during the summer on the sea shore fishing and in the
winter in the woods hunting." It appears that these poor people were
reduced to the necessity of leading almost an aboriginal life to save
themselves from starvation, yet they clung to the locality.

Major Studholme sent a committee of four persons to explore the River
St. John in July, 1783.[92] The committee reported sixty-one families
of Acadians settled in the vicinity of Aukpaque. There were in these
families 61 men, 57 women and 236 children. About twenty-five families
lived on the east side of the river, most of them near the mouth of
the Keswick; the others lived not far from the Indian village on the
west side of the river, and there were in addition two or three
families at St. Anne's Point. In their report to Major Studholme the
committee describe the Acadians as "an inoffensive people." They had a
considerable quantity of land under cultivation, but few, if any, of
them had any title to their lands save that of simple possession.
Those who claimed longest residence were Joseph Martin who came in
1758 and Joseph Doucet who came in 1763. The settlement began to grow
more rapidly after the arrival of the missionary Bailly, for out of
the sixty-one heads of families included in the Committees report to
Studholme nine came in 1767, thirteen in 1768, ten in 1769 and four in
1770. All of these enjoyed the ministrations of l'Abbe Bailly. The
missionary seems to have remained a year in residence and then at the
instance of the Governor of Nova Scotia was sent to the Indians and
Acadians of the peninsula to the eastward of Halifax. He, however,
paid occasional visits to the River St. John as is shown by the
records of the baptisms, marriages and burials at which he officiated
when there.[93] He is heartily commended by Lord William Campbell, the
governor of Nova Scotia, for his tact in dealing with the Indians and
his loyalty to the constituted authorities of the province. It is not
probable that there was very much ground for the complaint of Simonds
& White in their letter of June 22, 1768, in which they say, "We have
made a smaller collection of Furrs this year than last, occasioned by
the large demands of the Priest for his services, and his ordering the
Indians to leave their hunting a month sooner than usual to keep
certain festivals, and by our being late in getting to their village,
the reason of which we informed you in our last. * * It's expected
that the