The work I am now undertaking has never been done before. This sweeping assertion may astonish the reader; but there is this very good reason for making it: the archives of the most important part of this history have been either carried off. or destroyed, or simply lost. Which of these alternatives is the most likely will appear later on.

An American writer, Philip II. Smith, treating of the same subject, gave his book this title: “Acadia— A Lost Chapter in American History.” Though he had not the documents needed for a complete reconstruction, yet, with his sound judgment and great impartiality, by making good use of what he had in hand, he has managed to hit upon a line of development that affords a glimpse of what was hidden in the missing documents.

That lost chapter I believe I have reconstructed in its essential parts. The reader will judge if the title I have chosen suits the work I lay before him. Have I, then, found the missing portion of the archives? Yes and no. A considerable part of them will, probably, never be found; but good luck has put in my way fragments of them, which are amply sufficient to throw light, if not upon the secret details of this history, at least upon its main outlines. Close and continued thought has done the rest.

It is easy to understand what lively interest these events excite in a great grandson of the transported Acadians. That which for others was only a matter of curiosity became for me an intense attraction, urging me to undertake researches and meditations that seem to have disheartened those who have hitherto approached the question. The very mystery that enshrouds it has drawn to it. many writers; but labor that is continually running against all sorts of difficulties soon becomes wearisome, and so it has happened that all these writers have ended either by leaving a blank here or by copying the shadowy sketch found in authors who had opened the way.

All the importance of this history of Acadia, from the English conquest in 1710 until 1763, was centered in the events that brought about the transportation, in the transportation itself and in its consequences; that, is to say, in the period that extends from 1743 to 1763, or even to 1766. Before that, there is nothing but unimportant facts. No one will tarry to describe a river peacefully flowing through a valley where the landscape on all sides is monotonous in its sameness; but, once this tiresome monotony is past, if we reach mighty and fantastic cliffs, overhanging rooks, foaming surges dashing from chasm to chasm, we stop, we are thrilled with wonder at the wild wreck wrought by the ceaseless buffeting of the waters. This is the aspect of the story I am about to tell. It is the only part of Acadian history that presents a real and varied interest, it ought therefore to have been related in detail; and yet, all we have of it so far a rough sketch that leaves out the palpitating pity of it all.

How comes it that the documents of so important a period have disappeared? Was this the result of accident or design? Many writers have asked this question before. Those who have answered it have all done so in the same way. Others have ignored it, giving the reader no hint of this strange disappearance. (Granting that these latter did not share the suspicions of the former, it seems evident that they ought at least to have combated those suspicions, or at all events to have mentioned the disappearance of the documents, were it only to let the reader know why they were so brief in their treatment of so important an epoch. Did they think that obvious inferences unpalatable to them were easy to draw? Perhaps.

However this may be, few writers have bestowed on this “Lost Chapter” as much as one-sixth of the space I am giving to it. Now, unless I be despairingly prolix, this fact suffices to show that I must have undergone serious labor and- have found much information that is new. On this score I may assure the reader that he will not be disappointed. What opinion soever lie may form of my work, he will not be able to deny that he has been interested by a mass of unedited documents, by novel views, and by inferences from which it is hard to escape. Most of my readers, I am sure, w ill readily admit that this book is quite a revelation, that it solves a problem over which the world has been puzzling for more than a century.

Every one knows how deep are the impressions produced on a child by the tales he has heard at the fireside. especially when their very character is full of dramatic interest; and, if these events are personal to the authors of our being, then they take on portentous proportions and become ineradicably riveted in our minds. So it has been for ine with the events that preceded, accompanied and followed the deportation. Sitting on my mother’s knee, I have heard them repeated a hundred times, and the tears they often drew from me would alone suffice to perpetuate the remembrance of them. The whole of my childhood was spent in the midst of an Acadian settlement. Then were still alive the sons of those who had been deported, facts were still fresh in their memories, and each family could reconstruct the series of its misfortunes from the time it left Grand Pre, Beaubassin or Port Royal till its final settlement in Canada.

Since that time the generation that was dying out has made way for a new one. I have myself long left my childhood's home, and those memories, persistent though they be, have lost the precision that was needed to give them the weight of carefully collected traditions. Besides, as my recollections bear only on the purely material facts of the deportation and of the misfortunes that followed in its train, they would afford but slender interest to my readers. This only will I say, that the invariable answer of all whom I questioned as to the cause of this deportation was: the refusal to take the oath of allegiance unless it were stipulated that they should not bear arms against the French.

“But,” I used often to reply, that cannot be; your fathers must have been guilty of some act of hostility, in one way or another, which forced the Government to act with rigor; the punishment was too severe, and yet the choice of means alone seems blameworthy.” And there came back always the precise and formal answer—that never, at anytime, did the people dwelling in the peninsula on English territory, take up or even threaten to take up arms.

In spite of their affirmations I had always thought that they were mistaken; and, strange as it may seem, my only wish had been to convince myself that they were wrong. Thus at least would the bitterness evoked by these memories have been lessened by the certainty that the cause of all this woe was to some extent a righteous one. I would then have likened, or, at any rate, tried to liken these sad events to so many other calamities that have, in bygone ages, befallen all other nations indiscriminately. Whatever may be the cruelty of a chastisement, it is some consolation to know with certainty that it was partly deserved; forgiveness and oblivion become possible, nay, perhaps a duty.

No such consolation has issued from my conscientious researches. I am convinced, beyond all doubt, that tradition faithfully reproduced historic truth; but —eagerly do I proclaim it, incredible though it may seem—the Home Government had nothing to do with either the resolving upon or the carrying out of this act of barbarity that has left upon the civilized world an impression of ineradicable and unassuageable pain.

There are events and men that fill a large place in the eyes of their contemporaries. They bid fair to be long held in remembrance and perhaps to be immortalized in history; yet, hardly have they disappeared, when every trace of them is forgotten. Others again there are, apparently less important, less noticed at the time, which never seem to lose the interest that clings to them. Finally, there are other events and men that may be said to grow in magnitude with the very growth of the distance that separates us from them. To this last category belong, in ancient history, the siege of Troy, the battle of Thermopylce; men like Homer, Plato, Socrates; and, in modern history, the signing of the Magna Charta. the massacre of St. Bartholemew. Columbus, Shakespeare, Washington. So will it be, I venture to think, with the deportation of the Acadians. This unique fact of the dispersion of a people will grow as time grows. The very effort made to blot out all trace of it, bv suppressing both the documents and the names that should engrave it on the memory, will contribute more than anything else to make the recollection of it lasting Where the historian cannot penetrate the poet enters. These mutilated or lost chapters of history then become a field from which the poet gleans the golden grain that has escaped destruction, and gives to grateful humanity those touching poems for which he is repaid by immortality. And, indeed, what held can offer him a richer harvest than this one? A happy and prosperous people rudely snatched from its home, dispersed on every shore; families rent asunder, so that scattered members seek each other during many long years; the melancholy monotony of lives consecrated to sorrow and suffering,--all this is so charged with “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” as to produce in him who ponders it all, after more than a century, an indefinable feeling of sadness. The victims of this dismal drama still tug at your heart Strings like the wailings of some hero of ancient tragedy. The consequences of this dispersion cannot be measured; they have reached out into every family and to each member of every family; each heart has felt the torture, each nerve the cruel twinge.

If I have not been able to find in these events that comfort which the certitude of a merited chastisement might have afforded me, I must admit that the non-participation of the Home Government has been a great relief from the sinister thoughts that haunted my brain. No; the English Government never ordered this deportation, nor ever did anything that might imply it; quite the contrary. This work will give indisputable proof that, at the very moment when Governor Lawrence, falsely taking His Majesty’s name, was executing the project lie had long entertained, orders were addressed to him condemning, in energetic terms, the mitigated project he had submitted to the Lords of Trade. It is a strange thing—which shows how superficially history is sometimes written—that not one of the documents establishing so important a fact has been cited by any English historian. For some, the motive of their silence will appear in the course of this narrative. For others, it was a question of following the beaten path rather than facing the labor of cutting through a jungle.

It is not my intention to indicate even briefly, in these preliminary remarks, the important data on which this book rests. That would cause unnecessary delay. Suffice it to assure 'those who take a deep interest in matters of history, that they will find in this volume ample satisfaction for their curiosity, and, probably, the solution of the riddle that has long teased them. Perhaps they will be still better pleased to follow gradually, without further explanations, the connected series of facts brought to light by many hitherto unpublished documents to be found here.

I am fully aware <of the prejudices that may arise in the minds of my readers, prejudices whose name very likely is legion; but I am also aware that the)’ will disappear one by one, till the last of them, I hope, will evaporate long before the reading of my last chapter. Far from wondering at these prejudices, I should be liable to them myself, were I in the reader’s place; I could not, at first blush, shake off the impression that he who relates events with which his ancestors have been so painfully connected, cannot view them with that calm impartiality which is a requisite of history. I unhesitatingly confess that these events have produced on me the keenest of impressions, that my heart has bled at the recital of the woe that crushed my forefathers. Still, despite all this, I hope to convince the reader that I have not been biassed. No doubt education has a mighty influence in giving, from childhood, a fixedness to the opinions of one's whole life. For most men early education is everything, they are its slaves from the cradle to the grave; it has equipped them with spectacles, green or blue, through which they look at and pronounce without appeal on the most varied colors. But, there are others who, thanks to a more elastic temperament, are able to make a clean sweep of whatever is cumbrous in their past, to begin to examine anew whatever is not certain, and thus to break through the narrow horizon that shut them in. For better or for worse, this is, in a very marked degree, my own disposition.

This work' was first intended for my French compatriots; but, on second thoughts, I decided to present it also to my English-speaking fellow-countrymen.

Albeit historians are not wont to dilate on their own personality, I will, nevertheless, make bold to say that, aa far as I may judge, my chief characteristic is kindliness. Wherever I could, without too greatly jeopardizing the truth, I have been delighted to lean to the cide of indulgence. When I might have called in question the sincerity of several historians, I refrained from doing so; nay, I have sometimes been so indulgent as to suppose, against my plain convictions, honorable intentions, on the principle that it was better to sin by excess of silence and mercy rather than by too great severity. But, when brought face to face with systematic attempts, unmistakable and continually renewed, to falsify history, I have thought that silence became a fault, and that the linger of scorn must be laid on these dishonest practices, and on those who perpetrated them with malice prepense.

The exception I have just hinted at bears 011 the compiler of the volume of Archives of Nova Scotia and on Mr. Parkman. Regretfully do I say this ; but the evidence leaves no possibility of doubt.

As I advance nothing without proof, the public will be in a position to judge whether or not my motives are solidly grounded. I know that I am laying myself open to reprisals; but I believe that I can successfully face them, and that I can defend my position still more strongly than I have done here. However, despite my efforts to master the question, I may have made some mistakes; some secondary or even important facts may have escaped my knowledge; this would not be surprising, since I am engaged in reconstructing, in a lost chapter, the fragments that have not been destroyed. If there are mistakes, I will willingly acknowledge them ; but it is one thing to be ignorant of unpublished facts, and quite another to distort or suppress what one cannot hut know.

However, my conclusions agree in the main with those of most historians. During more than a hundred years all (hat was written on the subject was pretty much from the same standpoint. First, comes Raynal, who wrote about 1780, .shortly after the deportation. His work might possess some value, if he had lived in the country, or if, at least, he had visited it and collected information on the spot. Being a contemporary of the events—he was born in 1713—he might have written a work of much weight. Unfortunately lie did not avail himself of his opportunities. So, without questioning his sincerity, I attach so little value to his sayings and his opinions that I do not quote him even once. His views have no importance except as a reflection of the ideas and sentiments that then were current in France. Besides, Raynal does not strike me as a serious writer; at best, he is a superfine story-teller in the pompous and turgid style of the epoch. The flattering picture he draws of Acadian manners is, I admit, too ideal not to have been somewhat embellished by his imagination. And yet we have numerous proofs that, in Halifax itself, a goodly portion of the citizens did not think him very unreal. Haliburton, who wrote forty years later, quotes Raynal's appreciations, and points out that he was not so far from the truth as people might imagine.

After Raynal comes Haliburton himself (Thomas Chandler Haliburton). Here we have no longer a foreigner, nor a superfine story-teller, but a son of the soil, whose grandfather, a Loyalist, had immigrated to the country after the American war of Independence; a man, moreover, who rose lo the Supreme Court Bench of his province, a remarkable author, who enjoyed the respect of his fellow-countrymen, and was honored by his Sovereign. His position, his character, his judicial mind, his great and varied talents mark him out as the noblest representative of the eminent men this highly favored province has produced.

His History of Nova Scotia does not give us the lull measure of his literary ability ; but it does of his noble character, of his rectitude, and of the efforts he made to acquire a mastery of his subject, so as tp guide the public along the path his conscience showed lam. He founded the history of his province, for which he received a vote of thanks from the Legislature. To this day his work is continually consulted as an authority, and is a foundation for most of those who treat of local history. This book was published in 1829. As it was in preparation for many years previous to that date, and as he was then a middle-aged man, he may be said to have been a contemporary of some of the men who inquired at the time of the deportation. This, besides his researches in historical documents, lie could take advantage of much oral information on matters that were still fresh in men’s memories. The sequel will show that his conclusions do not differ materially from mine.

Thirty years later (1859), Rameau published “La Fiance aux Colonies” and, in 1889, “Une Colonie Feodale en Amerique.” In 1805 appeared the “History of Nova Scotia” by Beamish Murdoch. The volume of “Nova Scotia Archives,” begun in 1857, was completed inl8R9. Campbell’s “History of Nova Scotia” came out in 1873, which year also gave us Moreau’s “Histoire.de l’Aeadie.” Hauuay’s “History of Acadia" is dated 1879; Philip H. Smith’s “Acadia—A Lost Chapter in American History,'1884; Casgrain’s “Pelerinage au Pays d'Evangeline,” 1888; and Parkman’s “Montcalm and Wolfe,” which contains a good deal about Acadia, 1884.

With the exception of Hannay and Parkman, and perhaps of Murdoch, who, however, hardly expresses any opinion on the events he describes, all the other writers named above hold nearly the same view as Haliburton.

Of late years history has been enriched by an exceedingly precious collection of documents, which throw a flood of light on the very darkest part of the period. It is really unfortunate that men like Murdoch and Hannay, who seem to have been sincere, had not access to this collection. As to Parkman, I have the positive proof that he knew of it but chose to ignore it.

This voluminous collection is due to the Rev. Andrew Brown, Presbyterian minister, v, ho died at Edinburgh, when he was Professor of Rhetoric in the university. While living at Halifax, from 1787 to 1795, he collected materials with the intention of writing a history of Nova Scotia. This history, incomplete and in manuscript, was found with all the original and other documents that accompanied it, in a grocer’s' shop, and bought, Nov. 13th, 1852, by Mr. Grosart, who sold it to the British Museum in London. Some years ago it was copied, in whole or in part, by the Historical Society of Halifax, in whose archives it is now. I am particularly indebted to this collection, from which numerous extracts have been published in "Le Canada Francais,” if I am in a position to recompose, almost entirely, this lost chapter. The importance of this MS. is obvious. An historian was needed who should be a closer contemporary of tlie obscure period than Haliburton. This want is now supplied, and all the more effectually because Brown’s position and character would satisfy the most fastidious critic.

The volume of Archives, published in 1869 by order of the Legislature, was edited by Thomas B. Akins, Commissioner of the Public Archives of the Province. 1 do not hesitate to affirm that the documents have been selected with the greatest partiality, and with the purpose, poorly disguised in the very preface, of getting together such papers as might justify the deportation of the Acadians. This accusation I have not deliberately striven to support by hunting up examples, and yet the proofs of it have incidentally accumulated in such profusion as to open the eyes of those who are not wilfully blind. It is easy to see that this compiler aimed at starting a reaction against the opinions and sentiments that had been current for more than a century. His intention, evidently, was to make this volume an arsenal for all who wanted weapons, for he was fully aware that few writers would give themselves the trouble to go behind his compilation.

A’ mere summary of documents will not do duty for the history of this period. He who should accomplish no more than this would have written nothing that even remotely resembled history; first, because of the scarcity of materials, and then because, up to 1758, we are face to face with the omnipotent authority of the governor and of a soldier at that. Inured, to military discipline, these governors knew only how to command and imperiously to enforce passive obedience. Will any one pretend that, under such conditions, history can be written solely with the orders of this potentate, and his letters to the Secretary of State, whose representatives in this case were the Lords of Trade ? Such a pretension were absurd. Clearly, these letters exhibit one .side only of the question, the governor’s.; they are sure to contain nothing that is unfavorable to him, nothing that could militate against him and in favor of those who, most of the time, silently obeyed his unjust orders, or whose recriminations are not recorded, had they plucked up enough courage to contradict him or to utter a murmur. And yet these are the only documents we possess for this period; nay, even these one-sided statements have, in great part, disappeared. The only thing a man can do who undertakes to give the public a somewhat faithful picture of the reality is—for the satisfaction of his readers as well as his own—to make the best use of these wretched remnants, to piece them together, to try to penetrate their hidden meaning, the motives by which this despot may have been actuated; in a word, to get hold of some evidence from which an opinion may be formed of his character and his acts. If, in the teeth of these difficulties, the historian succeeds in explaining the governor’s acts by means of the latter’s own documents, in which he has said only what he chose to say; if, moreover, the historian detects the motives which he had every reason to hide with every facility for hiding them, so as to convict him of this or that evil design against those who have left nothing in their own defence; such a result is indeed surprising.

Yet that is what I have done, and more particularly for Lawrence and his accomplices. All. or almost all previous writers seemed to have perceived that the conduct of the Acadians, even as represented by Lawrence himself, had not justified their deportation. For a hundred years there has been scarcely a dissentient voice on this point. Such being the case, if it is true that the English Government never ordered the deportation, Lawrence must have had some motive for acting as he did. This motive I had some inkling of directly I began to study the question. Soon I understood clearly what it was. That was not the difficulty. The great, the immense difficulty, lay altogether in proving the motive, when all helpful documents had disappeared. It has been said, with more wit than truth, that, if you want to ferret out a crime, you must “find the woman in the case.” Though this may sometimes hold for a crime in the singular, it cannot be true of a crime in the plural, as this one is. Here I should say: “Find what profit the criminal got.” This profit I have found and the proof thereof, clear enough to satisfy any court of justice, though it were absurd to require the evidence of law courts for events that took place almost 140 years ago.

It is comparatively easy to write the history of a country enjoying representative institutions, or of a long-settled nation like France or England. The State papers are confirmed or contradicted by so many other documents that there is not much need of commentary in quoting authorities. But, in this case, nothing like history can be written without meditating, weighing probabilities, and drawing legitimate inferences. I should have found it much easier to be a mere compiler; but then, I might as well have done like so many others and copied right and left, or, better still, have written nothing at all. Others, possibly, may have examined more documents; but perhaps no one has brought to bear on the question so much of the deep consideration needed for grasping the dominant purpose of the interested parties, the intentions and feelings lurking between the lines of official or other documents.

Addressing myself to the subject 'with all the impartiality at my command, I thought I should find at least a partial justification of the deportation, and that thus I should free my soul from a burden that weighed heavily upon it. This justification I did not discover; I reached a contrary conclusion; but I have at all events the consolation of knowing that the guilt does not bear directly upon a nation, but upon individuals whom history has not yet properly branded. This book will, in my judgment, effectually clear England’s Home Government’s honor of the deepest historic stain ever attached to it. Let the stigma be obliterated which England has hitherto borne; burn it into the foreheads of Lawrence, Belcher, Wilmot, Morris, and their accomplices.

If it is true, on the one band, that the policy of England has always been one of self-interest, rather than of sentiment, it may be held that, as far as the Home Government is concerned, its policy has been in general honorable and compares favorably with that of any other nation. England owes its high standing to the wisdom and large-mindedness of its statesmen. Ministries rose and fell; but the main lines of its policy were unchanged. Impervious alike to sudden enthusiasm, to gradual apathy, and to unexpected reversals, England pursued its ends with invarying resolution and changeless tenacity of purpose. Obstacles seemed only to whet its ambition, and to strengthen its determination.

The policy of France, on the other hand, may be described in nearly opposite terms. Colonies were founded with enthusiasm, only to be left to themselves a few years later. This is. precisely what took place in Acadia. About a hundred families were settled there, and then left without adequate assistance to carry on heroic struggles against a much more powerful enemy. When this handful of colonists became a happy and prosperous embryo nation, when it was seen what store England set by keeping its hold on them, France began-asrain to covet what she had neglected or forsaken.

Instead of founding colonies by multiplying the colonists, she thought she could found them with fortresses. One single million out of the thirty millions spent on the rock of Louisburg would have peopled Acadia ;n a way to insure its permanent possession by France. Whilst Canada, with its sixty thousand souls, was checkmating New England’s twelve, hundred thousand, France, the prey of courtiers, was making merry. Voltaire, leader of the high court of witlings, declared that Canada was only “a few acres of snow;” and Canada was lost.

These colonies had duties towards France, and they fulfilled them nobly. Can she in her turn say as much?. Has the father of a family no duties beyond the begetting of children? Does he not owe them also education and protection?

After more than a century of forgetfulness, that same France has recollected that that child, conceived in a burst of love and carelessly cast off, is now grown up and keeps a fond remembrance of his mother. She has likewise perceived that those acres of snow are an empire, the possession of which enriches her rival. Vain regrets ! England has long since appropriated all the desirable lands of our planet. Its tongue, its institutions. its capital accumulated through the colonies themselves, now encircle the entire globe. In these are its might and its wealth. While France was making merry, England was attending to business; which was surely worth Voltaire's 'witty saying, which people laughed at one day, and would have forgotten the next, had not France beeu mourning over it ever since.

Poor France! In order ever to retain a firm hold of your sceptre, you had invented the Salic law. You would not be governed by queens, and you have been ruled by harlots. You were rich and honored; those women squandered your coins and your honor. What havoc has wrought in you the wit of your madcaps? You are now striving to retain the privilege of drying your fish on a corner of this continent that once belonged to you, or at least might have been entirely yours; it would still be yours, with all the wealth hidden under its acres of snow, if you had had less of the wit that evaporates and more of the w it that bears fruit.

You are getting wiser; you tardily acknowledge the folly of your wit; you perceive that England has become strong and wealthy just because of a wiser appreciation of what you despised. But it is too late ! A few acres of sand in the Sahara, where your people cannot live, a few thousand negroes in Senegal, or Congo, will never make up for the loss to you of those French hearts that would have throbbed in the vast and healthy plains of this marvellous continent.

O France ! Forgive to a son of those unfortunate Acadians the recalling of these cruel memories . . . . our sufferings have been so bitter.

Forsaken, forgotten, the Canadians have always kept their love for France. They changed their allegiance, but only to become ere long the masters of their own destiny. Their fate, except inasmuch as they were forgotten by France, was not otherwise a cruel one. Not so with the Acadians. Can they forget the woes wrought by that abandonment?

However, though we cannot forget the incalculable wrongs inflicted on us, we now can, with a juster appreciation of facts, forgive the English Government the share it may have had in them, But we cannot acquit the true culprits; we cannot absolve those who, without any cause, without orders or against the orders of the Home Government, impelled solely by sordid motives, despoiled us and cast us on foreign shores. No; such injustices, such wrongs cannot be forgotten. So long as our children shall be able to retrace their origin, they will recall and bemoan the sufferings of their fathers. It is not in our power to blot out from our hearts these poignant recollections. We may still cherish and bless the flag that floats above our heads; we may excuse and condone whatever share England may have had in these events; but we cry enough! to those who throw dirt at us in order to whitewash a dozen miscreants whom all the waters of Niagara could not cleanse. Let honest men join in restoring the historic truth which certain historians of most recent date have done their best to pervert. British fellow-countrymen! show us that British fair play is not an empty word. Brand the culprits with the stigma they deserve. Then, will Acadians forgive, bless, nay, perhaps forget .... provided that be possible after so many misfortunes.

A very natural curiosity impelled me to study this period of history; deep convictions led me on to write.

I regret this curiosity; it has flung upon iriy life a cloud of sadness which nothing can remove. I have doomed myself to climb again unceasingly this Calvary of suffering, humiliation and ignominy, to which my forefathers were condemned. My mind has fastened itself upon this mournful epic as Pygmalion, of ancient fable, riveted his soul upon the statue he had made; with this essential difference that he fell in love with the work of his hands, whereas I am haunted by a ceaseless and merciless nightmare. I have wished to see; I have seen; I recoiled with horror, but the die was cast. Like the lover who could not resist his longing to behold once more the dead face of her who had charmed away his heart, I drew back horrified; and yet I must needs bear the pangs my rashness has provoked.

A thoughtful writer—Thucydides—has said, “Happy the people whose annals are vacant.’’ This saying has a paradoxical sound to us who behold on all sides nations, whether mighty or feeble, whether lowly or haughty, glorying in their past, viewing it over and over again with complacency, as if to renew in themselves the joy they taste in contemplating the features of their ancestors magnified by the enchanting distance and by the illusions of love. But can this be the case for Acadians? To recall the contentment and the virtues of their fathers, the joys of the century that preceded tlieir deportation, is to recall the deportation itself and the century that followed. Their evil fortune is inseparable from their good fortune; to look at the one is to look at the other; to magnify the one is to magnify the other. Their history is a Janus with two faces, of which the more recent, the fresher to their memory, the hideous one, is ever staring at them. Gladly would they turn him round to view his other face, on which their eyes would rest with delight. I5ut, whenever they conjure up the past, the sad, the hideous face will always eclipse the sweet and agreeable one; the nearer will absorb the farther. Woe will ever be a mightier reality than weal; the former is the positive element, the latter is merely, so to speak, a negative quantity. For Acadians the paradox, “Happy the people whose annals are vacant,” will bear repeating.