Over the Border: Acadia, the Home of "Evangeline"Chase, Eliza B. (Eliza Brown)
History
Over the Border: Acadia, the Home of "Evangeline"
Chase, Eliza B. (Eliza Brown)
Nova Scotia -- Description and travel
These people, because they were foreigners, and there was some mystery
about them which the girls did not then understand, inspired them with
fear; though Philadelphia residents of that time testify that the
homeless and destitute strangers were in reality a very simple and
inoffensive company, when, "friendless, homeless, hopeless, they
wandered from city to city." Through the influence of Anthony Benezet, a
member of the Society of Friends, they were provided with homes on Pine
Street above Sixth, where the two little wooden houses still stand; one,
when we last saw it, being painted blue.
What a picturesque company of adventurers were those French noblemen,
who, turning their backs upon the luxuries and fascinations of court
life, sailed away to this wild and distant land, where, in the pursuit
of gain, fame, or merely adventure, they were to suffer absolute
privation and hardship; consorting with savages in place of the plumed
and pampered denizens of palaces.
After a probably tempestuous voyage across the bleak Atlantic, and a
merciless buffeting from Fundy in the spring of 1604, the prospective
Governor of the great territory known as Acadia was sailing along this
coast, which presents such a forbidding aspect from the Bay, making his
first haven May 16. At that time, we can readily imagine, in this
northern region the weather would not be very balmy. Even now the wild
rocky shore stretches along drearily--though with certain stern
picturesqueness--as far as eye can reach, and then must have been even
less attractive, as it showed no sign of habitation.
Champlain was somewhat familiar with these shores from former voyages,
and so had been chosen as pilot; but De Poutrincourt and Pontgravé,
other associates of Pierre du Guast, the Sieur de Monts, doubtless
looked askance at each other, or indulged in the expressive French shrug
as the cheerless panorama parsed before them. On that 16th of May, at
the harbor where the little town of Liverpool is now situated, De Monts
found another Frenchman engaged in hunting and fishing, ignoring, or
regardless of, the rights of any one else; and without ado this
interloper (so considered by De Monts) was nabbed; the only consolation
he received being the honor of transmitting his name, Rossignol, to the
harbor,--a name since transferred to a lake in the vicinity.
After a sojourn of two weeks at another point (St. Mary's Bay), the
explorers proceeded northward; and at last a particularly inviting
harbor presented itself, causing the mental vision of the new Governor
and his company to assume more hopeful aspect, as they turned their
course thither and pronounced it "Port Royal"!
PORT ROYAL
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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