Save in the Maritime Provinces, it is not possible to count the offspring of the original French settlers of Acadia who came out from France in the seventeenth century. It is estimated that there were at the time of the expulsion ten or eleven thousand under the British flag, and four or five thousand in Ile St Jean and elsewhere on French territory. About six thousand were deported, as we have seen, and scattered over the British colonies. Undoubtedly a great number of Americans of to-day are descendants of those exiles, but, except at the mouth of the Mississippi, they are merged in the general population and their identity is lost. Neither can we tell how many of those who found their way to Old France remained there permanently. For upwards of twenty years the French government was concerned in finding places for them. Some were settled on estates; some were sent to Corsica; others, as late as 1778, went to Louisiana. Nor can we estimate the number of Acadians in the province of Quebec, for no distinction has been made between them and the general French-Canadian population. For the Maritime Provinces, however, we have the count of the census of 1911. This shows 98,611 in New Brunswick, 51,746 in Nova Scotia, and 13,117 in Prince Edward Island, a total of 163,474 in the three provinces. The largest communities are those of Gloucester, Victoria, Madawaska, and Kent counties in New Brunswick, and of Digby and Yarmouth in Nova Scotia. Several thousand Acadians are counted in Cape Breton; so, too, in Halifax and Cumberland counties. But in the county of Annapolis, where stands the site of the first settlement formed on the soil of Canada--the site of the ancient stronghold of Acadia--and which for many generations was the principal home of the Acadian people, only two or three hundred Acadians are to be found to-day; while, looking out over Minas Basin, the scene of so much sorrow and suffering, one solitary family keeps its lonely vigil in the village of Grand Pre. BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE The story of Acadia and the Acadians has been told many times, but most of the treatises on the subject are unsatisfactory from the historical point of view, either because of the biased attitude taken by the authors or because of their inadequate use of original sources. The present writer has deliberately avoided consulting secondary works. The following titles, however, are here suggested for the benefit of the reader who wishes to become acquainted with the literature of the subject.