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be received in New England and in other provinces, now forming the United States, and could conceive the cold reception they met with, their wants, their miseries and the frightful havoc death was making in their ranks. I could follow the long journey of a large caravan of these unfortunate exiles returning to their native country from Massachusetts Bay, and the follow-narrative of this exodus, published in 1859, by the late Louis A. Surette, an Acadian, dwelling at Concord, Mass., came to mind:—
"In the spring of 1766 many set out for their beloved Acadia. This weary and lonely six months' journey through wilderness, dreary swamps and barren wastes—extending as it did upwards of nine hundred miles through what is now Maine and New Brunswick, round the head of the Bay of Fundy, thence down along its southerly side for nearly two hundred miles—no pen can adequately describe. It is a well known fact that young and tender children were carried alternately by father and mother the whole of this toilsome journey. Other children were born immediately after the arrival of their parents in Acadia. Who can describe the trials and sufferings of these mothers during the dreary days and nights of their pilgrimage, exposed alike to the scorching heat and the fury of the passing storm-hungry, thirsty and heartsick."
Some of the pilgrims came afterwards to St. Mary's Bay and many of them were interred in the burial ground where I stood on Piau's Island. I thought also of the disappointment they met with in finding their former homes destroyed and their lands occupied by English-speaking people. All these things flashed to my mind one after another, and I could not help thinking also of the winter passed on this very spot by Belliveau and his companions. ******* The chant of the Libera being over, the Acadian flag was hoisted again to the top of the pole, and the crowd dispersed. Placide P. Gaudet.