Acadia
The first successful attempt at colonization in Nova Scotia was made in 1633, when Isaac de Razilly and Charnisay brought out some families from France. These were the progenitors of the Acadian race. Very capable people they were,—though for a time they suffered much during the winters. Yet they kept up bravely, and barred out the sea, and felled the forests, and cultivated the marshes. They increased and multiplied, so that by-and-by we find them holding all the valley from Port Royal to Piziquid. They spread also round the head of the Bay of Fundy. Their great achievement was reclaiming thousands of acres where formerly the salt waves ranged at will. Their system of dike-building was remarkable for strength and durability. They did not pay much attention to things extraneous, and could not at all understand the inexorable law of race-conflict which brought the English against them.
This struggle, and the events connected therewith, forms the most striking period of Nova Scotian history. The whole subject is shrouded with a mist of controversy, of which the end is not yet. But this is of small consequence to the romancer. Of course we have had the great romance of the Acadians,—the tale of “love that hopes, and endures, and is patient.” Evangeline is a very charming (if very unhistorical) heroine, and the poem shows how much can be made by an artist out of good material. Yet Longfellow’s work has by no means exhausted the possibilities of that exciting period. There is a strong dramatic value in the opposition of the Acadians and English, and the vast background of the Anglo-French war.
That war presents many opportunities to the story-writer. The time was pregnant with fate; the destiny of three nations hinged upon the outcome. A striking work of fiction lies in the power of him who can read and weigh musty archives, who has an eye for effective incident and the skill of a literary craftsman. Beauséjour, Grand Pré and Louisbourg call up memories that loom large and are lit with battle-fires.
Francis Parkman, in his account of the Acadian exile, says:
“In one particular the authors of the deportation were disappointed in its results. They had hoped to substitute a loyal population for a disaffected one; but they failed for some time to find settlers for the vacated lands. The Massachusetts soldiers, to whom they were offered, would not stay in the province, and it was not till five years later that families of British stock began to occupy the waste fields of the Acadians. This goes far to show that a longing to become their heirs had not, as has been alleged, any considerable part in the motives for their removal.
“New England humanitarianism, melting into sentimentality at a tale of woe, has been unjust to its own. Whatever judgment may be passed on the cruel measure of wholesale expatriation, it was not put in execution until every resource had been tried in vain. The agents of the French court—civil, military, and ecclesiastical—had made some act of force a necessity. With their vile practices they produced in Acadia a state of things intolerable and impossible of continuance. They conjured up the tempest, and when it burst on the heads of the unhappy people, they gave no help. The government of Louis XV. began with making the Acadians its tools, and ended with making them its victims.”