George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 4, 15th edition.

[205] the colonial newspapers contained advertise-

chap VIII.} 1755

ments of members of families seeking their companions, of sons anxious to reach and relieve their parents, of mothers mourning for their children.

The wanderers sighed for their native country; but, to prevent their return, their villages, from Annapolis to the isthmus, were laid waste. Their old homes were but ruins. In the district of Minas, for instance, two hundred and fifty of their houses, and more than as many barns, were consumed. The live stock which belonged to them, consisting of great numbers of horned cattle, hogs, sheep and horses,¹ were seized as spoils and disposed of by the English officials. A beautiful and fertile tract of country was reduced to a solitude. There was none left round the ashes of the cottages of the Acadians but the faithful watch-dog, vainly seeking the hands that fed him. Thickets of forest-trees choked their orchards; the ocean broke over their neglected dikes, and desolated their meadows.

Relentless misfortune pursued the exiles wherever they fled. Those sent to Georgia, drawn by a love for the spot where they were born as strong as that of the captive Jews, who wept by the side of the rivers of Babylon for their own temple and land, escaped to sea in boats, and went coasting from harbor to harbor; but when they had reached New England, just as they would have set sail for their native fields, they were stopped by orders from Nova Scotia.² Those who dwelt on the St. John's were torn once more from their new homes.³ When Canada surrendered, hatred