CHAPTER III 



AN ACADIAN VILLAGE 



" Where a few villagers on bended knees 

 Find solace which a busy world disdains." 



Wordsworth. 



TN the year 1605 a small party of French- 

 men with their wives and children came 

 from the western part of France, from Rochelle, 

 Santonge and Poiteau, to establish homes for 

 themselves in the new world. They settled 

 in what is now known as Nova Scotia, but 

 which came to be known in those days as Aca- 

 dia, and the French settlers, who thrived and 

 spread to New Brunswick, Cape Breton, Prince 

 Edward Island and the Magdalens, as Acadians. 

 Because these people are generally pictured 

 as a happy, pastoral race, one is apt to suppose 

 that the name Acadia is a corruption of Ar- 

 cadia, but this is not the case, for it is derived 

 from a word-ending of the Micmac Indian lan- 

 guage, meaning " the place of " or " region of," 

 and was used as a suffix by these Indians in 



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