weather, while the torpid water was dimpled with rain- 

 drops and the upturned canoes lay idle on the pebbles, 

 the listless warrior smoked his pipe under his roof of 

 bark; or launched his slender craft at the dawn of the 

 July day, when shores and islands were painted in 

 shadow against the rosy east, and forests, dusky and 

 cool, lay waiting for the sunrise. The women gathered 

 raspberries or whortleberries in the open places of the 

 woods, or clams and oysters in the sands and shallows, 

 adding their shells to the shell-heaps that have accumu- 

 lated for ages along these shores. The men fished, 

 speared porpoises, or shot seals. A priest was often 

 in the camp watching over his flock, and saying mass 

 every day in his chapel of bark. There was no lack of 

 altar candles, made by mixing tallow with the wax of 

 the bayberry, which abounded among the rocky hills and 

 was gathered in profusion by the squaws and children. 



Some of the French were as lawless as their Indian 

 friends. Nothing is more strange than the incongruous 

 mixture of the forms of feudalism with the independence 

 of the Acadian woods. The only settled agricultural 

 population was at Port Eoyal, Beaubassin, and the 

 Basin of Minas. The rest were fishermen, fur-traders, 

 or rovers of the forest. Repeated orders came from the 

 court to open a communication with Quebec, and even 

 to establish a line of military posts through the inter- 

 vening wilderness ; but the distance and the natural diffi- 

 culties of the country proved insurmountable obstacles. 



If communication with Quebec was difficult, that with 

 Boston was easy; and thus Acadia became largely de- 

 pendent on its New England neighbors, who, says an 

 Acadian officer, "are mostly fugitives from England, 

 guilty of the death of their late King, and accused of 

 conspiracy against their present sovereign; others of 

 them are pirates ; and they are all united in a sort of inde- 

 pendent republic." Their relations with the Acadians 

 were of a mixed sort. They continually encroached on 



12. 



