A PLAGUE OF MICE 149

Cocking tails and pricking whiskers, Families by tens and dozens,

Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives,

Followed the piper for their lives.

Mice! They came in swarms, marching in long, narrow columns. They destroyed everything on their way. Like the proverbial goat, they ate everything. Even the rivers could not hold them back. The ones at the back pushed on those at the front. Then, for days after a raid, their dead bodies floated down the rivers and out to sea—victims of their own destruc- tion. The survivors lurked in the woods until new broods replenished their numbers. Then, out they sallied again.

The mice came in 1724, and they consumed even the grass. In 1728, they returned again. In 1738, they made still another raid. To the settlers, evil spirits were working against the colony, and many tales have come down with miraculous accounts of mice banishment—similar to the Pied Piper’s exploits in the town of Hamelin.

To see the town folk suffer so From vermin was a pity.

No wonder those hard-working peasants were dis- couraged. So completely did the mice do their work that the poor Acadian farmers had to plough down the remains of their crops, and depend for their sub- sistence on the fisheries. Some help, too, was sent from Cape Breton to prevent them from deserting en masse.

“Evil spirits,” murmured the credulous habitants, but the energetic de Roma sat down and wrote a first- hand description of the life and habits of mice. These