Boston cinq navires chargés d’Acadiens. Pour un motif ou pour un autre, la Législature du Massachusetts refusa positivement de recevoir ces exilés. Instances, supplications de la part du capitaine Brooks[1] et même du gouverneur Bernard, ne purent vaincre les résistances de l’Assemblée. On refusa même d’attendre le retour d’un courrier qu’on offrait d’envoyer au Général Amherst. Hancock, qui repré-
- ↑ Le MS. orig. — fol. 848 — porte la note suivante : — C’est ce même capitaine
Brooks Watson qui, en 1791, fit au Rev. Dr Brown une peinture si
flatteuse des mœurs acadiennes, laquelle nous avons reproduit. Ailleurs il
parle en ces termes de leur conduite en exil et de leur retour :
« Their orderly conduct (in Georgia), their integrity, sobriety and frugality, secured to them the good will of the people and gained them comfortable support. But, still longing for their Native Country, all their industry was stimulated, all their hopes supported, by that landmark of their former felicity ; many of them built boats, and taking their families, coasted the whole American shore, from Georgia to Nova Scotia… But alas ! what did they find ? All was desolated ; for, the more effectually to drive them out of the Country, all their houses had been burnt, all their cattle killed by order of Government ; hence they found no shelter ; still they persevered with never-failing fortitude, with unremitting industry, and established themselves in différent remote parts of the Province, where they had been suffered to remain, but without any legal property ; at least, I have not heard of any land having been granted to them… »
« Their numbers, I am told, have increased about two thousand, and I am informed they still continue, what I know them to be in their prosperous state, an honest, sober, industrious and virtuous people. » Hon. Brook Watson to Rev. Dr Brown July 1st 1791.
be well deserved. But at the same time his moral worth, judging from some of his correspondence with colonel Bouquet, could not very well be of a very high order. In 1763, while the Poutiac conspiracy was in progress, he wrote to the latter : « Might we not try to spread smallpox among the rebel Indian tribes ? We must in this occasion make use of every device to reduce them. » « I will try, answered Bouquet, to introduce smallpox by means of blankets which we will cause to fall into their hands. » « That suggestion was adopted by Amherst. » « You will do well, he again wrote him, to try to spread smallpox by means of blankets and by every other means which might help to exterminate that abominable race. »
