The mystery is that there ever lived human beings to undertake such an
unpromising work, where such hardship and perseverance were required,
and where the folly of any hope of success must have been apparent to an
intelligent person every day, from the commencement to the close of the
twenty-seven years of servile toil.

* * * * *

LANCASTER IN ACADIE AND THE ACADIENS IN LANCASTER.

BY HENRY S. NOURSE.


It is almost one hundred and thirty years

" ... since the burning of Grand-Pre,
When on the falling tide the freighted vessels departed,
Bearing a nation, with all its household gods, into exile;
Exile without an end, and without an example in story."

Of the numerous readers of Evangeline in Lancaster, few now suspect how
nearly the sad tale of wantonly-ravaged Acadie touched their own town
history. From the archives of Nova Scotia all details of that deed of
merciless treachery were left out, for very shame; but upon the crown
officials then in authority over the Province, history and poetry have
indelibly branded the stigma of an unnecessary edict of expulsion, which
devastated one of the fairest regions of America, and tore seven
thousand guileless and peaceful people from a scene of rural felicity
rarely equaled on earth, to scatter them in the misery of abject