About this time, two of the New England regiments were disbanded and returned to their homes, their period of enlistment having expired, and the difficulty of obtaining other troops prevented anything being attempted on the St. John for a year or two. Lawrence and Shirley, however, continued to discuss the details of the proposed expedition. Both governors seem to have had rather vague ideas of the number of the Acadians on the river and the situation of their settlements. Shirley says he learned from the eastern Indians and New England traders that their principal settlement was about ninety miles up the river at a place called St. Annes, six miles below the old Indian town of Aukpaque. He thought that 800 or 1,000 men would be a force sufficient to clear the river of the enemy and that after they were driven from their haunts the English would do well to establish a garrison of 150 men at St. Annes, in order to prevent the return of the French and to overawe the Indians. He also recommended that the fort at the mouth of the river, lately abandoned by Boishebert, should be rebuilt and a garrison of 50 men placed there. During the years that followed the expulsion of the Acadians occasional parties of the exiles, returning from the south, arrived at the River St. John, where they waited to see what the course of events might be. Their condition was truly pitiable. Some had journeyed on foot or by canoe through an unexplored wilderness; others, from the far away Carolinas, having procured small vessels, succeeded in creeping furtively along the Atlantic coast from one colony to another until they reached the Bay of Fundy; and thus the number of the Acadians continued to increase until Boishebert had more than a thousand people under his care. Some of them he sent to Canada, for his forces were insufficient for their protection, and his supplies were scanty.