Down North and Up Along 
Here we have a new and very different pic- 
ture of our Grand Pre. It is difficult indeed 
to transfer the people described by Parkman 
to the scene we look upon from our hillside 
and which has so recently been the theatre of 
Evangeline's drama. Yet let us once more 
dream a dream. Along the one street of 
Grand Pre straggle the homes of the French 
peasantry. They are rude wooden structures, 
picturesque enough, no doubt, with their heavy 
thatched roofs, but devoid of the refinements 
of life and not over-clean. 
It is a community of ignorant peasants, un- 
able even to write their names, we are told 
elsewhere. Brought as emigrants from the 
mother-country, they have settled here and 
industriously worked the soil and reclaimed 
part of the marsh that still spreads before 
their doors. 
Being ignorant and industrious, these people 
had neither ability nor time to make a study 
of the art of diplomacy ; being superstitious, 
they fell an easy prey to those who were 
skilled in that noble art. They loved their 
homes and were content, and very likely, had 
they been left to themselves, would not have 
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