Page:New Brunswick Magazine Issue 1.djvu/43

prices, nearly every person in Acadia was engaged in trading, or at all events, every person was accused of it, even Villebon himself being charged with having secret transactions with the English in the sale of furs. Even the captains of the men-of-war which arrived from France every year with supplies for the fort were engaged in trade, for they brought out goods for the traders in Acadia who were ruining the company's business.

Fortunately we are not without the means of correcting Villebon's statement that the d'Amours brothers had hardly a place to lodge in, kept no cattle and carried on no tillage. In August 1689 a little English boy named John Gyles, then nine years old, was taken prisoner in an Indian raid against Pemaquid, in Maine, and carried to Acadia. He remained six years a capive among the Indians of the Upper St. John, but in 1695 was sold as a slave to Louis d'Amours de Chauffeurs, the oldest of the d' Amours brothers. Gyles lived with this man for more than three years, and served him so faithfully that, at the end of that time, he gave him his freedom and sent him back to his people in New England. So far from having hardly a place to lodge in, Louis d'Amours at that time had quite an extensive establishment. His residence was at Jemseg on the east side of the St. John river and he seems to have lived in much comfort. Gyles, who published a narrative of his captivity many years afterwards, says that he did a great trade with the Indians and kept a store of which the English captive had charge while he lived there. He also possessed cattle and raised crops, and Gyles mentions particularly one very fine field of wheat of which the birds had made great havoc. Louis d'Amours was married to Margaret Guion, a native of Quebec, and they had two children when Gyles lived with them. This lady treated the poor English captive