Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/328

308 hard, historic truth, with all its stern, acrimonious, and distressing aggravations, we must read that incident in sober and saddening prose. Acadia, or Nova Scotia, the oldest French colony in North America, had been for near a century and a half occupied by that people, and had always been a scene of distraction and destruction. The peninsula, in the fortunes of rivalry and war, besides passing by royal patent from one to another French proprietary, had been transferred some half-a-dozen times by treaty negotiations alternately to the English and French crowns. That single statement tells the tale of what sea and shore had witnessed. The treaty of Utrecht, in 1713, closing one of the paroxysms of strife, had ceded it to England. It was never to be transferred again; but the tenure of it was long at risk, and the possession of it was worse than of doubtful value to the English. There were at the time about twenty-five hundred French inhabitants. There was, of course, an uncertainty, keeping open a dispute, as to what were its bounds. The English soon found that it was the purpose of the French to restrict these as narrowly as possible. The English drew the boundary line as east from the mouth of the Kennebec to Quebec, including the southern shore and islands. The latter insisted that the St. John and the lands north of the Bay of Fundy were not included in the cession, and that Acadia signified only the southern part of what is now Nova Scotia. It was provided by the treaty that the subjects of the King of France in Acadia might, within a year, move away at their pleasure, disposing of their real and personal property; or, if they chose to remain, might retain their religion and their priests, and be as free in all respects as British subjects under British laws. As successive British sovereigns came to the throne, orders were sent over that these so-called Neutrals should take the oath of allegiance, while not required to bear arms against the French or for the