was the very prevalence of the offence that elicited the order. This is precisely one of Parkman’s favorite receipts: Cut a quotation in two and drop out the peccant part; excellent advice, indeed, for a surgeon, but scarcely suited to the historian.

The Lords of Trade in a reply, dated October 10th, 1749, to three letters of Cornwallis, refer to the contents of the latter, and, among other things, to the irregularity and the indolence of the Halifax colonists. Now, on consulting these three letters as found in the volume of the Archives, we discover that there is no mention of irregularity or indolence; only, in one of the letters we see asterisks, which probably indicate the passage containing the obnoxious complaints. Quite otherwise would the Compiler have acted had complaints been made against the Acadians. In the chapter on the Founding of Halifax he repeats all the strictures on the Acadians which he had already complacently inserted in the chapter on “Acadian French,” and this is the only instance of such repetition. This creates the impression that what is merely a rehash of previous faultfinding is really something new, and thus strengthens the brief lie holds against the Acadians. One would think that he had borrowed Parkman’s method of multiplying by dividing, were it not that the Compiler’s book appeared before Parkman’s. They both understand each other like pickpockets in a crowd.

Not satisfied with introducing the letters of the traitor Pichon into a collection of official papers, the Compiler finds means to insert a letter that was utterly foreign to the legitimate object of his compilation, a letter from two French officers of Quebec, Hocquart and Beauliarnais, to the French Minister in Paris, the Count de Maurepas. The motive of this insertion is three or four lines of this letter that present the Acadians in an unfavorable light. Had these officers any correct information or personal acquaintance with the Acadians? Neither seems likely. They may have visited Louis-burg, but, certainly, they never entered Acadia, for no French officers would have been allowed there. Their strictures on the Acadians, though inapplicable to those who lived on their own farms in the Peninsula, may very well apply to those of mixed blood who were scattered everywhere and whom they may have met on the shores of Cape Breton Island. What these officers say is that the houses of the Acadians “were wretched wooden boxes, without conveniences and without ornaments,” and that they were “covetous of specie.” As to the first count of this indictment, many passages of the Archives agree with the chronicles of the period in representing the Acadians as living in plenty, and dwelling in roomy and comfortable houses; but, because the Compiler has inserted this letter in his volume, it is copied by several writers ; which proves that the end he had in view—to prepare an arsenal of weapons against the Acadians—has been attained. Nevertheless, it is evident that these officers were not in a position to form an enlightened opinion; and if all the obiter dicta of thoughtless tourists must be treasured up, history would be a caricature. Even if these officers spoke from actual experience, what they said would apply equally well to some Anglo-Americans or Canadians, in fact, to all new colonics. Then, again, an opinion of this kind depends for its value on the point of view, the circumstances of time, place and persons. To these gay gallants, enervated perhaps bj- the splendors of the court, setting foot for the first time on Americas soil, strangers to the simple and rude life of the husbandman and the colonist, the dwellings of the Acadians, if indeed they ever, saw them, must have’ appeared very humble. The Acadians had no skilled architects, no upholsterers; rich brocades, many-colored hangings, valuable paintings were wanting in their rustic homes; no doubt, as we may well believe, their houses were “without ornaments.” As to their being “covetous of specie,” they were neither more nor less so than are all the peasants of the world, who live by the sweat of their brow and not on capital accumulated by the labors of other men.

The gentle and peaceful manners of the Acadians are admitted by all historians. They are acknowledged to have been an industrious people, living in plenty notwithstanding the forced subdivision of their lands. Their morals are admitted to have been excellent; there was as much harmony among them as it is possible to expect in this world; their differences were settled amicably; the poor were very rare and were eagerly assisted by the community. To be sure, there must be one discordant voice in this harmonious concert of historians anent Acadia, the voice of Francis Parkman. Were the human race divided into two categories, the admirers of goodness and the fault-finders, or, in other words, the good-natured and the crabbed, Parkman would rank high among the latter. This mania for censure, if not" restrained, necessarily drags its victims into partiality, anil sometimes into downright dishonesty. The field for fault-finding is illimitable; nothing is easier than to give ah unfavorable color to the most innocent actions. Men are to be found who will blame whatever you do, even if you cannot help doing it. Listen to one of these. "They were,” says Parkman. “a very simple and ignorant peasantry, industrious and frugal till evil days came to discourage them.”

Of course the Acadians were discouraged on the shores of New England; but if Parkman hail had a spark of humanity, he would have readily understood that no other frame of mind was possible in their then desperate condition. Did he expect them to become colonists in the places whither the) had been exiled? Of what use would lands have been to sundered families, whose scattered members bemoaned their separation, and, owing to Lawrence’s injunctions, had not, during eight years, until the peace of 1763, the sad privilege of searching for each other, if so be they might meet again? Was there any hope of making steady colonists, attached to the land of their exile, out of people who had been reduced to a state of mind that was worse than death; robbed of all their possessions; snatched from the lap of plenty and their smiling homes to become beggars among men that abhorred their language and their faith and often sneered at them and treated them with scorn? Parkman can talk glibly about the evil days that came to discourage them, because he does not put himself in their place. Being good-hearted people, so simple and so unsophisticated, nothing was left for them, bereaved as they were, but discouragement.

Their very simplicity and ignorance, joined to their love of hard work and those high moral qualities witnessed to by Parkman’s fellow-countrymen, acted as a powerful magnet, winning for them in their misfortunes the sympathy of many distinguished writers. The man of generous instincts does not shrink from hia oppressed brother, still less does he visit him with scorn because he is simple and ignorant. It is precisely this simple rectitude that afforded a covetous despot the opportunity to reduce them to beggary, so that he might fatten on the fruits of their toil.

Tillage and the raising of live stock were their chief occupations. Parkman seems to reproach them for having “little spirit of adventure.” But, surely, their preference for agricultural pursuits shows a higher civilization than that of the roving hunter, trapper and fisherman. Very likely, had they been what Parkman reproaches them with not being, he would have had still harder things to say against them. We see, by Winslow’s statistical table, that each family in the Mines District had, on an average, 23 head of horned cattle, 30 sheep and 14 pigs. This would be a large average in our own day and must have been proportion-ably greater then, since it represented the slow increase of a few head of cattle brought into the country 75 years before. It took fifty years of continuous occupation of the lands of the Acadians after the dispersion to bring the total of the British settlers in the Mines Basin up to the total of the Acadians when they were driven out, notwithstanding the fact that the British settlers began in greater numbers than were the original Acadian settlers and took possession of lands already tilled, whereas the beginnings of the Acadians had been most arduous owing to the forests they had to . clear and the marshes they had to drain. Though the successors of the .Acadians set great store by the diked lands and were able to use a part of the diking constructed by the Acadians, yet the area enclosed by dikes diminished greatly in the hands of the British settlers.3 When in 1765 the new colonists wished to reconstruct or repair these dikes, they applied to Governor Belcher for permission to employ Acadians at the expense of the Government, although they themselves had had the advantage of occupying cleared lands. True, the Acadians were simple and ignorant; but at that time most peasants in Europe, and hardly less so in England, were ignorant. It would be unfair not to take into account their altogether exceptional situation. The 175 families that were left as colonists in what was then an out-of-the-way place remained just as isolated under French dominion as they afterwards were under British rule. When we consider that, in such an environment, the need of education was but slightly felt, and the desire, born of that need, was dulled in course of time by the obstacles that stood in the way of its gratification, their ignorance is not surprising. But, were it as inexcusable and as complete as Parkman so often insinuates, tliat would not he a reason to treat them with scorn or to refuse them the sympathy that misfortune elicits, especially when that misfortune is undeserved.

The complacency with which lie is continually harping on their ignorance and simplicity in connection with their woes, as if their ignorance and simplicity could excuse or attenuate the crime of their oppressors, is, to put it mildly, strangely out of season. In point of fact, we know, from their petitions, that one-fourth and sometimes one-third of the names are signed by the petitioners; which is far from implying such utter illiteracy as Parkman hints at.

“Raynal, who never saw the Acadiamsays Parkman, “ has made an ideal picture of them, since copied and improved in prose and verse, till Acadia has become Arcadia. This humble society had its disturbing elements, for the Acadians, like the Canadians, were a litigious race and neighbors often quarrelled about their boundaries. Nor were they without a bountiful share of jealousy, gossip, and backbiting to relieve the monotony of their lives.”

Parkman has a horror of monotony. It would, indeed, have been monotonous to stick to commonly received opinions; he thought he ran 110 great risk in supposing a different state of things. It is quite true that Raynal had never seen any Acadians except those who took refuge in France; his views were based on hearsay and common report; this was much, though too little to ensure absolute precision;! but does not the same reproach apply with still greater, force to Parkman, who is so positive, though he has no known evidence at all to back him? No doubt, he was at liberty

to suppose that the state of society described by Raynal and by so many, others was an ideal picture incompatible with human frailty; hence came the dark colors his imagination added to the picture; he may have thought that in doing so he could not be far wrong, and indeed J myself am inclined to think Raynal’s lights needed some shading; but what I complain of is that Parkman is inventively positive without proof, and that the unfortunate bent of his mind and heart have led to the limning of a picture more imaginary than that of Raynal. Here again we must observe what an important factor their situation was ; it made possible a state of things that under other circumstances would have been impossible. The original population was less motley than in other colonies; they were all sons of husbandmen or husbandmen themselves. Three-fourths of this little nation were descended from the 47 heads of families that settled in the country a century before their dispersion; they were all related or connected by marriage; their fertile lands furnished in abundance all that could satisfy their simple wants. Left to themselves, they were self-supporting and locally self-governed, dispensing with courts of justice, policemen and bailiffs, regulating the public business of each parish in common* settling their disputes by arbitration. In the entire volume of the Archives we find not a single instance of dissidence among themselves when meeting for concerted action, not an instance of an Acadian arraigned for murder, theft, assault or indecency; these things are not so much as mentioned. This astonishing fact is, of course, attributable to their exceptional situation. Any reasonable explanation of it is admissible; but the fact is beyond a doubt. Considering that morality is not an unimportant matter, should their priests have had something to do with these splendid results, it is, perhaps, not asking too much if we bespeak an indulgent view of the authority they so successfully exercised. Had the people freed themselves in a greater degree from this control, which Park man considers so fatal to mental robustness, what they might have gained in independence, in initiative, in material progress, they would probably have lost in moral worth, thrift,-trustworthiness and contentment. I am as great an admirer as Parkman is of the conquests of the human intellect, of the soul’s upward strivings, I believe in a constant and beneficent evolution of Christian nations along lines marked out by Providence; yet, if in reading the records of the past, I meet with an infant nation happy and prosperous, enjoying a somewhat primitive but very virtuous fellowship, and all impregnated with the true Christian spirit, I do not stop to reflect on the narrow limits of their mental horizon, on the greater or less control exercised by some of their leaders, on the doubtful benefits of a revolution in their ideas; I am satisfied with admiring what I behold, without mental reservation and without expressing any wish for other scenes: I leave to time the slow' process of evolution, feeling convinced that virtue is after all the most abiding and precious of blessings.

Parkman could not fail to reproduce the opinion of the two French officers which has found its way into the volume of Archives and is mentioned above ; but he does so in his usual misleading way: “French officials,” he says, “described their dwellings as wretched wooden boxes, without ornaments or conveniences, and scarcely supplied with furniture. Two or more families-often occupied the same house: and their way of life, though simple and virtuous, washy no means remarkable for cleanliness?

The inverted commas are mine; there are none in Parkman’s quotation. Where do the words of the “French officials” end? We cannot tell. The reader will be inclined to think that the whole passage is borrowed verbatim from then), while in reality the latter half is either evolved from Parkman’s magination or based on something he alone has unearthed nobody knows where.

Let us examine more closely, in this short quotation, Parkman’s favorite method: for this is a typical instance and will serve to throw light on many similar passages. What authority had he to go by? Two French officers, and perhaps only one, since a letter signed by two persons is written by one alone, and the silent partner is not likely to object to assertions that seem to him unimportant and of which perhaps he has no personal knowledge. Moreover, these two officers resided at Quebec, and, as far as I have been able to ascertain by special researches, never set foot in Louisburg or Beausejour. Consequently; Parkman’s proof, besides being grounded on one of those sweeping assertions that are always so dangerous, is pretty nearly worthless. How, then, is he going to give it weight? By two easy dodges, the first of which is, without mentioning the names of these officers, to use a term, “ French officials,” which has the advantage of conveying a specific as well as a generic meaning: specific, in that it suggests, not officers travelling among natives whom they did not know, but officers on duty in the neighborhood of the Acadians, either on Cape Breton Island or at Beausejour; generic, in that it suggests, not one ot two, hut an indefinite number, say, five, twenty or perhaps all the French officials in the country. The second dodge, which is one that he, often adopts, consists in tacking on to the quotation other graver charges founded on no known proof, and then in making these additions pass for part of the quotation by omitting all quotation marks. Out of next to nothing he thus constructs an apparently strong piece of evidence.

If I insist so much on the basis of Parkman’s ehareres, it is not because of their intrinsic importance, which is inconsiderable, but because of that which they borrow from the high position he has fraudulently won. Though if is a thankless task, yet the moment one has set his face against disgust, like a surgeon about to operate, the process of following him in his shifts and twists becomes really interesting. But one cannot help reflecting all the time that a writer who lowers himself to such petty arts and works like a mole underground, is incapable of rising to the higher strata of thought. Nor is there any unkindness in trying to unmask a cheat for the sake of truth. The enterprise is useful, nay, necessary. My object is to point out the methods of this literary malefactor, in the hope that others may pursue investigation further. I have confined myself to the ninety pages that refer to Acadia, and even here I have only reviewed the most obvious points. As these ninety pages do not constitute a thirtieth part of Parkman’s works, there must remain a perfect mine of Pichon-tricks (Pichonneries) to unearth; for he who lias formed the habit of fraud will use it as often as it suits him. It is only the first steps in this downward path that make a man hesitate.

“Not remarkable for cleanliness.” I had always thought they were remarkable for cleanliness; and I have had much better opportunities than Parkman for forming an opinion. I have known at least two generations of Acadians before my time, and the oldest members of the Acadian community in which my early years were spent had inherited their habits of cleanliness directly from the victims of the deportation. Besides, the descriptions I will quote further on of Acadian homes lay stress upon their orderliness and tidiness, two qualities which are inseparable from cleanliness. This last assertion of Parkman’s, forming part, as it does, of that sentence which he has tacked on to the original words of the two French officers, seems to me a pure fabrication intended to cast a slur upon a whole people.

Were I to follow his example, I could paint in sombre colors the Anglo-American soldiers of that period, without lea\ing the limits of Nova Scotia. Parkman must be aware of the opinions held anent them by Admiral Knowles, Governor of Louisburg. “All those I found here,” he writes to the Secretary of State, “from the generals down to the corporals, were sellers of mm. The soldiers are lazy, dirty, obstinate; I rejoice at getting lid of them, and I pity Warren who had to deal with them.”

The militiamen here referred to belonged, if I mistake not, to an expedition undertaken as a religious crusade against popery; they were the pick of the colony of Massachusetts. If, starting from this deliberate statement of an admiral to so distinguished a person as the Puke of Newcastle, Secretary of State and Head of the British Government, I should infer the uncleanliness and degradation of these militiamen and, constructively, of the entire population of Now England, I should he doing exactly what Parkman has done in reference to the Acadians, with this striking difference, however, that I should not he drawing on my imagination nor relying upon the casual remark of persons without either knowledge or authority. But, as I am writing with no intention of throwing mud at any one, I do not hesitate to say, before examining the facts, before weighing the motives or the personal worth of this admiral, that his charges, distinct and definite as they are, produce very little impression upon me. I am inclined to think he wrote thus out of spleen or vexation, because he was hungry at the independent ways of the American militia. Parkman, who, in his excursions across the continent, has picked up so many things, has not, to the best of my knowledge, noticed this one.

Ruynal's work was known to Haliburton as well as to Parkman ; but the Nova Scotia Chief Justice had the further advantage of living near the Acadians. When he wrote his History, 75 years after the dispersion, the Acadians whom he was acquainted with no longer enjoyed the competence of the olden time. Their struggle for existence was painful. Tolerated on lands of inferior quality, they engaged in the fisheries or the coasting-trade. Their present mode of life was not so favorable as had been their past to an idyllic condition of society. Yet here is what Haliburton adds to his quotation from Raynal:

“Such is the picture of these people ah drawn by Raynal. By many, it is thought to represent a state of social happiness, totally inconsistent with the frailties of human nature ; and that it is worthy rather of the poet than the historian. In describing a scene of rural felicity like this, it is not improbable that his narrative ha.s partaken of the warmth of feeling for which he was remarkable; but it comes nearer the truth than it generally •imagined. Tradition is fresh and positive in the various parts of the United States, where they were located, respecting their guileless, peaceable and scrupulous character: and the descendants of those whose long cherished and endearing local attachment induced them to return to the land of their nativity, still deserve the name of a mild, frugal and pious people.

Although this opinion of a quasi-contemporary, weighty as it is, failed to attract Parkman’s attention; although the very name of so eminent a writer is never mentioned by him, I trust I may be allowed to quote the opinions of persons who had much to do with the deportation, and in doing so I am far from pretending to enlighten Mr. Parkman, who had these passages before him when he wrote; I merely wish to furnish the unprejudiced reader with reliable data from the most authentic sources.

The Rev. Andrew Brown, wishing to collect information on the character, manners and habits of the Acadians, made inquiries of persons who had Rad excellent opportunities of judging. One was Captain Brook Watson, who had commanded the detachment sent to Bay Verte to carry off the inhabitants and burn their houses, and, on another occasion, had had command of a flotilla of several vessels transporting the Acadians from Halifax to Boston. Another of Brown’s witnesses is that Moses de les Derniers who played so wretched a part during the deportation. This one I quote first:

“The Acadians were the most innocent and virtuous people I have ever known or read of in any history. They lived in a state of perfect equality, without distinetion of rank in society. The title of ‘Mister' was unknown among them. Knowing nothing of luxury or even of the conveniences of life, tliey were content with a simple manner of living, which they easily compassed by the tillage of their lands. Very little ambition or avarice was to be seen among them; they anticipated each other’s wants with kindly liberality; they demanded no interest for loans of money or other property. They were humane and hospitable to strangers, and very liberal toward those who embraced their religion. They were very remarkable for their inviolable purity of morals. I do not remember a single instance of illegitimate birth among them, even to this day. Their attainments in agriculture were very limited, though they cultivated well enough their diked lands. They were altogether ignorant of progress in the arts and sciences. I have known but one of them that could read and write well; some could do so, but imperfectly, and none of them had learned the mechanical arts. Each husbandman was his own architect and each land-owner tilled the soil. They lived in almost complete independence of other peoples,. except when they wanted salt and tools, because they used very little iron in the other agricultural implements.

“They themselves cultivated and made up whatever was needed for their clothing, which was uniform, As for colors they were fond of black and red, and liked to have stripes on their legs, knots of ribbons and flowing bows. Notwithstanding their negligence, their want of skill and knowledge in agriculture, they amassed abundant stores of food and clothing, and had comfortable dwellings.

"They were a very healthy people, able to endure great fatigue, and generally living to a very advanced age, though none of them employed doctors. The men worked hard in the sowing and harvesting seasons, in the season suited for building or repairing dikes, and whenever work had to be done quickly. They thus secured, for at least half the year, leisure which they employed In social gatherings and amusements of which they were very fond. But the women were more constantly at work than the men; however, they had a considerable share in the amusements of the former. Though they were all quite illiterate, yet it seldom happened that any of them remained silent for a long time in company. They never seemed at a loss for something to talk about. In short, they all appeared at heart joyful and gay and of one mind almost always. If any disputes arose in their transactions, they always submitted to the decision of an arbitrator, and their final appeal was to the priests. Although I have known a few instances of mutual recrimination after these decisions, still one seldom or never noticed among them thoughts of malice or revenge. Finally, they were quite accustomed to behave with candor under all circumstances. Really, if there ever was a people that recalled the golden age, as described in history, that people was the old-time Acadians.”

Brook Watson’s description reads thus: “They were an honest, hard-working, sober and virtuous people ; rarely did quarrels arise among them. In summer, the men were continually at work on their farms ; in winter, they were engaged in cutting wood for their fuel and fences, and in hunting; the women spent their time carding, spinning and weaving wool, flax and hemp which this country furnished in plenty. These articles, with the fur of bear, beaver, fox, otter and marten provided them not only with comfortable, but often with tasteful garments. They also procured for them other necessary or useful objects by means of the exchange trade they carried on with the French and English. There were few houses without a cask of French wine. They had no other dyes than black and green £ but, to obtain red, of which they were remarkably fond, they got English red stuffs, which they cut up, ravelled out, carded, spun and wove into strips to adorn the women’s dresses. Their country was so rich in provisions that, as I have heard, an ox could be bought for fifty shillings, a sheep for five, and a bushel of wheat for eighteen pence. Young men were not encouraged to marry unless the young girl could weave a piece of cloth, and the young man make a pair of wheels. These accomplishments were deemed essential for their marriage settlement, and they hardly needed anything else, for every time there was a wedding the whole village contributed to set up the newly-married couple. They built a house for them, and cleared enough land for their immediate needs; they gave them live stock and poultry; and nature, seconded by their own labor, soon put them in a position to help others. T have never heard of marital infidelity among them. Their long cold winters were spent in the pleasures of joyous hospitality. As they had plenty of firewood, their houses were always comfort able. Rustic, songs and dancing were their principal amusement.”

Here is an extract from a letter addressed to the Due de Nivemais on Dec. 2, 1762: “Tho Acadians lived like the ancient patriarchs and their flocks and herds, in the innocence and equality of the earliest ages. All those who have known them speak with emotion of their virtues and their happiness.”

I have little to add or change in these descriptions of Acadian manners. In their lights as in their shades I know them to be fairly correct, and that is all I am looking for. What a difference between these pictures and the disjointed extracts culled here and there by Parkman! Seldom does the historian meet with materials combining in so high a degree those conditions that inspire confidence and respect. The circumstances in which these descriptions were composed are unique: they were intended to figure in a history which Brown was preparing. This man, whose high character sets him on the same level as Haliburton and Murdoch, when casting about him for competent witnesses, must have chosen them with discernment and with the fullest confidence in their ability and willingness to tell the unvarnished truth. Considering that the information furnished by these men was intended for so important a purpose, it is evident that they must have been thoroughly conversant with the subject and must have carefully weighed their words. In fact they seem to be replying to a series of questions. Neither of the two had any interest in exaggerating the virtues of the Acadians, since, had they done so, they would have added to the infamy of their own share in the deportation. It might appear astonishing that Parkman has not seized this exceptional opportunity of giving authentic information to his readers, did we not know that lie- has never mentioned even the names of Brown and Haliburton, and that, under various disguises, he has given so much space to Pichon.

Moses de les Derniers and Brook Watson were neither poets nor novelists, and yet Raynal said no more than they did. “Raynal,” as Ilameau observes, “may have sinned against good taste by describing these things in the turgid style of the eighteenth century; but the wording alone is out of tune; the things are quite true.” 4 Poets and novelists, moved by the woes of the Acadians after a long period of plenty and happiness, may have girdled them with a romantic halo that places them beyond the stern realities of life. This cannot be helped; in doing so, they followed the noblest drawings of our human nature. Great tragedies have a magnetism of their own; he who dramatizes them may, without writing history, correct it in some of its representatives. Parkman, for instance, has made such contributions necessary. The writers thereof are the successors of those knights-errant of yore who went about the world seeking for woes to console, injustices to repair and tyrants to punish. It were cruelty to carp at the oil and wine they have poured, like the good Samaritan, on the wounds of the people that were stripped by robbers and left half dead. For those who, wishing to forget this tragedy, cannot, it is a great consolation to call to mind the sweet memory of Longfellow and of so many other sympathetic souls.

To come down to plain facts, I would say with Rameau: “The Acadians were not poets, nor enthusiasts, nor dreamers; they were simply good folk (de braves gens), very obliging to each other, very religious, very devoted to their families, and living gaily in the midst of their children, without much worry.” In a word, they were honest, peaceable and happy folk, with more or less of the weaknesses of our common nature.

To these unexceptionable testimonies I trust I may be suffered to add my own, as far as it goes. I have had the privilege, if not of living long among Acadians, at least of very frequently visiting them in the parish of Saint-Gregoire, opposite Three Rivers, where my grandfathers lived. This is one of the places they took refuge in after the eight years of exile in the ports of New England. They founded this parish, and to this day it probably does not contain five families that are not of Acadian origin. The soil was very rich, but very damp and thickly wooded. The Acadians—and in this f think they were right—have always preferred low-lying lands, in spite of the greater difficulty of clearing and draining them; those who settled at L’Acadie, near the town of St. John, P. Q., and at St. Jacques l’Achigan also chose similar lands. These parishes are among the most prosperous of the province of Quebec. To speak of Saint-Gregoire alone, I believe the descriptions of Brook Watson and Moses de les Derniers would apply to the state of this parish twenty-five years ago as exactly as the circumstances permitted. Except that parents alone arranged for the marriage settlements of their children, and that education was very general, all the rest faithfully represents the condition of affairs that existed at Grand Pr<5 187 years ago. Disputes were still settled by arbitration^ I never heard of but one lawsuit, and never of an illegitimate birth or a public scandal. There never has been, and I think there still is not a single licensed hotel in the place. It was still the custom to provide iH the autumn for the necessities of the poor during winter: all the fuel, provisions and clothing they needed till spring were brought to their houses. 1 am told that a Mutual Insurance Company was founded two years ago; up to that date all losses by fire were made good by the community, which provided not Only the material but the labor, and the rule was to replace the sufferer in the same situation as before the accident. I remember that no exception was made to this rule even in the case of a rich miser of unenviable reputation. And, if their houses are like those of their fathers in Acadia—which is very likely, because they were such sticklers for tradition, and because very many of the houses date from the last century—then the contemptuous remarks I have quoted fmm two French officers would be altogether inapplicable.*

*My grandfather, Joseph Prince—Le Prince—was a merchant at Saint-GnSgoire, in partnership with his brother Francois. They were married to two sisters, Julie and Henriette Doucet. They each had ten children, in all fourteen girls and six boys. They held all their household property in common and lived in the same house, which they enlarged several times. They had with them their aged parents, and gave a college education to their youngest brother, who became bishop of Saint-Hyacinthe. They adopted a young Irish girl, Mary Walsh, whose parents had died of cholera at Quebec. All these children received a good education, either in a college or a convent ; two of the sons are priests, both canons, one of the diocese of Three Rivers and the other of that of Saint-Hyacinthe. When the house would no longer admit of enlargement, they built a new one alongside ; but after it was furnished, it remained unoccupied more than a year, so averse were they to a separation after forty years of this life in common.

About the year 1830 the Governor of Canada, on his way to Sherbrooke with his suite, lodged and was entertained at his own request in my grandfather’s house. Later, during the troubles of 1837-8, hospitality of a very different nature was extended to the brother {Benjamin) of the Honorable L. J. Papineau. His retreat was finally discovered ; he was arrested there by Chief Constable Burns and imprisoned at Three Rivers.

Some years before, an American from Boston, returning from Quebec, stayed over night with ray grandfather. The name of the city of Boston was sorrowfully familiar to the Acadians of Sanit-Grdgoire; but the sadness of the memory was not so marked in my grandfather’s case, because his own grandfather had been kindly taken up and protected by a charitable lady of whom my family ever cherished a touching remembrance. The conversation was long and agreeable; it turned on the deportation and finally on the charitable lady. Great was the surprise and joy of my people when they discovered that the stranger was the grandson of my grandfather’s benefactress, whose name, to my deep regret, I cannot recall. Our American friend prolonged his stay, and, when he was about.