Page:New Brunswick Magazine Issue 1.djvu/383
in condition for cultivation? It is not easy to stay the course of the sea: the Acadians nevertheless accomplish the task by means of strong dykes which they call aboieaux; and this is how they make them.—They set up five or six rows of large trees, quite entire, at the places by which the sea enters into the marshes, and between the rows they lay other trees lengthwise, one upon another, and they fill all the empty spaces so well with soft clay, well packed, that the water can no longer pass through. They fit in the middle of these works a flood-gate (un esseau) in such a manner that it allows, at low tide, the marsh-water to flow out by its own pressure, and prevents the water of the sea from entering."
A translation of a part of this quotation is given as a note by Mr. Beamish Murdoch on page 540 of the first volume of his valuable History of Nova Scotia. But he offers no explanation of the exact meaning, or of the composition of the words aboteaux and esseau.
From the way in which Diéreville introduces them it is obvious that aboteau was in his day not a classic or an usual term in the French language. Indeed, it has always been considered and treated as an Acadian word, which came into existence under peculiar circumstances among the early European inhabitants. of the alluvial lands that lie around the Bay of Fundy, in the counties of Annapolis, Kings, Hants, Colchester and Cumberland, in Nova Scotia, and in the counties of Westmorland, Albert, St. John and Charlotte, in the province of New Brunswick. That circumstance has led almost everybody to look for the origin of the word in some peculiar expression prevalent in those districts of France from which the first civilized colonists in Acadia came. Guided simply by the spelling of the first part of the words as Diéreville's book presents it, the main effort has been to get hold of a verb or a noun beginning with abo,—from which either the form aboteau or the form aboideau;—which latter one has by some means become predominant in printed pages,—could be obtained. Accordingly, attempts have been made to connect aboideau especially with aboyer, by attaching to that verb the sense "to keep at bay" and