wishing at once to console the husband and to get rid of him, sought for him a high command at a distance from the colony. Therefore while Marin, an able officer, was made first in rank, Péan was made second. The same writer hints that Duquesne himself was influenced by similar motives in his appointment of leaders.1

He mustered the colony troops, and ordered out the Canadians. With the former he was but half satisfied; with the latter he was delighted; and he praises highly their obedience and alacrity. "I had not the least trouble in getting them to march. They came on the minute, bringing their own guns, though many people tried to excite them to revolt; for the whole colony opposes my operations." The expedition set out early in the spring of 1753. The whole force was not much above a thousand men, increased by subsequent detachments to fifteen hundred; but to the Indians it seemed a mighty host; and one of their orators declared that the lakes and rivers were covered with boats and soldiers from Montreal to Presquisle. Some Mohawk hunters by the St. Lawrence saw them as they passed, and hastened home to tell the news to Johnson, whom they wakened at midnight, "whooping and hollowing in a frightful manner.' Lieutenant Holland at Oswego saw a fleet of canoes upon the lake, and was told by a roving Frenchman that they belonged to an army of six thousand

3

1 Pouchot, Mémoire sur la dernière Guerre de l'Amérique septentrionale (ed. 1781), I. 8.

2 Duquesne au Ministre, 27 Oct. 1753.

8 Johnson to Clinton, 20 April, 1753, in N. Y. Col. Docs., VI. 778.

1753.]

THE OHIO ENTERPRISE.

89

men going to the Ohio, "to cause all the English to quit those parts."

1

The main body of the expedition landed at Presquisle, on the southeastern shore of Lake Erie, where the town of Erie now stands; and here for a while we leave them.

1 Holland to Clinton, 15 May, 1753, in N. Y Col. Docs., VI. 780.

CHAPTER IV.

1710-1754.

CONFLICT FOR ACADIA.

ACADIA CEDED TO ENGLAND. - ACADIANS SWEAR FIDELITY. — HALI FAX FOUNDED. - FRENCH INTRIGUE. - ACADIAN PRIESTS.- MILDNESS OF ENGLISH RULE. - COVERT HOSTILITY OF ACADIANS. THE NEW OATH. — TREACHERY OF VERSAILLES. — INDIANS INCITED TO WAR. CLERICAL AGENTS OF REVOLT. - ABBÉ LE Loutre. ACADIANS IMPELLED TO EMIGRATE. - MISERY OF THE EMIGRANTS. - HUMANITY OF CORNWALLIS AND HOPSON. -FANATICISM AND VIO

LENCE OF LE LOUTRE. Capture of thE "ST. FRANÇOIS.” — THE

--

ENGLISH AT BEAUBASSIN. LE LOUTRE DRIVES OUT THE INHABITANTS. MURDER OF HOWE. BEAUSÉJOUR. - INSOLENCE OF LE. LOUTRE. - HIS HARSHNESS TO THE ACADIANS.- THE BOUNDARY COMMISSION. ITS FAILURE. APPROACHING War.

WHILE in the West all the signs of the sky foreboded storm, another tempest was gathering in the East, less in extent, but not less in peril. The conflict in Acadia has a melancholy interest, since it ended in a catastrophe which prose and verse have joined to commemorate, but of which the causes have not been understood.

Acadia that is to say, the peninsula of Nova Scotia, with the addition, as the English claimed, of the present New Brunswick and some adjacent country - was conquered by General Nicholson in 1710, and formally transferred by France to the British Crown, three years later, by the treaty of Utrecht. By that treaty it was "expressly provided" that such of the French inhabitants as