MILITARY»: AND CIVIL. 1 3

of a peculiar people. Here and there a stricken few remain, but how unlike their untamed bold progenitors. As a race they have withered from the land. The Indian of eagle glance and lion bearing are gone, and his degraded offspring crawl upon the soil where he walked in majesty and firmness. Their bows and arrows are broken, their wigwams are going to dust, and their Council fire have long since gone out. Slowly and sadly they enter the diminished forest and there read their doom; they, too, are shrinking before the mighty tide which is pressing them onward to the bosom of the Great Spirit, which shall envelop them forever.

We shall now for a while take leave of the little Island in order to bring to light the position and conditions of the Acadians. We discover that during our absence Sir William Alexander, a Scottish nobleman, having obtained a grant of the peninsula in I622———now denominated Nova Scotia—arrived there with a number of emigrants, intending to found a colony but failed; later on, however. British settle- ments became established. War against France having been declared by the Mother Country in 1626, soon this state of affairs reached the rival colonist in Nova Scotia, and the New Englanders, desirous of rendering a helping hand to their fellow colonists in Nova Scotia, furnished them with strong military bands. Thus it was that during a period of one hundred years the ownership of the provincechanged hands so often, being taken four different times by the English and as often relinquished.

Finally, however, four Regiments of Infantry, besides Ar- tillery, were raised in New England and conveyed to Port Royal in 1710. Those troops on their arrival opened fire on the fort, but the Governor having a force numbering less than three hundred men under his command, capitulated. The garrison being allowed to retain their arms and baggage, marched out of the fort with drums beating and colors flying, when the Lilies of France gave place to the Cross of St. George, which has been the national flag of the province to the present day. Thus Port Royal, the principal fortification of the French in Acadia, was taken by the British, which ended the war in that section, and in 17 13 a treaty of peace was concluded at Utrecht, by which France ceded Newfoundland and Nova Scotia to England, but retained Cape Breton, the Island of St. John and