The balance is still in our favor. In 1755 we expatriated the entire French population of Acadia. Mr. Longfellow tells the story graphically in "Evangeline." John Winslow, of Marshfield, was the instrument chosen by the home government for the work. It was conducted with savage barbarity. Families were separated, wives from husbands, children from parents. They were parceled out like cattle among the English settlements. Their aggregate number was nearly two thousand persons, thenceforth without home or country. One of these outcasts, describing his lot, said, "It was the hardest that had happened since our Saviour was upon earth." The story is true. Our little boat worked her way gallantly back to Plymouth. Though thoroughly wet with the spray she had flung from her bows, I was not ill-pleased with the expedition. Figuratively speaking, my knapsack was packed, my staff and wallet waiting my grasp. With the iron horse that stood panting at the door I made in two hours the journey that Winthrop, Endicott, and Winslow took two days to accomplish. Certainly I found Plymouth much changed. The Pilgrims would hardly recognize it, though now, as in centuries before their coming, "The waves that brought them o'er Still roll in the bay, and throw their spray, As they break along the shore." [Illustration] FOOTNOTES: [193] These trees are said to have been planted in 1783, by Thomas Davis. [194] Wife of Samuel Fuller. She gave the church the lot of ground on which the parsonage stood.--_Allen._ [195] See Appendix to Bradford's History. [196] In 1741, when it was proposed to build a wharf near the rock, it was pointed out as the identical landing-place of the Pilgrims by Elder Thomas Faunce, who, having been born in 1646, had received the fact from the original settlers. [197] This party consisted of eighteen persons--viz., Miles Standish, John Carver, William Bradford, Edward Winslow, John Tilley, Edward Tilley, John Howland, Richard Warren, Steven Hopkins, and Edward Doten. Besides these were two seamen, John Alderton and Thomas English. Of the ship's company were Clark and Coppin, two of the master's mates, the master-gunner, and three sailors. This little band of discoverers left the ship at anchor at Cape Cod Harbor on the 16th of December. Mourt calls Alderton and English "two of our seamen," in distinction from the ship's company proper, they having been sent over by the undertakers, in the service of the plantation. [198] On her return voyage the _Fortune_ was seized by a French man-of-war, Captain Frontenan de Pennart, who took Thomas Barton, master, and the rest prisoners to the Isle of Rhé, plundering the vessel of beaver worth five hundred pounds, belonging to the Pilgrims. The vessel and crew were discharged after a brief detention.--"British Archives." [199] First spelled Swansea, and named from Swansea, in South Wales.