Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/202

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
160
THE TOURIST'S MARITIME PROVINCES

erences as this to the refounding of Acadie are contained in the provincial archives.

In September, 1768, Joseph Dugas mounted his wife and his child Isabelle, aged four years, upon the horse "that constituted the most appreciable part of his fortune," and placed behind them provisions for the journey and implements necessary to the establishment of a home in the wilderness. They departed from Annapolis by the path known hitherto only to the Indians, and thus blazoned a trail for others who followed, mourning the lands to which they had first returned and had found in the hands of English colonists. More Acadians arrived soon from New England, having walked north through the woods, or come by frail barks to the haven of St. Mary. Among the heads of families who joined Joseph Dugas were Prudent Robichaud, Jean Belliveau, René Saulnier, Yves Thibault, Pierre Mélanson, Joseph Comeau, Joseph Gaudet and Pierre Doucet. In 1771, says Father Dagnaud, there were in the municipality of Clare twenty-four families, comprising ninety-eight persons, all of them dwelling in the neighbourhood of Leblanc Cove. Church Point received its first colonists a year later. Thus,

... a few ...
Wandered back to their native land to die in its bosom.

"Who remembers Acadie?" asked a French writer in 1859. The author of Jacques et Marie,