Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/156

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THE TOURIST'S MARITIME PROVINCES

The village Longfellow described vanished over a century and a half ago. People of English descent dwell in the Grand Pré of to-day. Not a single Acadian may be found in the prim straight-gabled cottages that climb the road from the railway station. But in the field at the foot of the hill we can trace the site of the chapel where fathers and sons were imprisoned, and the foundation of the priest's house, in which Winslow stayed—his troops camping in the adjoining meadow. The graveyard is marked by a single stone cross erected in late years by a group of Wolfville men who have organised an association to preserve the few material witnesses of Acadian occupancy still remaining. Some years back, a pump and a crude railing denoted the well of beloved tradition. The Park Committee has substituted a sweep for the unromantic pump, and walled the old well with new masonry. The church and adjacent buildings fell a prey to Winslow's torch, but the willows, stubborn as a bay-tree, resisted the flames. To-day, as in the time when the villagers descended by the road they border and crossed to the Chapel of St. Charles, these ancient trees, sprouted from Normandy shoots, oppose a leaning hedge of green to our vision. If willows might speak! Beneath these boughs walked the farmers in their Sunday homespun. We may imagine them gathering to discuss after mass the message of the priest—warnings, mayhap, of Indian raids, counsel as to