PET1TTE ROCHELLE. 233 



a fortunate individual. Off Bourdo Point, so called after 

 M. Bourdo, the French commander, who was buried 

 there, the hull of a French frigate lies embedded in the 

 sand. The iron has rusted away, but the oak timbers are 

 still sound. 



Years rolled on, but the history of Petitte Rochelle was 

 still preserved in the archives of the Acadians ; and in the 

 year 1861 seventy families of these people, driven from 

 Prince Edward Island, not this time by fire and sword, but 

 by an oppressive feudal law which then existed in the 

 island, returned to the home of their ancestors. They found 

 their old lauds occupied by English and Scotch settlers ; 

 and pushing farther up the river they obtained a govern- 

 ment grant of land in the heart of the forest, 3 miles from 

 the Restigouche. 



I have elsewhere alluded to the hardships these poor 

 people endured in their battle with the forest (p. 18). I 

 happened to be in the neighbourhood a few years after their 

 arrival, and took the opportunity of visiting their settlement. 

 The men at that time spoke a little English, and dressed 

 like the other settlers in the country, but the women were 

 as Acadian as ever ; they were the women of Grand Pre. 

 They dressed in the homespun kirtle, generally black 

 striped with red, a white handkerchief round the shoul- 

 ders, a black one on the head, black stockings, and thick 

 sabots. Not one word of English could they speak, nor 

 French either, for that matter : the Acadian patois is as 

 unintelligible to the Frenchman as to the Englishman. 

 Their settlement was a cluster of log huts, hid away in 

 the bosom of the forest, with their chapel in the centre. To 

 build this latter edifice was the first care of the Acadians* 



