[Sidenote: _Their fate._] Some 6,000 in all were removed, out of a total population of a little over 9,000. Of these, over 3,000 had had their homes round the Basin of Mines, the majority of whom {226} were dwellers in the village and district of Grand Pré. The others came from the isthmus, or from Annapolis. They were dispersed abroad among the English colonies in North America, from Massachusetts southwards; but the colonies were not all willing to receive them, and from Virginia and South Carolina many were sent on to England. Some, it is said, found their way to Louisiana, while of those who had escaped transportation a certain number took refuge at Quebec. A considerable remnant was left behind in Acadia, and some of the exiles 'wandered back to their native land to die in its bosom';[5] but those who were left behind in Acadia, and those who returned, were not enough to leaven to any great extent the future history of the peninsula. [Footnote 5: From Longfellow's _Evangeline_.] [Sidenote: _Different views as to the policy of expulsion._] What judgment may fairly be passed upon this measure of expulsion? The traditional view has been that the removal of the Acadians from Acadia was an injustice and a crime--an arbitrary and cruel act, parallel on a smaller scale to the earlier expulsion of the Huguenots from France. According to this view the English were oppressors, rooting out and carrying captive a harmless and innocent peasantry-- Men whose lives glided on like rivers that water the woodlands, Darkened by shadows of earth but reflecting an image of heaven. Longfellow has given us this picture in _Evangeline_, and it has been drawn in similar outlines by various hands. In the foreground are bands of terror-stricken peasants, driven on board ship amid mourning and lamentation. In the background are burning homesteads, emptiness where there had been plenty, desolation where yesterday the children played. A different view is given by later writers who have more closely tested the facts. Their conclusion is that the expulsion of the Acadians, stern and even cruel as it was, was more or less a political necessity; that the Acadians {227} themselves were sinners as well as sinned against; and that they were sinned against more by men of their own race and religion than by the English.