was the beautiful tract they had occupied : their homes lay smoking in ruins; the cattle, abandoned by their protectors, assembled about the forsaken dwellingplaces, anxiously seeking their wonted masters; and all night long, the faithful watch-dogs howled for the hands that had fed, and the roofs that had sheltered them.

The distress of one family will serve to exhibit the sufferings of these refugees. There was among them a notary-public, named Rene Le Blanc. He loved the English. On one occasion, the Indians would have persuaded him to assist them, in an attempt upon the English. He refused; and the Indians, in resentment, made him prisomer, and detained him four years.

At the time of the expulsion, Le Blanc was living at an advanced age. His fidelity to the English, and his sufferings on that account, deserved favour, but he found none. Le Blanc had twenty children, and about one hundred and fifty grandchildren: these were embarked in different vessels, and scattered in different provinces. The unfortunate old man was set ashore in New York, with his wife, and the two youngest of their children. Love for those that were scattered, led him from one strange city to another He reached Philadelphia: there he found three of his children, and there, despairing to recover the rest, in penury and sorrow, he sank into his grave. It may be questioned," says a writer in the North American Review, "if the history of the world exhibits a more heartrending incident than the exile of this amiable and unhappy people. When the traveller contemplates the noble dykes reared by their industry; while he walks beneath the shade of their abundant orchards, and

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stands over the ruins of their cottages, or muses among their graves, his imagination goes back to a scene of rural felicity and purity seldom seen in the world, and his heart melts at the sudden and dreadful fate of the Acadians."

PART THE FIRST.

PRELUDE.

THIS is the forest primæval. The murmuring pines and the hemiocks,

Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,

Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic ;

Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms.

Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neigbouring ocean

Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.