Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/151

Rh

The message was carried to all the settlements on the rivers Canard, Pereau, Habitant, Gaspereau. Fathers and sons, even little boys of ten, were to be kept in restraint. The wives must prepare the goods for departure, and compose their minds for the endurance of woe beyond describing. For so long they had planted these meadows and fended them laboriously from the sea, for so long they had tended the fruit-trees planted by their fathers, and watched the flocks on the hills, and built and repaired their rude homes over-looking marsh and river and the Basin beyond

Five days after the governor's edict had been read in the church, two hundred and fifty of the younger men were embarked upon transports which had arrived in the harbour. At the bayonet's point they were separated from their families. Their plea to be deported to Cape Breton or Canada had been ignored. They knew nothing of the country to which they were bound except that it was peopled by the same race as that which was at this moment despoiling them of everything in life.

When the men had been put aboard and more transports had arrived, the embarkation of the women and little children began. By Christmas sufficient vessels had arrived to carry away all the