Page:New Brunswick Magazine Issue 1.djvu/45

would be drunk and fight for several days and nights together, until they had spent most of their skins in wine and brandy, which was brought to the village by a Frenchman called Monsieur Sigenioncour. The reader will easily recognize in this name that of Rene d'Amours, Sieur de Clignacourt. Perhaps we may discern in this statement, also, the principal reason for Villebon's dissatisfaction with the d'Amours brothers. A man who was engaged in selling the Indians wine and brandy, and keeping them drunk for days until he had obtained from them all the furs they had gathered in the winter's hunt, was not likely to be a favorite with the Acadian governor. Yet the time soon came when Villebon had good reason for looking on the d'Amours with some degree of favor for at a very critical period they rendered essential service to him and to the state.

In 1696 Villebon was established with a garrison of one hundred men at Fort Nashwaak, which was then the head quarters of Acadia. It had been chosen because it was near the principal Indian villages, and so far from the mouth of the St. John river that it could not be easily attacked by the English of Boston, with whom a constant state of war existed. The story of the combats which were carried on between 1690 and 1700 between Villebon and the English would make a paper of itself, and therefore I shall not touch upon it further than as it relates to the fortunes of our first settlers, the d'Amour's brothers. If settlement was tardy on the St. John River it was not without good cause, for the tiller of the soil above all things needs, peace to enable him to prosper, and he is not likely to be content to live in a land where his fields are being constantly ravaged by an enemy, his buildings burnt and his cattle killed or driven away. Yet that was what he might expect if he lived on the banks of the St. John two hundred years ago.