Not dreaming of their impending fate, the poor Acadians met at the appointed place, and were there informed of the fact, that their houses and lands were forfeited, and that they must leave the country, to become wanderers in strange and distant lands. They sued for mercy, but the iron yoke of a Christian nation was laid more heavily upon their necks, in answer to that prayer, and they were driven from home and country; and as they sailed from shore, or entered the wilderness, they saw in the distance, ascending to heaven, the smoke of all that they had loved and lost. Those who survived, found an asylum in the United States, and in the more remote portions of the British Empire; and when, after the war, they were invited to return to their early home, only thirteen hundred were known to be in existence. It is a remnant of this very people who, with their descendants, are now the owners of the Madawaska settlement; and it is in an Acadian dwelling that I am now penning this paper.
But, owing to their many misfortunes (I would speak in charity), the Acadians have degenerated into a more ignorant and miserable people than are the Canadian French, whom they closely resemble in their appearance and customs. They believe the people of Canada to be a nation of knaves, and the people of Canada know them to be a half savage community. Worshipping a miserable priesthood is their principal business; drinking and cheating their neighbours, their principal amusement. They live by tilling the soil; and are content, if they can barely make the provision of one year take them to the entrance of another. They are, at the same time, passionate lovers of money, and have brought the science of fleecing strangers to perfection. Some of them, by a life of meanness, have succeeded in accumulating a respectable property; but all the money they obtain is systematically hoarded. It is reported of the principal man of this place, that he has in his house, at the present moment, the sum of 10,000 dollars, in silver and gold; and yet this man’s children are as ignorant of the alphabet as the cattle upon the hills. But, with all their ignorance, the Acadians are a happy people; but it is the happiness of a mere animal nature.